Honoring Feds Killed in Action

Early in the work day (9:02 a.m. CDT) on April 19, 1995, a truck bomb exploded at the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The blast destroyed or heavily damaged more than 300 buildings within a 15-16 block radius of the Alfred P. Murrah building.

The death toll included 168 people (most of them federal workers) including 19 children in a pre-school center. A total of 680 people, the vast majority civil servants, were injured. Some will never recover. The bombers were Americans who (understatement of the day alert) were mad at the U.S. Government.

Two hundred children lost one or both parents in the OKC attack.

It is hard to find any good out of the event, but there was and still is a silver lining of a sort.

A relatively new at the time charity, Federal Employees Education and Assistance fund, stepped in. Using contributions from federal and postal workers, and some very generous corporate (Blue Cross-Blue Shield, GEICO and Long Term Care Partners) sponsors, FEEA promised the children of the victims a college education. Full ride to any school they could get into. There were 200 kids, including one whose father was killed before the baby was born.

Steve Bauer, executive director of FEEA has been the unofficial godfather for the Oklahoma City kids. He said he still has 22 kids to go.

FEEA has also promised to educate 50 children whose parents were killed or severely injured (some of the burns from the jet fuel were horrific) when the Pentagon was attacked on 9-11.

(Personal note: One of my sons was on the other side of the Pentagon when the airplane slammed into it. Another was at Dulles Airport from whence the airplane took off before it was hijacked. I watched the Pentagon burn from the fourth floor of our radio station building. It was a Tuesday.)

FEEA is celebrating its 25th anniversary. It is asking federal workers to donate (at least) $25 to help out. Blue Cross-Blue Shield has agreed to matching contributions up to $25,000.

Today at 10 a.m., Bauer will be our guest on our Your Turn with Mike Causey radio program. He’ll talk about FEEA, the Oklahoma City and Pentagon kids, and others who have been touched by the feds-helping-feds charity. Listen if you can, call in (or email me: mcausey@federalnewsradio.com) if you have questions or comments. You can listen live at www.federalnewsradio.com or, in the DC area, on a real radio at 1500 AM.

But listen if you can. The FEEA and the generosity of feds is worth learning more about.

Not bad for government work!!!

For more information on FEEA or to contribute click here: http://www.feea.org/

Buyouts, TSA Election

If you are hoping your agency will offer early-retirement and a $25k buyout, welcome to the club. Although not as widespread as the buyouts of the 1990s, more and more agencies are joining the club buyout. Today at 10:30 a.m. on our Your Turn radio show we’ll get the latest on the buyout situation from Federal Times editor Steve Watkins and senior writer Steve Losey. They’ll also talk about the fast-approaching runoff election between the American Federation of Government Employees and the National Treasury Employees Union for the right to represent workers at the Transportation Security Administration.

To reach me: mcausey@federalnewsradio.com

Nearly Useless Factoid
by Suzanne Kubota

Harper’s Magazine reports, “Beneath the ice of Russia’s White Sea, a diver tamed a pair of beluga whales. Since belugas are thought to dislike artificial materials such as wetsuits and breathing apparatus, the diver entered the freezing water naked, using yoga to stay alive.”

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