Former student remembers national story
Rachel Vasquez
Nathan Chambers
April 19, 1995 was a day that Rachel Vasquez and many others will never forget.
Every class at Southmoreland High School took a moment of silence to remember the 168 people killed by the bombing at the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Rachel Vasquez’s class was just one of them.
She wouldn’t make a connection to the incident until five years later.
“It brought to life that the most terroristic attack on American soil had happened, and as a nation, we had to come together,” said Vasquez.
Vasquez wrote a story for the school newspaper about one of McVeigh’s defense attorneys, Nathan Chambers, who is a 1975 Southmoreland graduate. In fact, Vasquez, then a senior, broke what was a national story.
“I found out about Nathan Chambers just through simply starting with the facts. The library at school was my first source,” said Vasquez, who recently spoke with the Tam O’Shanter.
After finding out that the class president was of Chambers’ graduating class was actually the father of one of her classmates, she immediately contacted Randy Graft, the class president of Chambers’ class. With confirmation that Chambers served as a District Attorney for Denver, “the rest just fell into place.”
“The McVeigh story was iconic in my journalism career,” Vasquez said, “I will never forget when Chambers returned my phone call.”
It was after her first volleyball practice when Vasquez saw Chambers’ name and number on her kitchen counter. She immediately thought, “What should I ask him first?” She said she was “nervous” and that she “wanted nothing more than to nail the story.”
Vasquez said that after talking with her journalism adviser, Mr. Chuck Brittain, “I knew that I was ready.”
After speaking with Chambers, she knew that she was “about to nail something big. Any aspiring journalist wants to nail the scoop, and this was definitely the story that put my name on the map.”
Vasquez, an editor for the Tam O’Shanter and a 2001 graduate of Southmoreland High School, tried to interview McVeigh before the execution, but he declined. To speak to the press.
Everyone has that one person that they look up to. For Vasquez that person happens to be Mr. Brittain.
“Mr. Brittain is an amazing, professional journalist,” said Vasquez, “I have learned so much from him even after my high school writing days, of what it is like in the real world of media.”
Vasquez said his “passion for her success” pushed her. She feels that part of her legacy as an “aspiring journalist” is not only just having the talent of writing, but in also making her advisor proud.
“His guidance helped me throughout my college experience at Point Park University, and I am forever grateful for every note” written in her notebooks.
The Nathan Chambers, above the fold in the Tribune Review, is part of her legacy as a professional journalist. She says that she is “just as proud of that story today” as she was in 2001. She said, “Never leave your notebook out of sight, because every day is different and you never know when the next story will break.”
McVeigh was convicted of bombing the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injuring several hundred more. McVeigh would later say that the attack was to avenge the fiery deaths of Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas, two years earlier. McVeigh said he believed that the victims at Waco “had been murdered by agents of the federal government.”
McVeigh was convicted and executed on June 11, 2001. His story and Vasquez’s journalism career will forever be linked.
“My advice to future journalists is always report and verify the facts,” she said. “Chase the story, because coming from my experience, nothing beats the thrill of breaking one.”
Tiffany Stone
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