McVeigh's dad will be alone execution day
'I don't want to be around anybody'
By Karin Grunden
Tribune-Star
The moment his son dies, Bill McVeigh plans to be alone.
He might be in a church, a friend's home or a secluded hunting cabin.
While he hasn't finalized where he will be on May 16, the father of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh has decided one thing: He plans to be in seclusion the day his son is scheduled to be executed at the U.S. Penitentiary, Terre Haute.
"I don't want to be around anybody," Bill McVeigh said Friday in an interview with the Tribune-Star.
Friends have offered to leave their homes as a refuge. Others have suggested he find sanctuary in their hunting cabins. A family member offered his trailer for the day.
"I've got millions of offers," Bill McVeigh said from his home in Pendleton, N.Y.
Although he won't completely avoid what's happening that day -- he plans to watch some television -- wherever he is, he doesn't want to talk to media.
Shortly after 7 a.m. central time May 16, his 33-year-old son is scheduled to die by lethal injection, the sentence for bombing the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The explosion killed 168 people, including the eight federal agents Timothy McVeigh was convicted of murdering.
Even six years after the bombing, it's an act the elder McVeigh still cannot fathom.
"I wouldn't have any idea why he would do something like that. It still baffles me," said Bill McVeigh, who is divorced from his son's mother, Mildred. She lives elsewhere; Bill McVeigh, who serves as the family spokesman, declined to say where.
Nearly four months ago, Timothy McVeigh confirmed what his father was 90 percent sure of figured first hinted at his guilt nearly four months ago at the U.S. Penitentiary.
After his two sisters, Patty and Jennifer, left for the restroom during a visit in December, Timothy McVeigh turned to his father and said, "Dad, I did what I thought I had to do. I'm sorry for what I put you through," Bill McVeigh remembers his son saying.
Prior to a trip to Terre Haute, Bill McVeigh scribbled down a few questions, which he brought along to ask during the 3 1/2 hour final visit with his son on April 10.
One question centered on his son's lack of remorse.
"I said, 'Are you going to apologize?' " Bill McVeigh recalled asking his son, while separated from him by a pane of glass.
"If I apologize, dad, I'd be making a lot of people happier. But if I apologized, it would be a lie," he remembers his son telling him.
The lack of remorse "ain't OK with me," Bill McVeigh said Friday. Neither are his son's anti-government views.
"All his views are completely opposite of mine. I don't know where he got them from," the elder McVeigh said.
An auto worker retiree who has always lived within five miles of his current home in Upstate New York, Bill McVeigh didn't think much about capital punishment until his son faced a death sentence.
"I don't favor the death penalty," he said, adding he prefers not to think about his son's impending death.
Between playing in golf leagues and bowling tournaments, running bingo games at church, watching NASCAR on television and carefully tending to his garden and lawn, he has little time to dwell on such things as the memorial service he may have for his son, who has requested to be cremated.
"I keep busy. I'm into everything. That's the way I keep my mind off it," he said.
But when it comes to life after May 16, Bill McVeigh isn't sure how he'll cope.
"I don't want to take the time to think about it. It might make it worse," he said.
For now, he prefers to remember happier times -- a Timothy McVeigh who graces his walls in photographs, one as a toddler in a sailor suit.
"I love him," Bill McVeigh said. "He's still my son. He's still Tim."
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