Mother, photographer forever changed by famous picture
deb...@comcast.net
Associated Press
CHOCTAW, Okla. - She's got a 7-year-old on spring break, a 4-year-old
on top of the kitchen table, a pizza in the oven and a birthday party
to plan.
Aren Almon-Kok's life pushes on, even though her loss remains famously
frozen in time.
Strangers cannot forget the photograph of her baby girl, Baylee, lying
lifeless as a rag doll in the arms of a firefighter, with the dust and
madness of the April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City bombing still swirling.
They stop her in the grocery store almost a decade later: How are you
doing? Are these your new babies? I named my baby Baylee, too. Would
you like to hold her?
"They expect me to console them," the young mother marvels.
The photograph, an image captured by two amateur photographers and seen
worldwide before the dust had settled, defined the tragedy for history
books to come.
Baylee Almon, a day past her first birthday in little white socks,
became a symbol for all 168 victims of homegrown terrorism, as well as
the lost innocence of an America yet to know Sept. 11, 2001.
But how do you move on when your life is wrapped in a symbol?
For Baylee's mother and the photographer whose image won the Pulitzer
Prize, the photo left a separate and lasting imprint on their lives.
"Innocence comes in a lot of different shapes and sizes," says the
photographer, Charles Porter IV. "A lot of my innocence was lost that
day as well."
***
Many photos of Baylee hang in Almon-Kok's suburban Oklahoma City home.
But not that one.
Still, her children with her husband of eight years, Stan Kok, know it
as well as their older half-sibling's smiles on the living room wall.
Bounding past his sister, Bella, and onto the kitchen table, 4-year-old
Broox pulls a pewter figurine of the firefighter and the baby from a
keepsake box. "That's Baylee," he says, as if making an introduction.
Soaring on their swings, the children call to the sky, "Hi Baylee!" Her
name is scrawled along with theirs in chalk on the patio slab.
"If you were to sit in our home in the evening, you wouldn't know she
is gone. We talk about her like she's here," Almon-Kok says.
She never hid the tragic image from Bella and Broox, knowing someday
they'd see it in a history book. She told them how Baylee lived and how
she died in the federal building day-care center.
Almon-Kok says her family, counseling and time have eased her pain in a
decade that took her from a working single mother in her 20s to a
stay-at-home mom who feels older than the 33 she is.
But the bad days, though fewer now, still strike without warning.
That's why she endures strangers' probing questions.
"People don't realize how much I need their prayers," she says. "It's a
small price to pay to let them know how we're doing years later."
One of the many donations she received led to the start of her
foundation, Protecting People First, which pushes for protective film
and other safety features in building glass.
After the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon, workers thanked her because
the protective glass helped save lives, she says.
The famous image serves as the foundation's logo, and Almon-Kok says
she can appreciate the symbol Baylee became for all innocent victims.
But her grief was for flesh and bone, and the photograph at times only
made it worse, especially when Baylee's image turned up on pins,
figurines and T-shirts soon after the bombing.
Everywhere, it seemed, she saw her baby's body being sold for profit.
"For you, in 10 years, to be changing the oil in your car in a shirt
with my dead daughter on it, is not a good idea," she says.
***
Flipping through the channels in his Fort Worth, Texas, apartment,
Porter stumbles upon his photo in a documentary. Pride and disbelief
jolt him.
"That's when I get humbled," he says. "I say, 'I can't believe that was
me. I can't believe I took that image. I can't believe it."'
For a time, he wished he had never taken the photo.
Porter was a 25-year-old loan specialist with a love for photography
the day he ran from his downtown bank job expecting to snap photos of a
planned implosion.
His was not the only camera trained on Oklahoma City firefighter Chris
Fields as he tenderly cradled Baylee's bloody body.
An almost identical photo by Lester "Bob" LaRue, a gas company worker,
appeared on the cover of Newsweek.
Porter sold his photo to The Associated Press. He won't say what he has
made from it, only that he allowed it to be reproduced only for photo
contests, magazines, textbooks and other journalistic endeavors.
He says he turned down thousands of dollars in reproduction requests.
When the image turned up in stores on T-shirts or plates anyway, he was
stunned. At first, he confronted the shopkeepers, he says, "but it
would have taken my entire life to stop all of these things."
Porter felt vilified by Almon-Kok's complaints. Sometimes, he felt
guilt.
He left his bank job for a collection agency but the tough-talking work
didn't suit him. Another employer fell on hard times and let him go.
He worked odd jobs. He shot weddings. Often brides had no idea their
discount photographer was a Pulitzer Prize winner.
Finally, he went back to school and found his destiny - a degree in
physical therapy. He is studying for his licensing exam, while his wife
teaches high school.
She and others assured him that God must have meant for him to take the
photo, knowing he wasn't the type to exploit it. And he has come to
believe that.
"I was placed in that position at that time for a purpose," he says,
"to be used as a voice. What that voice is, I don't know."
More recent photos hang on his walls: Photos of University of Oklahoma
players Josh Heupel and Rocky Calmus and the one he shot of Dale
Earnhardt Jr. that made the framer exclaim, "You took this?"
But the photo of Baylee is not there. The Pulitzer he received for it
is somewhere in his attic in a box.
"My life," Porter says, "is not defined by that one picture."
***
For Almon-Kok, the hardest day won't be the 10th anniversary of the
bombing, but the day before - the day of the birthday party.
It's in honor of Baylee's 11th.
The cake and balloons, she says, are for her children. They anticipate
Baylee's birthday, just like they know the next day they'll go to the
Oklahoma City National Memorial and lay a wreath on the little chair
that bears her name.
And while the world remembers Baylee when her life stopped, the mother
will wonder what her little girl would have been like had she gone on.
"She's my daughter," Almon-Kok says. "She's not just the baby in the
fireman's arms."
danny burstein
>CHOCTAW, Okla. - She's got a 7-year-old on spring break, a 4-year-old
>on top of the kitchen table, a pizza in the oven and a birthday party
>to plan.
....
>Strangers cannot forget the photograph of her baby girl, Baylee, lying
>lifeless as a rag doll in the arms of a firefighter, with the dust and
>madness of the April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City bombing still swirling.
[ snip ]
Not to take away from the horrors in the Murrah building, but it's
important, I'd think, to keep in mind why McVeigh, et al, chose that
specific date for their attack.
Something pretty ugly occurred two years earlier in Texas. It began on
28-feb-1993 and ended with about 75 deaths, incldng about 20 children [a],
on 19-Apr-1995.
[a] some conflicting info about the exact numbers.
--
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dan...@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]
Brad Ferguson
<deb...@comcast.net> wrote:
> Mother, photographer forever changed by famous picture
> Associated Press
>
> CHOCTAW, Okla. - She's got a 7-year-old on spring break, a 4-year-old
> on top of the kitchen table, a pizza in the oven and a birthday party
> to plan.
>
> Aren Almon-Kok's life pushes on, even though her loss remains famously
> frozen in time.
>
> Strangers cannot forget the photograph of her baby girl, Baylee, lying
> lifeless as a rag doll in the arms of a firefighter, with the dust and
> madness of the April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City bombing still swirling.
It seems odd to post a wire file about a famous pic without providing a
link to the pic.
Here.
Bill Schenley
> picture Associated Press
The photograph:
(color)
http://www.homestead.com/LOL2/files/BayleeAlmon.jpg
(B&W)
http://www.constitution.org/ocbpt/baylee_almon.gif
(drawings)
http://www.house.gov/moore/cp-ppfevent2.jpg
http://bolson.homestead.com/files/barbsokladraw_op_234x294.jpg
Aren Almon-Kok:
http://edition.cnn.com/US/9712/18/nichols.jury.delibs/almon.jpg
Charlene
danny burstein wrote:
> Not to take away from the horrors in the Murrah building, but it's
> important, I'd think, to keep in mind why McVeigh, et al, chose that
> specific date for their attack.
Caused totally by the scum of the earth David Koresh, and nobody else.
HE will burn in hell not just for Waco, but also for Oklahoma City.
wd41
deb...@comcast.net
ever forgive me?!