LOCKPORT, N.Y. — Bill McVeigh was sitting at the kitchen table of his small ranch house. On the wall was the United Automobile Workers clock he had been given for 25 years on the assembly line. Next to it was his son's framed high school graduation picture; the 18-year-old, with longish hair and an eager smile, looks exactly like what his father tells everyone he was: a regular kid.
Bill McVeigh's only son, Timothy, who in 1995 bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, turned 33 on Monday. His father sent him a birthday card care of the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind.
"It's hard to find a card that's appropriate," he said. "How can you say 'Happy birthday, Tim, have a good year?' I just got a plain one with a couple cartoon characters that had no writing." He signed it: "Love, Dad."
Bill McVeigh does not plan to be anywhere near Terre Haute on May 16 when his son will be executed. "He asked me not to be there," McVeigh said. "I don't think I would go anyway."
There was a painful silence. "Would you want to watch your son die?"
At 61, retired from the factory, and divorced for many years from Timothy's mother, Bill McVeigh's shoulders are stooped.
"I'll get through it," he insisted several times in an interview.
Has he forgiven his son? "That's a tough one," he said. "How can you forgive him for killing 168 people. You can't. He's my son, but he did something that was terribly wrong."
During his final visit to Timothy, on April 10, McVeigh asked his son if he intended to apologize. "His answer to me was, 'Dad, I'm not going to lie about it. If I told the people I was sorry, I'd be lying.'
"I asked him why he did it," McVeigh said. "He said, 'Dad, it all came down to Waco.' "
Bill McVeigh says he wishes people were interested in the Timothy McVeigh who, to his father, is more than the Oklahoma City bomber. He would like to tell them about: "the kid at home, the kid who worked at Burger King, the kid on the bicycle."
"I try to think of him as a kid," McVeigh said. "I call him Timmy. Tim is the one who did this bad thing. Timmy is the kid I remember.
"I love him, no doubt about it," he said. "I don't love what he did."