Oklahoma City bombing survivor: Thinking 'back to normal'

Fifteen years after losing sight in his left eye from injuries sustained in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing, Nichols native Steve Pruitt says his thinking has “gone back to normal.”

“I've gone back to thinking like everybody else does, kind of, ‘It won't happen to me,'” said Pruitt, 47, who now lives in Duluth, Ga. “Of course, it did happen to me.”

Pruitt, an employee of what was then called the General Accounting Office, had just finished a meeting and was walking back to his office when the explosion occurred. His contact lenses were embedded into his eyes and had to be surgically removed and he lost sight in his left eye, which has been replaced with a prosthetic. He had some internal bleeding in a kidney, had a broken jaw and suffered some hearing loss, as well as cuts and abrasions to his face, chest, arms and legs.

Pruitt said the bombing has had little long-term affects on him - he won't have an office with a window - but said he worries that another domestic terrorist incident is on the horizon.

“The biggest impact with me lately is hearing people talk about revolution and violence and being overheated and overblown,” he said. “If they'd been through what I've been through, they wouldn't talk like that. There's a lot of posturing, a lot of noisemaking, and they don't know what that really, really does to people.”

PHOTO: Steve Pruitt after the bombing attack (warning: graphic image)