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Fire Captain Chris Fields had been working for two hours on his shift April 19 when he and the dozen others at Station No. 5 heard the explosion and saw billowing black smoke. Thinking a natural gas explosion had occurred, they jumped on four engines and two trucks and sped to the federal building 17 blocks away. Fields vividly remembers arriving at the scene.

"People [were] running everywhere with looks on their faces I can't find words to describe," he says. "I don't think I will ever forget those faces."

Most of the nation will not forget the face of Chris Fields. He is the firefighter caught by a photograph flashed almost immediately around the world of him tenderly holding one-year-old Baylee Almon. Fields took Baylee into his arms 30 minutes after he began digging slowly through the rubble.

"I thought of my own two-year-old son, Ryan," Fields says. "But even more, I thought of all the parents who had kids in that building." Fields, a member of Westmore Baptist Church in Oklahoma City, talked later with Baylee's mother, Aren, who thanked him and other rescuers for their efforts.

"That helped me, because I didn't know what to expect," Fields says. "Sometimes, in emergency situations, a person might say we didn't do enough."

Fields has received hundreds of cards and letters from around the world, which he plans to answer. But he knows it will be a long time before things are back to normal. Until then, there is talk of a park being developed on the former site of the federal building-a park with a memorial statue dedicated to those rescue workers depicting a firefighter cradling a child whose tiny arms are stretched toward heaven.

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Editor's note: A complete article about Fields will appear in the July issue of the Christian Reader.

Copyright 1995 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

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June 19 1995, Vol. 39, No. 7