Reaves honors mother’s paralegal work
Before Sunday, Brenna Reaves had never been to the Oklahoma City National Memorial. A longtime resident of the metro area, she had never taken part in the Memorial Marathon, even as a spectator.
It wasn’t that she didn’t care, or that the OKC bombing didn’t have a meaningful impact on her.
She did, and it did, more than most people could understand.
Reaves’ mother, Joyce Webb, was a paralegal for the FBI, working at the courthouse across the street from the Alfred P. Murrah Building when the bomb exploded.
She spent two years serving on the prosecution team that put bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols in prison for life.
And all of that touched on a wide array of emotions for Reaves over the last 22 years.
“I was very bitter about all of that,” Reaves said. “That took a lot of my mom’s time and energy.
“Now that I’m older, I respect it. But it took my mom away from us.”
Last Thursday — three days before the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon — Reaves decided she wanted her family to be involved. She signed up her three youngest children, Briley, Lily and Jack, for the kids’ marathon. She and her husband, Zac, joined in as well.
“I didn’t even know if they were still registering,” Reaves said. “I decided on Thursday that I wanted to honor my mom and her hard work. It makes me feel closer to her.”
Webb died in 2006 and though there’s no specific known reason why she developed cancer seven months before her death, the most logical reason points back to the bombing.
When the bomb exploded, Webb was with a room full of jurors in the basement of the courthouse. After the explosion, they were trapped there for several hours, before getting out late that night.
One of Webb’s close friends lost a 1½-year-old baby who was attending America’s Kids day care inside the Murrah Building. Webb’s boyfriend, a DEA agent, died in the building as well.
“She lost many, many friends in the bombing,” Reaves said. “She felt it was her destiny to make sure those two men were prosecuted and put to death — that was her goal.”
When Webb was brought on to help the FBI’s prosecution team, she spent two years of her life sifting through asbestos-ridden rubble from the bombing site that was used as evidence in the trials of Nichols and Tim McVeigh.
“Me and my sister went up to her office, and they had this big room with pieces of the Ryder truck,” Reaves said. “They were painted different colors and numbered, and they were trying to put it all back together.
Webb moved to Denver, where Nichols’ trial was held until his conviction on Dec. 24, 1997.
While her mother was gone, Reaves, who was 20, moved back in with her younger sister while she completed high school.
In March 2006, Webb was diagnosed with cancer at age 55, at which point she retired from her career working for the government. She began as an intern for the FBI when she was 18 years old, and remained with them until the last few years of her career, when she worked for the DEA.
Webb died seven months after her diagnosis. “My mother never smoked. She was very active, very healthy,” Reaves said. “Three other people had also gotten the same type of cancer, and all of them were very healthy.
“Their best conclusion was that it came from being around that building, being down there after the bombing, then sifting through everything for two years.”
Over the last few months, Reaves watched a couple of documentaries that were made about the bombing and listened to the tapes of McVeigh’s confession.
It all reminded her just how important her mother’s work had been. Webb was recognized by Janet Reno, the U.S. Attorney General at the time, for her work on the trial.
“It was very important to her that justice was brought to the people who did that to our city,” Reaves said. “It’s made me appreciate my mom’s dedication to that, and I respect her even more. I wish I would’ve been more supportive as a young adult.
“It’s exciting to get to honor my mom. All her hard work, I don’t want it to be forgotten.”