‘Silence is not a strength’: Firefighter in Pulitzer Prize photo details struggles after OKC bombing

In the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, Sgt. John Avera placed 1-year-old Baylee Almon in firefighter Chris Fields’ arms. 

The baby had an open skull fracture and concrete dust in her throat, which Chris cleared out. He didn’t see any signs of life, so he took her to a nearby ambulance. 

While Chris was waiting on the paramedic, he paused to look down at Baylee in his arms. A freelance photographer snapped a photo of the moment. 

The photo would go on to be distributed by the Associated Press to newsrooms across the country, eventually earning a Pulitzer Prize. 

But, at that moment, Chris didn’t know about the photo. He and his crew spent the rest of the day digging for bodies in the rubble, running on adrenaline. 

In the months and years to follow, Timothy McVeigh was arrested and executed for the bombing, Oklahoma City launched major reconstruction throughout the early 2000s and a memorial and museum was established to commemorate the lives lost.

The world moved on, but around 12 years later, while installing a pool in his backyard, Chris caught the smell of wet concrete. It took him back to being in the Murrah building that night, searching the wreckage for bodies. 

“I can pinpoint that day as kind of when everything kind of increased and kind of spiraled a little bit,” Chris said.

‘Somebody's world is getting ready to be turned upside down’

Chris grew up in Del City and Moore, and his childhood best friend’s dad was the Oklahoma City Fire Department chaplain. His friend’s dad would take them to visit fire stations on the weekends. Chris’s childhood draw to firefighting led him to join the Oklahoma City Fire Department at 20 years old in 1985.

Chris remembers showing up two hours early for his first shift out of rookie school, nervously waiting in the parking lot for shift change. Shortly after clocking in at 7 a.m., he responded to a call about a heart attack and performed CPR on a person for the first time. 

“My first call, my first day, that's when I knew,” Chris said. “The reality of the job hit me.”

Despite hardship and low pay, Chris said the job was fulfilling.

“The payback you get — not monetarily — was worth it,” Chris said. “I mean, you can't always make the bad situation better, which we like to do. But when we do, it is worth it.”

Just before Chris began firefighting, he met his wife, Cheryl. They both attended a church Christmas play, and Chris saw her sitting nearby. He thought she was pretty and asked his best friend to set them up on a date. Both were immediately smitten. 

The couple married in 1987 and settled in south Oklahoma City. They had their first son, Ryan, in 1992, and their second son, Parker, in 1999.

The morning of the bombing, Chris was doing yard work at the station with his crew when he felt the bomb blast. It rattled the station. They looked south, toward downtown Oklahoma City, and saw smoke billowing into the sky.

The crew immediately self-dispatched, and saw people running frantically around downtown. His captain set up a triage site for the wounded, though they still didn’t know what happened. 

Chris’ unit was called to help recover people from the building. When he first saw the nine stories flattened at the blast site, he knew many would be dead.

“Pictures do not do it justice …” Chris said. “It's as vivid as if it happened yesterday.”

After Chris had helped recover a woman out of the basement, he was walking back to the other side of the building when Avera stopped him to hand off baby Baylee. She was in critical condition.

Seeing an ambulance across the street, Chris took Baylee to get medical help. As a paramedic went to find a blanket for the baby, Chris gazed at Baylee. Chris knew she was close to his son’s age. Ryan was two at the time, and Baylee had turned one the day before. 

“I thought, ‘Man, somebody’s world is getting ready to be turned upside down today,’” Chris said.

Chris spent the rest of the day working with scent dogs and search and rescue teams to find and bag bodies. Most were in such bad condition, the crews couldn’t remove them from the rubble, so they marked each with a spray paint “X.”

He arrived back at the station around 11 p.m. to a phone call from firefighter and communications officer Harvey Weathers. Weathers said the Associated Press had received the photo of Chris and Baylee, and it was going worldwide. 

Chris and Cheryl first saw the photo the next morning, April 20, when it was printed and broadcast all over the news. 

“All I saw was Ryan's face, that it could have been our kid,” Cheryl said. “I just felt horrible for that mother, that her baby’s just plastered everywhere. It was horrible.”

Then, the phone started ringing. The media attention was so intense, AT&T gave Chris a phone to handle all the calls.

That day, Cynthia Newsome, a local CBS reporter, set up a meeting with Avera, Chris, and Baylee’s mom, Aren Almon. Chris said it’s rare for a first responder to meet the family associated with a call, so seeing Almon was surreal. Almon thanked Chris and Avera, and asked if they were alright. She said she could tell they were fathers by how they held Baylee. 

“Sometimes families will come by the fire station to thank you for your efforts, or thank you for helping other than that. But this was like that times a hundred,” Chris said. “I always tell people, and Sgt. (Avera), he would tell you, that here was this 20-year-old single mom who just lost her only child, and she was support for us.”

Almon and Chris’ lives have been linked since, and Chris said he’s taken on an older brother role for her. 

Chris felt guilty about the photo, because it hurt Almon to see so often and it thrust them both into the spotlight. He felt like he owed it to Almon to agree to media interviews.

“I took a lot of that on because that's what my brain told me,” Chris said. “Of course, it's not rational at all to feel responsible for it. But I did.”

A conversation with Jon Hansen, the Oklahoma City Fire Department’s public information officer, changed how Chris saw the photo. 

“I don't see Chris Fields, I don't see Baylee Almon,” Chris remembers Hansen saying. “I see a firefighter representing all the first responders that responded that day. I don't see Baylee Almon. I see a child representing the innocence that was lost that day.”

Chris said the photo reminds him of a painful time, but he has learned to be gracious with people who still want to hear about it. 

“It's history,” Chris said. “People need to know about it. The photo is history. That's what I tell my son today. … It's always going to be around, every April 19. It may fade into obscurity throughout the year, but every April 19, 1995 it'll be talked about.”

‘Be the Chris Fields that I wanted everybody to see’

Firefighters and first responders put up a mask to get their jobs done, Chris said. They can’t dwell on a traumatic call from earlier when lives are depending on them in the moment.

Chris said pride keeps them from reaching out for help, or even telling their families about their struggles. Many deal with PTSD or substance abuse from their cumulative trauma, he said, and he watched as senior firefighters he admired later died of cirrhosis of the liver or suicide. 

“It wasn't that they didn't have the heart. They didn't want to (talk about it),” Chris said. “It's that ego, that's the pride, that's the way the fire service is.”

One in seven first responders are likely to experience PTSD due to their jobs, and that number may be growing, according to researchers in Australia. On average, firefighters will experience nine potentially traumatic events in the first three years of their service. 

A 2017 study found around 30% of urban male firefighters surveyed were dependent on alcohol. A 2015 study found 46.8% of firefighters reported suicidal ideation, compared to 5.6–14.3% of U.S. adults, and 15.5% reported at least one suicide attempt, compared to an estimated 1.9-8.7% of U.S. adults. 

“I’m just getting by, doing what I got to do to get by and still be happy-go-lucky. Be the Chris Fields that I wanted everybody to see and they expected to see,” Chris said.

While installing their pool in 2007, Chris was breaking up concrete when it began to sprinkle. The smell of the damp dust triggered his memory.

“It took me back to April 19,” Chris said. “I said, ‘Wow, this smells just like being inside the building that night.’”

His angry and depressive spells became more frequent, and he and Cheryl argued more. He said he also wasn’t being a good father.

Cheryl said Chris masked his pain well for over a decade, but she started to notice he’d miss their sons’ events or want to leave town, which wasn’t like him.

“He kind of left, you know, left things here and there, where I think he wanted me to figure it out,” Cheryl said. “I think he was tired of living how he was living.”

Chris said he selfishly became mentally and emotionally abusive to Cheryl. He began having an affair with another woman.

“My wife said, ‘You need to reach out, get some help. We need to get help, because we can't live like this,’” Chris said. “‘Well, I'm Chris Fields, you don’t tell me what to do.’ Pride and ego kicked in.”

In 2009, Chris moved out of the house to an apartment on the other side of Oklahoma City. 

Cheryl said that what Chris did was horrible and hurtful, but she knew it wasn’t really him. 

“I would look in his eyes and I wouldn't see Chris,” Cheryl said. “It was just a black hole in those eyes, it's like he had no soul or something. It was weird.”

Their sons helped Cheryl get through it, Cheryl said. Parker, then in fifth grade, often slept in her bed. Ryan, in high school at the time, would always have his friends over to their house so Cheryl wasn’t alone.

Cheryl found comfort in reading the Bible and praying in her closet, which she calls her “war room.” She said she even saw visions of Chris speaking to a group of people, but didn’t know what it meant. 

Cheryl would cry and beg God to take away her love for Chris. But her love never faded. 

“In my heart, the Lord's telling me, ‘Oh no, there's something so much bigger and better for you two, …’” Cheryl said. “I never stopped loving him.”

‘I want to come home’

Meanwhile, anxiety overwhelmed Chris, so a friend who was a doctor prescribed him Xanax. Taking the pills helped him relax, and he began finding ways to lie to get more and more of them.

About a year and a half after moving out, Chris took what he hoped was enough Xanax to never wake up again. 

“If I didn't wake up, things would…everybody’d kind of move on, because I had done enough damage. By then, it wasn't even about the bombing,” Chris said. “It wasn't about the photo. It wasn't about buddies I'd lost. It was about the things I put my family through for the last 17 months. I thought, ‘There's no way I can start over.’”

But Chris woke up the next morning. He dialed Cheryl’s number. 

“I want to come home,” Chris said.

Without hesitating, Cheryl replied, “Come on.”

Chris was so shocked she said yes, he doesn’t remember what he said next. 

“I get emotional talking about it, because I think about where I would be if God hadn't given her the grace to say (yes),” Chris said.

Cheryl said saying yes was the obvious choice, because the door was always open to him.

But Chris wrestled with what it would be like to walk back in his own home.

“You walking back in would be stronger than you just leaving it,” Cheryl told him. “Your boys will respect you so much more if you fight hard and do what you need to do to get well. That's a hero right there. That’s what you can be proud of. … You gotta pull your bootstraps up and be the hero that these boys need.”

Chris packed up his apartment and moved back home in 2011.

Chris began seeing a clinician and the couple began counseling together, but it wasn’t easy. Cheryl struggled with her anger and anxieties. Chris stayed at his parents’ house for a few weeks during their counseling because their emotions were so raw. 

“The whole time we're thinking, ‘Can we ever rebuild this thing?’” Chris said. “And if not, we can get to a point to where we can at least be present for the kids.”

Through counseling, Chris and Cheryl found ways to heal, and Cheryl said it was God who gave her the grace and strength to forgive Chris.

Cheryl saw his eyes come alive again. She said Chris has always had a sweet soul, he just had damage he never dealt with properly. Cheryl said their feelings for each other never left. 

“I can just sometimes feel him staring, and I'll look over at him and he'll just smile,” she said.

A few months later, Chris attended a treatment facility in California for a few weeks, and he was diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. There, he met other first responders and military personnel who carried similar stories of trauma. He felt seen.

“I don't have any bad days anymore,” Chris said. “I have days, sometimes (that) aren't as good as others. Some days something just triggers me and I really can’t tell what. I'll just think — maybe when I see my sons or I pull up to my house — I’ll think, ‘I am so lucky to have this.’ Because I always told myself I didn't deserve it because of the things I'd done.”

‘This is what life's about’

After 31 years, Chris retired as a major in 2017, not knowing what his next step would be. 

Later that year, Jay Dobyns, a former special agent who infiltrated the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, reached out to Chris to speak at a conference he was hosting in Tucson, Arizona. It was there Chris shared his story in front of an audience for the first time, like Cheryl had envisioned. 

Chris now frequently speaks at events, sharing his story and commemorating the 168 people who died in the bombing. 

In 2021, Chris and three other former first responders and service members he met at speaking events formed Trauma Behind the Badge, a webinar series and community promoting conversations about mental health and trauma. 

“You reaching out, taking that step is braver than anything you'll do in your profession,” Chris said. “You can't name one incident or one thing that you could possibly do — walk through a wall of fire to save a life, no, that's your job, that's what you're doing. But to reach out, take that personal (step) and to reach out to save your own life and to save your family is a lot braver than anything you'll do as a first responder.”

Chris also serves as a team leader for the Oklahoma First Responder Wellness Division, which provides mental health programs for first responders.

Cheryl works as a principal’s secretary at Fisher Elementary in Oklahoma City, but she plans to retire soon to spend more time with family.

Both Ryan and Parker are now married. Ryan and his wife, Drew, have a two-year-old son named Gray and will have another son in August. When Cheryl and Chris sit with Gray, she said they’re reminded to be grateful for their lives.

“Chris will just look at me and say, ‘Thank you so much, thank you,’” Cheryl said. “I'm like, ‘Thank you,’ right back. This is what life's about … It’s tough, but boy, but it was definitely, definitely worth it.”

Chris said if he could tell his 30-year-old self in the photo anything, he would say that his feelings and pains are not weak, they’re human. 

“Everything that I went through, that I put my family through, I would look at him and say, ‘You don’t have to do that.’” Chris said. “Silence is not a strength.”

This story was edited by Anusha Fathepure. This story was copy-edited by Kennedy Johnson, Lauren Brogdon, Tori Pham and Gretchen Schultz.