Every American who heard about the April 19 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oaklahoma City reacted differently. Some people cried and prayed. Others shook their heads at the senselessness of the violence.

Thirty-year-old Andrew James Kluttz did something more.

A Harvard security guard and former marine, Kluttz was at home when he first heard the news of the bombing. For a while he sat transfixed by the continuous images of horror that came into his living room via CNN.

Nothing Kluttz had seen in his military or security careers--not even the 1983 terrorist attack on marines in Beirut--had been as terrible as the Oklahoma disaster.

"Around 1 a.m., after watching CNN, I thought: I was going," Kluttz recalls. "I was so moved. I saw the video footage. It was just too much to do nothing, to go about my business like nothing, to go about my business like nothing had happened."

Believing that his knowledge of CPR and first-aid would allow him to contribute to the rescue effort, Kluttz headed for Logan International Airport.

Kluttz says he was also motivated by the memory of the bombing of the U.S. marine barracks in Beirut that occurred while he was stationed off-shore there on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. John F. Kennedy. Two hundred and forty-one U.S. service personnel were killed in the October 1983 blast.

"Being a Beirut veteran, I thought my country was calling," he says.

Following Instinct

The morning following the Oklahoma explosion, Kluttz went to Logan Airport and bought a ticket on United for the next flight to Oklahoma City. He was to become one of the volunteers flying in from all over the world to help the search effort.

Kluttz says he never called ahead to see if volunteers were needed. He just followed his instinct.

"I was just winging it. I had a lot of faith that I'd be taken care of," he says.

At the airport in Oklahoma City, Kluttz hailed an airport express van. The shuttle driver drove him to the devastated building. Despite the security checks around the area and the fact that prior clearance, Kluttz was allowed to go directly to the Red Cross area.

Despair and Hope

In the shadow of the bombed-out building disaster, Kluttz describes what he called a scene of heart-warming humanitarian gestures.