BY FRANK SCANDALE

SPECIAL TO NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

COMMENTARY

Add the Boston Marathon Bombings to the list.

The list is a grim litany of some of some of the most horrific events to plague our country in recent history.

The list is now two decades old, give or take a few days.

It’s the list of terror, of death, of shock. One after another, the items on the list have rocked our sensibilities, our sense of safety and security and our foundation.

It’s the list of April tragedies. The third week in April to be precise. Patriot’s Day in many cases, the date to earmark the first battles of the Revolutionary War. Some say that is the thread that ties these events together. Who knows.

These are milestones in our lives, those of us who have been around a few decades anyway. They are not the types of milestones we care to remember, but they are inescapable in their importance to our lives in America.

Many of us marked Sept. 11, 2001, as our defining moment when it comes to terror. But there were others before and now after.

If you want to go back 20 years, minus four days, and recall the view from television sets around the country of a distant cult compound occupied by a group called the Branch Davidians, you’ll be at the start of what was a series of unusual and violent events in American history.

On April 19, 1993, a nearly two-month siege resulted in a conflagration that ended the lives of all those in the house. Men, women and children. In addition, four Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents were killed in gunfire at the outset. In that case, the leader of the group, David Koresh, barricaded the compound against federal agents seeking to exact a search warrant and arrest Koresh.

The sight of the house burning and knowing the certain death of those inside was unbearable even then.

Two years later to the day, April 19, 1995, I’m getting ready for work at The Denver Post when our babysitter calls me over to the television. She’s transfixed at the sight of a blown away building, half of it anyway. Beirut? No. Oklahoma City, she replies quietly.

I’m weak-kneed.

The Alfred P. Murrah Federal building resembled something from Dresden. Homegrown terrorists killed 168 people, including 19 children under the age of six, as there was a day care center in the building.

Two years and eight days later, Timothy McVeigh’s trial opened in Denver to much media fanfare, to say the least. He was convicted and eventually executed. Terry Nichols, his accomplice, is serving life in prison.

Two years later, it’s a beautiful Spring day in Denver, CO on April 20, 1999. The kind of day in the towns against the foothills of the Rocky Mountains that floats you above the earth. Green foothills rise from bucolic suburban landscapes. The sun is just right.

I walk into the Associated Press office in downtown Denver to meet the bureau chief, Pete Mattiace, a Jersey boy from Hasbrouck Heights, for lunch. A few staffers are huddled around a television. “Hey, Frank. Take a look at this,” Pete calls.

SWAT team members flash across the screen. Panic. Chaos.

“Where is that, Georgia or someplace,” I ask, not knowing why I chose that state.

“Littleton. Columbine High School,’’ he replied as I bolted out the door, tearing up the middle of the walking street in Denver, my pager (cell phones were still large as bricks and rare as diamonds in newsrooms) exploding with incomings from the home office.

The carnage left 12 students and a teacher murdered in what was the worst school shooting in US history. The shooters took their own lives, still leaving more questions than answers

Years go by. Now it’s April 16, 2007, and a cold windy day greet the students at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va. By 9:26 am, reports were coming out about a mass shooting on campus. When it was over, the largest mass shooting incident in US history had taken the lives of 32 students, with 17 others injured, before the shooter took his own life.

Another dark moment in April. More tears. More questions. Few answers.

As a reporter and editor since April 21, 1980, I am eerily used to and frankly have come to expect mass destruction of one sort or another in April. Perhaps it stems from my first day on the job as a full time news reporter with The Daily Journal in Elizabeth, NJ.

I worked the day, just trying not push the wrong buttons on the computer, the Tube, we called it and erase the obituaries and press releases I was asked to type in. I couldn’t work the phones too well either, cutting off more than one or two callers to the newsroom that day.

I went home and a few hours later heard an explosion that rocked the eastern part of Union County. The Chemical Control Corp, a storage center for 35,000 or so barrels of toxic waste, ignited and blew up, sending fiery barrels sailing across the night.

The next day I was plunged into covering my first disaster. April 22, 1980.

And now Boston. The marathon. An iconic day across the country.

Another day in April filled with terror and tears.

Residual questions mingle with the sight of extra police at the Hoboken transit hub, some with assault rifles. National Guard members and soldiers are positioned at the PATH station the new Freedom Tower. Warnings from New Jersey and New York officials to be vigilant.

It’s April and we are welcoming spring with tears.