Mark A. Bolte loved hockey and the Razorbacks. Shortly before the bombing, he traveled to Dallas to meet old friends and go to a Dallas Stars hockey game. That night, the group watched the Arkansas Razorbacks play in a Final Four college basketball tournament game. Less than three weeks later, Bolte, 28, would perish in the federal building blast. “We had common backgrounds,” said Joe Heflin. Like Heflin, Bolte received a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Arkansas and went to Austin to finish training as a highway engineer for the Federal Highway Administration. Bolte wanted to focus on environmental work, said Frank Meyer, highway administration division administrator in Austin. So when Bolte was promoted in late 1994 to area engineer and heard of an opening for an environmental specialist in Oklahoma, “He saw a career opportunity,” Meyer said. “He was kind of excited he was getting the position he wanted,” Heflin recalled. The new position Bolte took also put him closer to his hometown, Bentonville, where his parents, Don and Joyce, lived. Bolte also had a younger brother, Matt. Bolte, who played lots of golf, had just bought a new green Chevrolet Blazer and recently had resumed a relationship with a hometown girlfriend, Heflin said.