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THERE is only one word to describe Bud Welch, and that's "remarkable". Unless you want to add saintly, kind, gentle, quiet and understanding.

Bud lost his daughter in a bombing at Oklahoma City, in America, in 1995. Two former soldiers, one called Timothy McVeigh, loaded a van with home-made explosives and set it off in front of a government building soon after many of the staff there had started work. Among them was Bud's 23-year-old daughter, Julie, who by ill chance was at the front of the building when the bomb went off instead of her usual office nearer the back. She was one of 168 who died.

Bud went through all the emotions you'd expect: the grief, the bewilderment and the consuming wish for revenge.

"I wanted McVeigh to be executed there and then, without a trial," he said.

The anger consumed him. He began drinking heavily, he started smoking four packets of cigarettes a day, he went daily to the ruined building where Julie's body wasn't found for several days.

But then two things happened. One was that Bud came to see that revenge, which dominated his life, was the cause of what had happened. McVeigh and his accomplice, however misguided they were, wanted revenge on the American government for its handling of a siege in Waco, in Texas.

“It was hatred and revenge that made me want to see him dead,” he said, “and yet those two things were the very reason that Julie and 167 others were dead”.

The other event that changed Bud was seeing McVeigh's father being interviewed on television.

“They talked to him while he worked on the garden in his yard,” he said. “He was kneeling down and he kept looking down at his plants as he worked, so that you didn't see his face. But then at the end, he looked up into the camera, and he said: 'My life will never be the same again.'”

Bud Welch realised then that he had lost a daughter but that Bill McVeigh had lost a son.

Time passed and eventually Bud and Bill got to meet, thanks to a nun who drove him to Bill's house at frightening speed in a tiny car - “I didn't even know that made them that small.”

The two men started by admiring the garden that Bill had been tending on television and an empathy grew between them.

“I cry fairly easily,” Bud said, “and I asked Bill if he had ever cried. I could see his eyes going up all the time to a picture of Tim on the wall. He said he never had. But that day we cried together.” And as he left, a thought came to him. It was that for the rest of his life, he would be able to speak with pride of his daughter. But never again would Bill McVeigh be able to say he had a son.

Tim McVeigh – Bud refers to him as Tim – wanted to be executed quickly. He wanted no appeals, no delays. And for that reason Bud never met him.

“If you had,” I asked, “what would you have asked?”

Bud looked thoughtful and paused. And then he said: “I'd have asked... why That's all. Just why. I wouldn't have wanted to say anything else. I just wanted to know why.”

And he looked at me and, after another little pause, said: “Thanks for the question.”

It's been a long time since Bud stopped running his chain of gas stations. His first marriage broke up because of Julie's death. He has remarried and he tours the world to speak against the death penalty.

“You can’t think of enough adjectives to describe the rage, revenge, and hate I felt,” he remembers. “But after time, I was able to examine my conscience, and I realized that if McVeigh is put to death, it won’t help me in the healing process.”

And that goes for all other executions. They are all based on a thirst for revenge. Julie had always insisted that executions were only “teaching children to hate.”

Bud now leads an organisation for people like himself, the incidental victims of outrages, but who are against the death penalty. He has addressed the European Parliament, the Russian Duma and countless American official committees. His most colourful triumph, he said, was helping persuade Mongolia.

Mongolians live in a land-locked country with just two neighbours: the Chinese, whom they passionately dislike, and the Russians. If they had to be more like one than the other, they'd prefer it was the Russians. So Bud looked at them seriously and said “You want to be more like the Russians and less like the Chinese?”

“Of course.”

“Then the easiest thing you could do is abolish the death penalty.”

“Why?”

“Because the Chinese execute so many people each year that not even the Chinese know how many – whereas the Russians haven't had a death penalty for 15 years.” And soon afterwards, Mongolia did away with the death penalty.

You know, it doesn't matter what pleasures or pain I ever feel on this journey or any other, I will never forget the day I met Bud Welch.