Places 8 – The Oklahoma City National Memorial

“It was twenty years ago today…”

Lost Lives, Empty Chairs (13 June 2008)

We interrupt the state capitol parade to remember.

In 1989, I used that line from Sgt. Pepper’ Lonely Hearts Club Band to introduce a cassette mix tape I made…on the 20th anniversary of Woodstock. For those of you who are too young to know what any of that means, I can’t go into it now. We all have a period that made the greatest impression on us. That was mine.

In a rare instance of actually being timely and blog-like, today I note another 20th anniversary. I still remember when we first heard the news on 19 April 1995. I was at work and our group secretary came through the cubicle farm to announce that something blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City. I recall the speculation in the first hours as we and the media tried to understand (once we learned it was a deliberate act) who did it and why. Well, imagine that…it wasn’t some A-rab, jihadi, America-hater. It was a home-grown, American, America-hater.

I also remember first learning how destructive a truck-load of fertilizer can be and can still see that photo of the fireman carrying the limp little body of one-year-old Baylee Almon. Timothy McVeigh later said he regretted that a day care center was in the building but innocents die in war and that’s the way it goes.

Five years later, on the anniversary of the bombing, President Clinton dedicated the Oklahoma City National Memorial. In 2008, I was passing through on what I call ‘Road Trip IV’, the 4900-mile journey that ended the Dead Presidents Quest and started the State Capitol Odyssey. I visited the state house that morning and wandered through the Memorial in the afternoon. Like the 9/11 memorials, I couldn’t help but feel profoundly for this event that happened in my lifetime.

The Outdoor Symbolic Memorial (13 June 2008)

The reflecting pool is in the space of the former SW 5th Street that fronted the building. The lawn beside the reflecting pool is the actual footprint of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Placed there now are 168 bronze chairs, one for each victim. They are arranged in nine rows to show the floor of the building where each person worked. Each chair sits on a clear, glass base that bears the name of the victim. Nineteen smaller chairs represent the lost children. At night each base is illuminated…a display that I am sorry I did not see.

The Survivor Wall (13 June 2008)

A portion of the building was retained to remind us of the survivors of the terrorist attack. The destroyed concrete and exposed re-bar also demonstrate the destructive force of the blast.

The Survivor Tree (13 June 2008)

The blast killed most of the vegetation near the building. This American elm was defoliated and burned but it survived and is now a gathering place to view the memorial and ponder human and nature’s resilience.

I can’t say what we’ve learned in the twenty years since this atrocity happened. Hating government seems to have become a standard platform position for too many citizens and candidates. I only hope the 168 are resting in peace, the injured have recovered and McVeigh has reaped his eternal reward.