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Oklahoma City

Memorial1

Continuing our trip east from Dead Woman’s Crossing, our route took us through the middle of Oklahoma City. We had an interest in seeing the memorial constructed there in the aftermath of the 1995 domestic terrorist bombing of the downtown federal building. What we saw made a big impression. This was probably the finest example of a meaningful memorial we’ve ever seen. It was beautiful, tastefully done, elegant, and informative. It was a holiday (Labor Day) so it wasn’t crowded and the weather was gorgeous.

The featured picture for this post shows the outside wall at the entrance to the memorial. All the pictures below are from the inside. A total of 168 people were killed in this attack, making it the the most deadly act of domestic terrorism in this country’s history. (The 9/11 attack was conducted by foreign terrorists)

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Upon entering the memorial, the first thing that catches your eye is this reflecting pool that stretches to the end of the block. The wall you see at the end is identical to the front wall.
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Just inside the entrance to the left is the only remaining wall from the original building. The two plaques contain all the names of the people killed in the explosion.
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In a unique tribute, there are empty chairs setup on the left side of the reflecting pool that represent each person killed. They are arranged in nine rows. The number of chairs in each row corresponds to the number of people killed on each of the nine floors of the building.
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Very sadly, a number of children were killed in this explosion. You can see in this picture that their chairs are smaller than the chairs of the adults.
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The numbers engraved on the back wall represent the time the recovery effort began after the explosion (9:03AM in the morning). At the opposite end of the reflecting pool, the front wall is engraved with the time 1 minute earlier (9:02AM), which was the time the bomb went off.
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Here is how all the chairs look from the other side of the pool.
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Children from all over the world sent handprints on paper to honor the children killed in the explosion. A sampling of the 1,000’s received were transferred onto these tiles inside the memorial area.
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On the reverse side of the handprint wall are other hand drawn pictures and sentiments sent by other children in sympathy.
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At the back end of the memorial is this chain-link fence. The fence was installed during the cleanup from the bombing and to protect the area while the memorial was being built. It was never meant to be part of the memorial, but since people continued to decorate it with personal memories of lost loved ones, it was left in place. Even 26 years later, the city has to regularly “archive” some of these memento’s because the fence gets too full.
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The side of the memorial opposite the chairs includes a big tree at the top of small hill. That was the original location of the parking lot of the doomed federal building (the tree was growing in the middle of the lot). Although heavily damaged by the explosion, the tree survived and is now known as the “Survivor Tree”. It is an integral part of the memorial.
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A side look at the last remaining wall of the original building.

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