Day Trips
By Gerald E. McLeod, Fri., Sept. 6, 2002
The Oklahoma City National Memorial has taken a horrific event and turned it into a garden of inspiring hope and healing. Encompassing nearly two city blocks, the memorial to the 168 victims is a beautiful tribute to life. In the daytime it is a vibrant park with lots of open space. At night it is a solemn place with a touch of romanticism.
The centerpiece of the memorial to the innocent victims of the bombing of the Murrah Building is a field of bronze and glass chairs that stand like tombstones on the grass-covered hill. Each chair resembles the others, except is unique in a handmade way. Nineteen smaller chairs signify the children that died in the brutal attack.
In the area where the federal office building once stood, the chairs are lined up in five rows. Each row represents a floor of the building and the number of chairs are people who died there. In one corner of the Field of Empty Chairs is a portion of the building left standing bearing the names of survivors who experienced the horror of April 19, 1995.
Operated by the National Park Service, the Memorial Center Museum documents the events that happened that day in chronological order. The day started like any other spring morning in the Midwest. The introductory exhibit includes pictures of the daycare class taken just days before the event.
In groups, visitors are ushered into a small hearing room resembling the one in the basement of the Oklahoma Water Board across the street. A recording of a hearing there captured the concussion of the blast at 9:02am. The bomb, hidden in a rental truck parked at the building's Fifth Street entrance, blew a hole in the street nearly seven feet deep. The force of the explosion blew out windows nine blocks away, scattered the truck over a three-block area, and registered on the Richter scale.
Leaving the hearing room, you go into the corridors of the museum that lead through the maze of confusion and the human drama that followed. One woman had to have her leg amputated to be freed from under a fallen beam. She later found that she also lost her mother and child in the devastation.
The most poignant of the displays is a room where each victim has a color photo and an acrylic box with one special item that represents them. Eyeglasses, bowling trophies, stuffed toys, all kinds of things that you and I might also own. It is impossible to look at the cubes and not think of the pain of the families' loss.
Back outside, the monument takes on added significance. What was once Fifth Street is now a pool of water with a black bottom that hides its shallow depth. At either end is a gate -- one marked with 9:01 and the other 9:03.
On a hill overlooking the pool and the Field of Empty Chairs is the Survivor Tree, a 70-year-old American Elm tree that witnessed the blast. Surrounding the scarred tree is an orchard of fruit- and flower-bearing trees dedicated to the rescuers.
The entire experience is shrouded in symbolism that weighs heavy. You come away from the memorial with a better understanding of what was at the time the worst act of terrorism on American soil during peacetime. Who would have ever imagined that the brutality would be surpassed? Maybe the why is incomprehensible, but there is some solace in seeing the what and how of such an event. The remains are an incredible thing to witness. The memorial to the victims of senseless violence in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania should be as full of feeling as the Oklahoma monument to do justice to the event.
Signs from I-35 lead the way to The Oklahoma City National Memorial Center in the central part of downtown off I-235. The grounds are open 24 hours, seven days a week at no charge. The Memorial Center at 620 North Harvey Ave. opens Monday through Saturday 9am-6pm and Sunday 1-6pm. Admission ranges from $7 to $5. The Center is closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's days. For more information, call 405/235-3313 or visit www.oklahomacitynationalmemorial.org.
587th in a series. Day Trips, Vol. 2, a book of Day Trips 101-200, is available for $8.95, plus $3.05 for shipping, handling, and tax. Mail to: Day Trips, PO Box 33284, South Austin, TX 78704.
