Late this afternoon we stopped in Oklahoma City to visit the Oklahoma bombing memorial earlier when we were driving down I-35, we drove past the spot where Timothy McVeigh was arrested as he fled north. I was teaching in Upham on April 19, 1995, when the bombing of the federal building occurred. The teachers and high school students gathered in the science room to watch as events unfolded. Like most Americans at the time I assumed the bomber was a Muslim. I was shocked to learn it was a home grown right wing terrorist. We arrived too late to go into the museum. We’ll catch that on the way home. We walked through the grounds. This was a sacred place, one of those places like the Vietnam Wall in D. C. Where you walk slowly and keep your voice down.
The grassy expanse south of the reflection pool is the footprint of the federal building. There is a chair with a name on it for every one of the people killed, 168 of them. The smaller chairs are for the children who were in the day care on the second floor. There are nine rows of chairs, one for each floor of the building. The chairs are arranged to indicate approximately where each victim was when the bomb went off.
Someone had left flowers on one of the chairs.
On the west side along the sidewalk is a chain link fence where people have hung little memorials for the casualties. Lots of teddy bears and toys for the children who died. Some pictures and letters.
This wall is made of tiles painted by school children.
The wall at the east end of the reflection pool. It has 9:01 written on it, the time the bomb went off.
This is what’s left of the northeast corner of the building.
Ruth is taking a picture of the chair designated to Braylee Almon. She was the little girl in the Pulitzer Prize winning picture in which a fireman was seen carrying her body away from the building.
Looking at the chairs from the southwest corner of where the federal building stood. Reflection pool in background. Museum is off to the left.
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