Skip to main content

Oklahoma City, July 24, 2021

 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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Highways

 I find it interesting to come across a highway number down here that is the same as a highway number up in our neck of the woods. Yesterday, we spent some time on Highway 281, which is the same U.S. highway that goes through Jamestown and crosses Highway 2 at Churches Ferry.  I-35 splits into I-35 W and I-35 E as it passes through Ft. Worth and Dallas, just as it does in the Twin Cities. Many years ago in North Carolina, I was on U. S. 52, which runs from Portal SE across America, sometimes disappearing for hundreds of miles, swallowed up by highways that get more respect.  On the way down here we crossed U. S. 30, which is known as the Lincoln Highway out east because it passes through Gettysburg and Northern Illinois.  I don’t know who devised the U.S. highway system, but they made it interesting.
Post a Comment
Read more

Dallas where JFK was assasinated

I am standing on the sidewalk reading the historical marker.  Out in the street behind me is a white X painted where the Presidential limo was when Kennedy eat hit with the fatal head shot (the third shot).  Farther up the street to my right an X marks the spot where the second shot hit him high on his back. This was the “magic bullet” that went through JFK’s back and then hit Connelly.  That billet actually caused seven wounds.  Beyond me is the Texas Book Drpository.  Oswald shot from the far right window on the sixth floor. That window is behind the tree. Only the seventh floor can be seen from this angle.  Ruth is standing next to the stone pedestal in which Zapruder stood and made his famous video of the assassination.  Dealy Plaza is across the street behind her. This was taken up in the Sixth Floor Museum. This is the window Oswald shot three shots from.  The boxes are arrranged just as they were on 11/22/63.  This is the X on the stre...
Post a Comment
Read more

Smithsonian

There is so much to see in the museums on both sides of the National Mall I cannot possibly mention everything. I will list that which stands out.      Mueum of Natural History:  a huge stuffed elephant that dominates the rotunda, dozens of dinosaur skeletons, the Hope diamond, gemstones galore, and Egyptian mummies.      Museum of American History:  the section on civil rights from 1863 to 1963, the stories of Medal of Honor winners, the section on America at War, the section on Thomas Edison.     Air and Space Museum:  the Wright brother's plane, all the Apollo space stuff about how we went to the moon, the section on telescopes,  the section on aircraft carriers, the section on taking photographs from the air.  This last sectio n covered everything from the first pictures taken from the air in baloons and from cameras strapped to the bellies of birds to pictures taken from modern satellites.  Of all the museums...
Post a Comment
Read more