It's a three-hour drive due north from Fort Worth to Oklahoma City. GPS guided us to the National Memorial and Museum, which occupies the space downtown where the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building once stood.
It's hard to believe an act so horrifying could produce something so lovely and contemplative.
Until you see the 168 engraved chairs. Each represents a person who lost their life in a bomb blast on April 19, 1995. They're arranged in rows that correspond to the floors of the building where they were at the time of America's worst (to date) domestic terror attack. Shorter chairs dominate the second row. That's because the terrorists killed 19 kids in a day care center.
The times inscribed above the gates at each end of the reflecting pool refer to innocence before the blast (9:01 a.m.) and the healing that began afterward at 9:03 a.m.
The names of more than 500 survivors, many seriously injured, are etched into stone that hangs on the only remaining piece of the building. Note the cross floating above Thom's head. Eerie.
Most of the building had to be demolished after rescue and recovery workers completed their delicate efforts, fearful that floor collapse would kill people trapped beneath.
The only tree in the area to withstand the blast--a large American elm--still provides shade and solace to the right of the building that houses the museum.
Jesus wept in a statue erected by a nearby church after the murders. No comment.
Visitors to the memorial continue to hang personal keepsakes on the chain link fence outside just as they did in the aftermath. The museum has archived tens of thousands of similar items, bleached by the harsh Oklahoma sun.
Thom didn't feel up to seeing the exhibits inside. Who could blame him?
What a different world we inhabited in 1995, although Madonna persists--embarrassingly! Another display states that fewer than 14% of Americans had internet access at the time.
The museum depicts with extraordinary intensity how people with a warped political agenda--not unlike those who participated in the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol building earlier this year--can instantly transform a mundane Wednesday morning into an inconceivable eruption of evil.
This display of ordinary items recovered from the dead reminded me of what I saw as a child at the Holocaust Museum in Paris.
The museum honors each of the dead.
Family members contributed photographs and personal effects.
Just try not weeping in the face of such incomprehensible loss.
As the 20th anniversary of the attack approached, an art teacher suggested that her students pay tribute to people who perished in the attack that preceded their birth. The idea quickly spread throughout the public school system.
Identification encourages empathy.
The museum also chronicles the investigation of the murderers who stayed at this motel
. . . and drove this car. Lurid Americana. We saw plenty more as our road trip continued, minus the malevolence.
Good riddance!
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