Oklahoma City

April 19, 1995 I was in second grade. I remember coming in from morning recess and Mrs. Couch was watching a national news report of the Oklahoma City Bombing. I remember hearing about children in the daycare center. I don't remember much else about it, being so young. Saturday I was able to go to Oklahoma City with the sisters in the Relief Society to visit the beautiful Memorial.

The picture on the left shows what it looked like before the bombing in 1995 and the one on the right is what it looks like today.

Fire fighters wrote this on the wall the building next to it.

This is the reflection pool that is in between two gates. Before the bombing this was the street where to truck with the bomb was parked. The field of empty chairs is where to Murrah Building once stood. The empty chairs represents each of the 168 people who lost their lives that day. At night the chair glow in their memory. There are nine rows of chairs to represent the nine story building. The number of chair on each row represents how many people died on that floor. The second floor of that building had a daycare. I think there were 19 children who died. Their chairs are smaller.

That wall is what is actually still standing of the Murrah building. It survived the explosion of April 19th and then survived the later implosion to tear down the remaining building.

There are two gates on either side of the reflection pool. The say 9:01 and the other says 9:03. The explosion happened at 9:02. The east 9:01 gate represents the last minute of innocence of the city before the attack. The west 9:03 gate represents the moment we were changed forever. There was a ranger lady who told us that 9:03 also represented the first minute of healing for everyone. She said if you heard of an explosion before this time you probably wouldn't have suspected a terrorist attack. Today that is probably the first thing we would suspect.

We also went to the museum which was really interesting. There were several video interview of survivors and recount of that day. I have a tender heart when it comes to the children. I felt for the parents who lost their children that day. I saw footage of parents who were frantically telling police that their children are in the building. Rip your heart out. The museum had a shoe off the foot of a little girl who was killed that day. It was the same shoe she wore to day care that day. Tragic! However, the spirit of this museum was more about healing. They wanted to celebrate how people from everywhere were really Christlike and helped those affected by this tragedy.

The first picture is of the survivor tress. It's a 90 year old tree that survived the explosion. They almost tore it down until they realized it was showing signs of life. The guide said that this is the best taken care of tree in the world. It has it's own irrigation systems and it is vaccinated. It is a symbol of human resilience. I can't believe it's been 16 years since this has happened. I'm glad I got go see this. Hopefully we'll go again before we leave Oklahoma.