10-22-18

Intense and extremely moving, today we visited the Oklahoma City National Memorial at the site of the Alfred P. Murrah building.  The museum was very well done, historically factual and with an emphasis on the victims and not on the perpetrators.

The entry gate is above. There are two other large entry gates, one that has 9:01 engraved on it, which stands for the last minute of innocence before the explosion, and one that has 9:03, which stands for the first minute of healing.

Across the street is a statue of Jesus weeping with his back to the site.

168 empty chairs represent the people who were killed in the blast.  On each pedestal is the name of a victim and the pedestals are lit at night.

Inside the memorial there is a video introduction by Kristin Chenowith, who is from Oklahoma.  Then the explosion is depicted in a meeting room where there is a tape of the actual sound of the explosion interrupting a meeting of the Water Commission in a nearby building.

The rest of the museum follows the events chronologically and displays many artifacts.  The last display of events shows how McVeigh was caught.  After that the museum has displays of the photos of the victims and their stories.

These plaques name the survivors and are displayed on the last surviving wall of the building.

Leaving the building there is still a chain link fence where people leave remembrances and tributes to those whose lives were altered by the events of April 19, 1995.

The Holocaust Museum in D.C. is the only other one I have seen that commemorates the horror of hate in such a moving way.