Friday, April 20, 2012

Trip to Oklahoma City

Over Brenda's spring break we took a quick trip to Oklahoma City to see Kyle. We saw where he works, where he lives and who he hangs out with! Our next planned trip to OK will be for the wedding in June. 

We also went to see the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial & Museum.  The museum is shown behind Kalynn & Kyle.

On our way west, we stopped in Rolla, MO and had supper with my cousin Bill & Lois.  They highly recommended that we take time to visit the bombing memorial and now that we've been there, we too would suggest that if your travels take you to OK., you really shouldn't miss this site.

Dwarfing K, K & B is the entry to the memorial.  The bombed federal building would have been situated behind and to the right of this wall.  On the opposite side of the wall toward the top, engraved in the stone is 9:01

Stepping through the entryway in the wall above, you see a reflecting pool which is where the street used to be, the federal building to the right.  The wall on the opposite end of the block has 9:03 engraved toward the top.  The truck packed with explosives was detonated at 9:02 AM on April 19, 1995 which would be 17 years ago yesterday.

There is far, far too much history, facts & figures to mention in this blog but it might be of interest to note that aside from destroying the Murrah Federal Building, the blast The blast destroyed or damaged 324 buildings within a sixteen-block radius, and shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings.  It registered in the Richter scale.  More details can be accessed here

Of the 168 fatalities, 163 were from the federal building.  These chairs sit where the building once sat and each chair represents a person killed.  The base of the chairs illuminate at night and the are arranged in 9 rows representing the 9 stories of the building.  The victims found on the first floor have memorial chairs in the first row of this display and those on the second floor are in the second row, etc.

The chain link fence bordering the grounds is covered with notes, flowers, stuffed animals, photos and much more.  We took a few minutes to look.

We found evidence of previous visitors from IL including someone who left an ILLINOIS t-shirt attached to the fence.

Because photography was prohibited inside the museum, I have no photos from there.  
The museum website is OKC Memorial & Museum

1 comment:

Jennifer said...

Thanks for sharing! It's close enough that we'll have to put that on our to-do list.