Greetings from Oklahoma City

It has been a good day here in OKC. This group is all of the Chief Advancement Officers of the various Christian Colleges throughout the States. This is the 2nd time in three years I have been with them - last year I missed because of weather. There has been some really good conversation and encouragement come out of this. I find myself moving between "Oh, I really should be doing that in our shop" to "Wow, I am not as far behind as I thought. We have been doing that for a couple of years."

This afternoon, we went to the Oklahoma City National Memorial, which is at the site of the Murrah Building which was bombed by Timothy McVeigh. They have an outdoor memorial, which is highly symbolic. The space remembers those who died, those who survived, and those who were changed. It has nine rows of chairs, one for each person who died - the nine being the number of stories the Murrah building had. It has a reflecting pool, in the space that was originally the street in front of the Murrah Building, which represents those who have been changed, i.e., all of us. There is one section of the original wall still standing. There is also a fence where items are still being left.

There is also a tree, named the survivor tree, because it survived the blast, although it was directly across the street from the Ryder truck. It is the big tree in the pictures below. The building in the back houses the musuem and the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism. It has a large room that the flag, which is cross-stitched with the name of every person killed in a terrorist act since (1980??). It is huge. The roof was blown off this building and in the MIPT, there are pictures taken from the room you are in that shows the destruction. Three years later, when the pictures were taken, it was still in ruins and has grass growing in the building. (5th floor, mind you.)

The large structures at each end of the reflecting pool have a time on them. One has 9:01, the other 9:03. The in between space is time standing still - 9:02 when the bomb went off.

We did not go in the musem, but the people from OC sid it was very intense. I can imagine, just walking around outside was pretty moving.