Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum

Today we spent the afternoon at the Memorial & Museum.  It was very interesting and moving.  I did skip one part of the Museum because it was just too emotional for me.  They have a room with pictures and momentos from each of the 168 people that died and right after that is a room where they loop video of their funerals, memorial services, etc.  I just didn't want to sit through that.  Other than that, it was a beautiful presentation and when you hear about the way the people of Oklahoma and the rest of the country banded together after this tragedy, you realize that after it's all said and done there are a heck of a lot more GOOD people in this world than bad.

A very interesting story was that Florence Rogers, the President of  the Federal Employees Credit Union in the Murrah Building, was having a staff meeting in her office that morning.  When the blast occurred, the 8 employees sitting across from her desk literally disappeared.  The floor under Florence's desk & chair remained intact.  All 8 of the employees died.  Florence had one small tear in her dress and other than that, she was fine.  Can you imagine?   

This is the outside of one of the end panels at the Memorial.

Some of the debris from the bombing.

More of the damage from the bombing.

A photo of the Murrah Federal Building after the explosion.

This car was parked in front of the Ryder truck that
the bomb was in.

The license plate from the Ryder truck.

The face of a monster.

It's still amazing that he wasn't
sentenced to death.  161 life
sentences should be sufficient, though.

This is one of the end panels at the Memorial which reads
9:03 - one minute after the explosion.

The chairs at the Memorial.  There are 168 chairs, one for
each person that died.  The smaller chairs are for the 19
children that died.

The other end panel at the Memorial, which reads 9:01 - one
minute before the explosion.  In between the end panels
are the chairs. 

This press pass was in a display case of
press passes.  The rest of the passes were
 for access to Oklahoma City.
 I found this one to be very eerie.

Part of the fence in front of the Memorial & Museum.  I
thought it was interesting that this large one was from
Tawas City, MI.