Oklahoma

I recently spent a weekend in Oklahoma.  My parents and I left last Thursday after the Scholastic Bowl meet in Milford and headed southwest.  Our destination: Edumund, a suburb of Oklahoma City.  Our purpose: The USA Archery and Junior Olympic Archery Development (JOAD) Indoor Nationals.

We left home at about 9 PM expecting to travel about 5 to 7 hours and find a place to stop for the night.  It was smooth sailing from here to Springfield, IL.  We pulled into a gas station for some fuel and snacks.  We were probably inside for only 5 minutes.  By the time we came out, it was a blizzard.  We got back in the car and continued.  We lost about 4 hours of time because we were forced to travel about 35 miles an hour on the interstate.  Once we hit St. Louis, it was all good again and we kept working our way towards Edmund.

We finally rolled into OK City at about noon on Friday.  We checked into our hotel and crashed until I had to get to the venue to shoot.  Once we got onto the University of Central OK campus and into the shooting venue, we realized just what type of place we were in.  It was a huge gym/fitness center.

Where a ton of Olympic/Paralympic athletes trained every day.   Yeah, like Olympics, like the big show.  These athletes were primarily archers and sitting volleyball players, but how cool is it to say I met a bunch of Oly/Para athletes?  It definitely was a highlight of my week.

Between the actual shooting and other tournament activities, we had time to visit the Oklahoma City National Memorial.  It was in this spot where Timothy McVeigh parked a rental van filled with explosives in front of the Federal Murrah Building.  The explosion killed 168 people and ripped the front of the building off.  It was the biggest act of terrorism against American citizens up until 9/11/2001.

In this memorial, there are several parts.  One is a museum highlighting those who lost their lives, the event itself, and ways to prevent it.  Another part is a reflecting pool flanked by 2 'gates' with the time 9:01 on one and 9:03 on the other.  This is to represent the moment of destruction.  At 9:01, the city was still innocent; at 9:03 it was changed forever.  Still another part is the "survivor tree".  It's a tree that survived the blast.  It is surrounded by fruit and nut bearing trees as an homage to the volunteers who came to help.  The final part is the field of chairs.  The south and east walls of the Murrah Building are still standing.  Inside them, where the building once stood, sits 168 chairs, one for each person that lost their life.  They are there as a reminder that this was a senseless act of violence and that, if this hadn't happened, these people would still be there with their families and they wouldn't have left empty chairs behind.

This was a really emotional tour for me.  It really made me sad, thinking of not only the people that were lost, but the people who were lost during 9/11.  Sure, they'll get a monument, but in New York, they're not going to set aside the entire spot where the building stood for a memorial.  This monument was real.  It was a place where people can truly reflect on this event and learn from it.  It's a constant reminder to the people of OKC of exactly what used to stand there and just how quickly things can change.  I know it's a simple thing, but it really touched me.  I'm sad that we live in a world where things like this happen, but glad there are memorials like this one to remind us of these acts so we can learn from them.

If you want more info about the memorial follow this link.