Creating Memorial: A Personal Journey

Where Timothy McVeigh parked a truck bomb on the morning of April 19, 1995, the waters of a reflecting pool now softly babble.

Where the explosion chewed open the face of the nine-story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, there is now a grassy hill with nine rows of empty bronze-and-stone chairs - one for each of the 168 people killed in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Exactly five years after the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, the Oklahoma City National Memorial will be dedicated to show that America's spirit remains strong after an attack to its very heart.

The bombing shattered countless lives and forever changed the way Americans see terrorism, said Bob Johnson, chairman of the Oklahoma City National Memorial Trust.

"We can no longer view terrorism from a safe and comfortable distance," and that is part of the memorial's meaning, Johnson said.

The serenity of the completed memorial is in stark contrast to the chaos of the bombing.

It is anchored on opposite sides by dual four-story gates, emblazoned "9:01" and "9:03" for the moments immediately before and after the 9:02 a.m. bombing.

They are among many symbolic elements of the memorial.

The Survivor Tree, an American elm that weathered the blast to bloom again, stands as a sentinel over the site, representing the more than 1,000 people who lived through the bombing.

It is surrounded by the Helpers' Orchard, an army of fruit trees representing those who rushed in to help.

In a corner of the memorial, a wall of tiles bearing messages of hope from people across the country - honors the 19 children who died in the bombing.

The $24 million memorial came about as a result of an unprecedented and emotional journey driven by thousands of survivors, rescuers and others affected most by the bombing.

"We democratized a memorial process," Johnson said. "We wanted those most directly affected by the tragedy to be involved in every aspect of it."

Not long after the ruined building was leveled by demolition experts, a local 350-person task force was appointed to develop a memorial on the site.

Members came from all backgrounds, bearing wounds, physical and emotional, still fresh from the blast. Johnson remembered those first months as the most challenging of the memorial process. Meetings often posed more questions than answers. Planning was put aside for listening. There were complaints about the halting pace of the project and a lack of initial results. But Johnson said pausing was necessary.

"For about seven or eight months we didn't focus on what this memorial should look like," Johnson said, "but we asked the question, 'What should a visitor to the memorial feel, encounter, experience and learn?' And I think that caused people to open up and talk about how they were grieving, and their very raw emotions came to the surface."

A mission statement developedspelling out whom the memorial should honor, as well as the site's more general themes of peace, remembrance and comfort. It became the project's constitution, said bombing survivor Richard Marshall.

"In those times of disagreement we always reverted back to the mission statement," he said.

Florence Rogers was president of the Murrah building's Federal Employees' Credit Union, where 18 of 33 employees were killed in the bombing. She said tears were common in the memorial's planning meetings, but the job at hand always came first.

"I have found it very rewarding to know that through some little effort of mine all those gals I lost at the credit union will go on," Rogers said.

With the final, physical results of the memorial now in sight, Johnson said the past five years of work have already proven what the memorial stands for.

"The real irony of what happened in 1995 is that misguided individuals tried to use terrorism as a means of divisiveness," Johnson said. "But yet what happened was a very, very strong unity, rather than the divided America they sought to achieve."

© 2000 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed