With the 17th anniversary of the Oklahoma
City bombing last week and the upcoming 12th Annual Oklahoma City
Memorial Marathon coming up this weekend I found myself getting nostalgic.
Looking back as a lifelong Okie, the Oklahoma City
Bombing shaped the state of Oklahoma and interestingly, if not oddly, became a
place of peace for this kid over a decade later. In short, while in college,
and as I entered the professional world, the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial was
where I would go to find solace.
I would sit and admire the work of an architect who
was told that a ¾-inch reflecting pool could not be done in Oklahoma. He proved
the naysayers wrong. Side note: that
architect reviewed my first year architecture final and tore it to shreds
(rightfully so, though I still got an A). That architect would later go on
to design the Skydance Bridge in OKC.
In the evening, I would sit with a security guard
and watch a single duck, that never learned his lesson, crash and burn in the
¾-inch reflecting pool. It was hilarious.
I started and finished my first half marathon at the
bombing site while families that had lost loved ones cheered wildly along the
course.
Months before I left Oklahoma, a group of friends and I joined together to run the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon relay in the
pouring rain.
The list goes on, but at the end of the day, there
is a certain amount of strength and peace to be found at the Oklahoma City
Bombing Memorial. I continued to visit until the day that I left. Just outside
the West Gate of the Memorial stands a statue of Jesus with the words “Jesus
wept”. The image is one of the last I compiled before I moved to Durham from
Oklahoma City.
