9:02 AM, A time When Things Changed

It was 15 years ago last week that home grown terrorism came to the United States. While there have always been assorted idiots around, on April 19, 1995 one of them blew up a Federal Building in Oklahoma City. 168 people died in the blast. I was recently in Oklahoma City, just a few days before the 15th anniversary of the bombing. I was working with one of my sales managers. After a quick breakfast we went to see the memorial. I seldom stop to see anything when I am running through cities, but this time I took a moment to pause.

Here are some pictures of the memorial; they have done a wonderful job of commemorating the event. I walked though this memorial and looked at the chairs that are lined up in rows that indicate what floor the person was on when they died (5 chairs sit away from the rest in honor of those killed outside the building). I stared at the gates at either end of the reflecting pool (that used to be the street in front of the building) which commemorate the time just before and just after the event. I looked at the wall of survivors and the Survivor Tree which was planted across the street from the explosion and survived it. I walked around the site and then just before leaving I was looking down on the site and noticed some of the chairs were smaller than the others.

In the second row of chairs there are 19 little chairs (if you look closely you will see it in the picture). Yes, 19 children who were in daycare in the building were killed in the blast. Their outdoor play area is fenced off with a small sign remembering the children. While the entire memorial was moving, the part remembering the children sends shivers up your spine.

Should you find yourself wandering the Great Plains someday, this place in the heart of Oklahoma City is worth a visit and deserves to be remembered.