168 Empty Seats.

January 7, 2017

Our next destination: Oklahoma City.  We booked a room at Aloft in the historic district of Bricktown.  Unfortunately, the welcome at the Aloft was not friendly like it was in Asheville, but it is a dog-friendly hotel chain and we were really tired so we stayed.

The next day we had a hearty breakfast at Cattlemen's Restaurant, a local's joint.  Outstanding service, Billy Jack was our waiter, he sported a crisp shirt and a bow tie and kept us laughing.  

We enjoyed him and also the hearty cowboy grub! 

Doug has been to OK City before and he really wanted to show me the OKC Memorial.  Nobody can forget that fateful day on April 19, 1985, when Timothy McVeigh detonated a bomb that blew up the Murrah Building and killed 168 people and injured hundreds of other innocents.  At the Memorial, there sit 168 empty chairs, placed in rows representing the floors where the people worked and where visitors were stopping by.  A huge reflecting pool is the central focal point and tributes to lost loved ones adorn the wire fence alongside the site.  

It is impossible to go there and not recall the images on the news and shed tears.  I could barely focus the camera.  The small chairs honor the children lost in the Murrah Building's Day Care Center.   

The large tree in the background is 

the only tree on the grounds that survived the explosion.  

It is honored and respected, as are the victims of that horrific day.

New trees of the same type have been planted nearby and around the tree, showing the resilience of OK City.  Life must go on.

These two solid structures at either end of the shallow pool bear the numbers 9:01 (the time of the explosion) and 9:03 (the time Oklahomans began to mentally rebuild).  It's pretty powerful, ya'll.  

A part of America and its history.  

A part that hurts to remember but one we must not forget.

This is a solemn place, enveloped in a cloak of sadness.  The Memorial area has an eerie silence about it, people silently stroll around the site, slowly and respectfully.  Tears ran down my face the whole time.  Such a waste of human lives.  Such a waste.  The only other place I've ever experienced this same feeling is at the 911 Memorial site in NYC.  

There is no noise here.  

There is no reasoning for what happened here.

168 Empty Seats.

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