OKLAHOMA CITY — More than one thousand visitors poured into OKC’s First Church Saturday morning to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing alongside city and state leaders, survivors, family members, and a former United States President.
In a ceremony marked as much by appeals to faith and religion as by appeals for unity in the current age of political division and violent rhetoric, one subject repeatedly emerged as the central theme of the day: the resilience and unwavering spirit of Oklahoma City.
True to that resilience, the ceremony, originally planned as a large outdoor event inside the Memorial grounds, was moved indoors to First Church in the face of driving rain and cold.
The morning’s speakers – including Former Governor Frank Keating, Mayor David Holt, Governor Kevin Stitt, Senator James Lankford, and Former President Bill Clinton – each spoke reverently and delicately about the tragic attack and the 168 lives taken.
But they each also applauded the residents of OKC for the recovery and relief efforts at the time, and for the solemn work of memorializing and honoring the victims in the years since, both through the OKC National Memorial and through the continued cultural growth and success of the city itself.
“As we have done each year for the past thirty years, we gather as a community on April 19th to remember, to learn from what happened, and to grow and heal,” said Dr. Susan Chambers, Chair of the OKC National Memorial, in her opening remarks for the ceremony. “Those we honor today serve as our inspiration as to why it is vital to continue teaching the world our story.”
Generational growth
Much of the morning’s focus was on the three decades that have passed since the terrorist attack and on the changes and growth that the city and state have seen in that time.
Both Keating and Holt spoke of new generations poised to pick up the mantle of OKC and to carry the remembrance of the Bombing forward into an age that will be led by people too young to remember the events of 1995.
“The contrast between then and now is very dramatic,” Keating said, referring to what he calls a “renaissance of Oklahoma” sparked by the spirit of compassion in the wake of the Bombing.
Mayor Holt echoed those sentiments, detailing how OKC has blossomed and risen from the ashes of the Murrah Building in the thirty years since.
“One day of darkness has unquestionably been followed by thirty years of light here in Oklahoma City,” he said. “These last 30 years have unquestionably represented our city’s Golden Age.”
But he then looked further into the future in a speech that invoked the Bible, Shakespeare, “Gone with the Wind,” and even Fleetwood Mac to discuss the ever-present concept of “tomorrow” and the many hopes and challenges it can represent, including upholding the memory of the Bombing as generations change.
“We are beginning to pass the baton of that commitment,” Holt said. “Even then, when tens of thousands of tomorrows have passed, this commitment by the people of Oklahoma City to stand against evil must endure.”
Context and contention
Another recurring theme throughout the ceremony was the concerning parallel that can be drawn between the violent, anti-government rhetoric that influenced bomber Timothy McVeigh and the increasingly violent and dehumanizing sentiments being platformed in the modern mainstream.
Though the ceremony saw no direct mention of McVeigh by name, many of the speakers invoked the word “evil” to denote the Bombing’s perpetrator and his accomplices.
But only Holt referred to him as “a fellow American,” placing McVeigh’s fringe extremist views within the modern context of growing hostility and anti-social sentiment in American political discourse.
The Memorial, he said, stands as a reminder of the evils that people are capable of when they “fail to acknowledge our shared humanity, when they dehumanize each other, when they entertain conspiracy theories.”
Former President Bill Clinton drove that point home more bluntly in what many expect to be the 78-year-old’s final major anniversary address as he pleaded for Americans to look to Oklahoma City to not only see what resilience can achieve, but also what division can destroy.
“Because in recent years, the country has grown more polarized,” he said to the citizens of OKC, “and on that day thirty years ago, you were the center of that polarization.”
Remembrance and reflection
Following the ceremony, visitors, survivors, and families made their way out of the church and across the street into the Memorial grounds.
With intermittently light rain still coming down, those in the crowd each reflected on the events of the morning, of the same morning thirty years ago, and of the developments and divisions of the decades in between.
Some groups gathered to pray amongst themselves, some families laughed together or cried together, and a group of school students placed handwritten letters on each chair representing each victim in the Memorial’s Field of Empty Chairs.
“The city has definitely come a long way,” said Laura Weiss, a survivor of the attack who was in the Journal Record office next door to the Murrah Building, where the Memorial Museum now stands. “I don’t come every year. Sometimes it’s easy to be here and I’ll bring people and tell them my story of it, and other times it’s just too overwhelming. But I wanted to come this time to see President Clinton.”
Others, like Toastmaster Jeff Halpin, were there just to pay respects and to appreciate the Memorial for what it represents to the city and to its healing and the passage of time since the Bombing.
“It’s bittersweet that this Memorial is the most famous landmark in Oklahoma City, but at least it’s being recognized the way it deserves,” he said. “It’s just something that we must never forget.”
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
