May 29, 2000
DOWN HOME:
We also must remember victims of horrific hatred
___Memorial Day arrived a couple of weeks early for our family this year, but we remembered just the same.
___A few weekends ago, we traveled up to Stratford, Okla., where my father is pastor of First Baptist Church, to celebrate his birthday and Mother's Day. And we also commemorated Memorial Day, of a sort.
Marv Knox
Editor
___We visited the Oklahoma City National Memorial, located on the site where, at 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was destroyed by the largest terrorist attack in U.S. history.
___Giant brass "gates of time" provide access to the memorial. The east gate is marked 9:01, for the minute before a truck bomb exploded, decimating the building and defacing American history. The west gate is marked 9:03. Together, they bracket a moment of eternal infamy.
___A field of grass now marks the exact spot where the Murrah Building once stood. On that field stand 168 empty chairs. They're made of brass and stone and translucent glass. Each chair bears a name of one of the 168 victims of the bomb blast. The chairs are built in two sizes; 149 large chairs represent the adult victims, and 19 agonizingly small chairs stand for the children. They're lined up in nine rows, placed according to the floor on which the victims worked or visited at the second the bomb took their lives.
___Maybe you've never contemplated it, but 168 is a very large number. Especially when 168 represents lives obliterated in a blinding, deafening horrific moment of hatred.
___I wonder if the designers anticipated one of the most impressive aspects of the memorial. That is the visceral silence, the agonizing quiet of the place. Even crowded with visitors on a lovely evening, the grounds are as somber as a tomb. People who mill among the memorial chairs stand mute or whisper lips-to-ear.
___A reflecting pool spans the length and breadth of the street that once stretched in front of the Murrah Building--the place where the bomber parked the truck that carried the bomb that horrified the world. The pool is shallow, only a couple of inches deep.
___At first, that shallow, tranquil pool surprised me. But then I began to see it as an important metaphor.
___Civility presents a tranquil surface across much of America today. But it is shallow, and beneath it lurks powerful and dangerous forces of hatred, anger and contention.
___Just as we remember and honor the brave soldiers who died to preserve freedom, we must remember and honor those who die at the hands of hate every year. And we must strive for deep tranquility, compassion and understanding, in the name of the Prince of Peace.
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