On I35 heading north to Oklahoma City
St. Joseph's Old Cathedral, right across the street form the Oklahoma City Museum and Memorial. This cathedral is being restored.
We visited the Oklahoma City Museum and Memorial. On the grounds outside is the memorial, which are two identical walls, a reflecting pool and a field of chairs. The wall above has the inscription 9:01, the time before the bombing on April 19th, 1995, the opposite wall has 9:03 inscribed in it, the time right after the bombing. The memorial stands on what used to be part of 5th Street, which was decided to be turned into the memorial site.
Here the kids are sitting in the shade of the Survivor Tree, an American Elm that is part of the memorial and has it's own special history. It was planted in 1920 in a front yard in the area. The yard was eventually turned into a parking lot with this tree being the sole tree standing in that parking lot. The tree miraculously survived the 40,000 pound blast. It was transplanted to the memorial site where it now grows and gives shade and quiet place for reflection. You can see and feel the burn marks on the branches and the trunk of this tree. It is a true miracle of nature and a truly beautiful tree.
This is the former record building where the museum is housed. You can see the Survivor Tree.
This is the view from the first floor of the museum over the memorial. Opposite is the field of chairs. This is where the Alfred P Murrah building used to be. It is the site of the bombing. There are a total of 168 chairs, each honoring a victim that died. 19 of these chairs are small, symbolizing the 19 children that died. The building housed a childcare center.
The kids had the choice between visiting the capitol building or this museum. They all chose to visit this museum and memorial. They took everything in, thought about it, felt the pain and fear, tried to understand why anyone would do such a thing, learned about domestic terrorism, but also learned how much goodness there is in us, despite the bad and ugly.
After our visit to the museum and memorial we walked to a nice restaurant just a few blocks away. We walked by this street. Seems like we cannot escape dance.
One of the reasons we went on this field trip was to look at Greek inspired buildings as part of Katharine's civic's lesson. In civics, she is going back to the old Greeks this year. She will also study Greek literature in language arts, and 10th grade Math is all about geometry, so she has been studying Pythagoras. As most capitol buildings are inspired by Greek architecture, I decided to go to OKC. Austin is a much longer drive. Like I said before, we ended up not visiting the capitol building, which didn't matter, because walking through the city we found many buildings, federal and other, that had Greek architectural elements like this church.
Here is the main entrance to the county building with a quote by Thomas Jefferson. We found quotes of Washington, Adams, Lincoln and Hamilton around the sides of the building.
Our next stop on our walk through central Oklahoma City were the Myriad Gardens:
They found the one fan in the building to cool off.
Frangipani blossoms. They are used in perfumes and to make leis in Hawaii.
I almost forgot to take a picture of myself with the kids.
The flower below is a Beehive Ginger. It looks like it is made out of wax. I have never seen anything like it.
Devon Tower
We had planned to go the museum of art and a homestead as well, but unfortunately the homestead closed early and we were honestly tired and sweaty and happy to get home early and beat rush hour traffic. We all agreed that we had a great day!
On our way home.
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