Amid restrictions, video tribute honors victims of 1995 bomb attack
OKLAHOMA CITY >> Survivors and loved ones of the 168 people who were killed in the Oklahoma City bombing were not able to gather Sunday to mark the 25th anniversary of the attack, but that did not stop them from remembering.
Because the annual remembrance ceremony was canceled due to coronavirus restrictions, the victims instead were honored with a video tribute that included the reading of the names of those who died followed by 168 seconds of silence.
Ordinarily, the city would have gathered Sunday at the memorial where the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building stood before it was destroyed by a truck bomb on April 19, 1995. Gates to the memorial mark time, 9:01 and 9:03 a.m., with a reflection pond between them representing 9:02, the minute the explosion permanently altered lives and the nation. Stylized, empty metal chairs represent each person who died, and the “Survivor Tree,” a gnarled American elm that withstood the blast, now stands on a small hill and shades the memorial below.
It was “extremely difficult” to not be able to attend in person, said Ryan Whicher, whose father, U.S. Secret Service Agent Alan Whicher, was killed in the bombing. “I’m not with my sisters today, I’m not with my mother today,” in Oklahoma City, he said by phone from Baltimore, where he now lives.
“But it’s all for the right reasons . ... Everyone is making sacrifices. I don’t think it’s fair for us in this coronavirus (environment) to feel we should be treated any differently,” he said.
The prerecorded video, which included remarks by former President Bill Clinton, who was president at the time of the bombing, U.S. Sen. James Lankford, Oklahoma City
Mayor David Holt and Tony award-winning actress and singer Kristin Chenowith, an Oklahoma native, drew praise from Whicher and state District Judge Cindy Ferrell Ashwood, whose sister, U.S. Housing and Urban Development attorney Susan Ferrell, died in the blast.
“They did just an extraordinary ceremony under extraordinary circumstances, it was just remarkable,” Ashwood said of the video put together by the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum.
“The main thing I missed today was not being with our family” in Oklahoma City said Ashwood, who lives about 40 miles east of the city, in Chandler.
Kari Watkins, the director of the memorial, said this year’s social distancing restrictions are necessary but unfortunate, as survivors and victims’ family members often only see each this one time each year.