the unfinished bombing oklahoma city in american memory

[...]... the Athenian Building, the YMCA Building, the Journal Record Building, the Regency Tower Apartments, and the nearby churches sustaining the worst of the damage Windows were shattered in a ten block radius The force and heat of the blast set fire to cars parked on the street and in the lot across from the building The dust from the collapsing building and the smoke from the burning cars billowed into... haunted me since I began working in Oklahoma City in the spring of  The powerful images of dark and lonely places and people clawing their way out of them capture well the mood of this book When I first thought of writing about the bombing, it was in the familiar terms of a biography of memorial processes Having written about changing interpretations of American battlefields, the making of the United... Ernestine Clark, who worked in a city library only a few blocks from the Murrah Building, recalled looking “to see if the silver nose of a plane engine In the lower left, the badly damaged YMCA, and evident directly across from the Murrah Building are the ruins of the Water Resources building and the Athenian building, and the larger Journal Record Building On the far right a partial view of the Regency... this project In the spring of , Toby Thompson, whose brother was killed in the bombing, and who was active in the Foundation’s work, invited me to visit Oklahoma City, a trip that remains vivid in my mind We went directly from Will Rogers Airport to the bombing site, where I saw popular memorial expression on the fence that protected the site of the former Alfred P Murrah Federal Building, and appreciated... would, rather, continue to be a day marked by violent death and fear of violent memorialization of these deaths through continued terrorist attacks.⁷ IN TRODUCTION 7 The ominous associations with April  were not on the minds of people in Oklahoma City that cool sunny morning in  When asked by the Oklahoma City National Memorial Foundation how they would like to begin telling the story in the Memorial... G A floor of the Murrah Building clearly shows where the bomb scooped out the building Note the coat still hanging on a rack and several bookcases still standing (City of Oklahoma City) seeing, amid the destruction, a suitcoat hanging neatly on a rack, near the jagged precipice where the building had ceased to exist Some recalled the cold rainy weather and the forty-five mile-per-hour wind that descended... nightmares of international travel The bombing in Oklahoma City killed  people, more people than any other single act of domestic terrorism in American history Consequently, Oklahoma City could claim the dubious distinction of being “first and worst” in the hierarchy of American terrorist attacks It took place in what was envisioned as America’s “heartland,” shattering the assumption that Middle America... arts creations, and travel to the site The bombing also occurred at a time when, in the words of Rochelle Gurstein the “party of exposure” had triumphed over the “party of reticence” in the culture The reticent sensibility, she wrote, finds genuine intimacy in the “mutual baring of one’s innermost self to another person and to no one else; this is quite unlike the modern therapeutic mode of effusive openness... of people (David Allen, Oklahoma City) Looking toward the Journal Record Building, charred remains of cars surround what became known as the Survivor Tree Note car parts in the tree (City of Oklahoma City) The interior of the Journal Record Building The clock on the floor is stopped at 9:02 (June Ranney) This area was called The Pile,” where nine floors had “pancaked” together (Boldt Construction,... Robert Vincent, Kari Watkins, Pam Whicher, and Richard and Lynne Williams In February , I had the pleasure of serving as the Feaver-MacMinn Visiting Scholar at the University of Oklahoma For five days, I worked with a group of undergraduates in a seminar, Memory and Memorials in American Culture: Violence and the American Landscape.” I am indebted to Sue Schofield, coordinator of the Graduate Advising . project. In the spring of , Toby Thompson, whose brother was killed in the bombing, and who was active in the Foundation’s work, invited me to visit Oklahoma City, a trip that remains vivid in. : Oklahoma City in American memory / Edward T.Linenthal. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.  --- . Oklahoma City Federal Building Bombing, Oklahoma City, Okla.,. Shuddering Dawn: Religious Studies and the Nuclear Age (co-edited with Ira Chernus) THE UNFINISHED BOMBING Oklahoma City in American Memory 1  EDWARD T. LINENTHAL 3 Oxford New York Athens