My Life and Times

Larry W. Smith for The New York Times

Regina Bonny, a survivor, kneeling at the chair memorializing a co-worker, Carrie Ann Lenz, who was five months pregnant when she was killed
10 Years After Bombing, Oklahoma City Remembers
By JOHN KIFNER

OKLAHOMA CITY, April 19 - "Did you see all the pretty flowers on our girl's chair?" Doris Needham asked the half-dozen relatives clustered around the memorial to her daughter, Rebecca Anderson, piled high with eight colorful bouquets, a potted plant, a snow globe with an angel and, almost inevitably, a teddy bear.

Ms. Anderson is particularly honored here as the heroic nurse who rushed into the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building to give aid moments after a truck bomb exploded 10 years ago Tuesday. She was almost immediately killed by falling debris, becoming one of the 168 fatalities.

All around the sloping lawn that is the centerpiece of the Oklahoma City National Memorial, families, friends and survivors, along with rescue workers who had experienced the pain of that terrible day, were gathered around the 168 bronze and glass chairs -19 of them small, for the children killed in the explosion - sharing sorrow, a sense of bonding and, many said, hope for the future.

There were more formal, choreographed ceremonies, including speeches by Vice President Dick Cheney, former President Bill Clinton and other political dignitaries. But the day really belonged to the people who gathered among the chairs, heaping them with flowers, wreaths, pictures and whimsical balloons to remember their loved ones. It was a mixture of wake and family reunion.

A crowd gathered around the chair marked for Lanny L. Scroggins, 46, an accountant in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, with most of the attention focused on his granddaughter, Kaleigh, just over a year old, dressed in a frilly party dress and held aloft for photographs by her father - Lanny's son - Brad. Pictures of the little girl filled the chair.

Janice Smith, Lanny Scroggins's older sister by 10 years, recalled how he had graduated from high school in Hughes County, fought and was wounded in Vietnam, finished college in accounting, married Cheryl Parker and had two sons. A friend, David Burkett, helped get him his job in the Federal Building, which he worked at for 23 years. Mr. Burkett, 47, was killed too; wreaths adorned his picture on the cyclone fence that is part of the memorial.

"He has a brother down in Holdenville, Larry, who hasn't come here," Mrs. Smith said. "He can't take it all in; it's too much for him."

Carrie Ann Lenz, 26, was showing sonogram pictures of her expected baby, five months along, to her colleagues in the Drug Enforcement Administration when the blast struck, Glenn and Jolene Short, friends from the Draper Park Christian Church, recalled. The name Michael James Lenz III is also etched on the frosted glass of her chair.

Like many in this deeply religious, largely Protestant, community, the Shorts spoke of the power of faith, saying that Ms. Lenz's mother, Doris Jones, had never lost hers. Like many others here, she went to New York after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to help console families.

At one chair, a woman knelt by herself, crying, oblivious to the television cameras clustered around her. By contrast, the gathering for LaKesha R. Levy, a 21-year-old who had gone to the building that morning to get a Social Security card, was almost raucous. A bus brought 53 people to the ceremony; they wore T-shirts with her picture and jostled loudly for group photographs at her chair.

Almost unnoticed were Hans and Torrey Butzer, the American-born couple practicing architecture in Germany who designed the memorial along with Sven Berg.

"We are so happy," Ms. Butzer said. "It is so wonderful to see people find comfort, to find some kind of peace. You don't want to spoon-feed people your idea, but the empty chairs to us is a gentle way to think of the people we lost."

She was rewarded a moment later, when Steve Powell, who directed rescue dogs at the site, said: "You guys did a wonderful job. It's a kind of humble way to honor those, it's very respectful."

"This is really the 23rd Psalm," Mr. Powell said of the memorial. " 'The Lord leadeth me to lie down by still waters' - and this is the valley of death."

The formal ceremonies began with about 1,600 people in the nearby United Methodist Church, which had been damaged by the blast. At 9:02 a.m. - the moment the bomb struck - the crowd observed 168 seconds of silence.

Mr. Cheney told the assembly that "goodness overcame evil that day," adding, "All humanity can see you experienced bottomless cruelty and responded with heroism."

Mr. Clinton said: "Oklahoma City changed us all. It broke our hearts and lifted our spirits and brought us together." He also drew chuckles when he said of the damaged elm known as the Survivor Tree, "Boy, that tree was ugly when I first saw it, but survive it did."

A lone bagpiper, Frank Ward, was to lead the way to the memorial. But as he left the church, he tripped, stumbled and fell down the stairs, kilt flying.

Then, in a moment that caught the spirit of the day, the crowd broke into applause as Mr. Ward got back on his feet and huffed up his pipes.

A sprinkling of New York City fire and police uniforms populated the crowd, emphasizing the bond that has grown between the two very different places because of their similar tragedies. Standing by her daughter's chair, Mrs. Needham recalled how she had also gone to New York to help out after the terrorist attacks.

"I have to thank God for the experience I have had," she said. "It's a bond that maybe you wish you didn't have, but you do have. And you have an obligation to share.

"I'm afraid we'll have more opportunities to share," she added. "It's very heartbreaking."



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