Memorial: A Driving Need for Catharsis

If a terrorist’s bomb had savaged the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in another day and age it’s quite possible that no evidence of the attack would mark the site today.

More often than not, scenes of violence and tragedy are wiped clean from the American landscape, obliterated or refurbished with nary a plaque to hallow the ground. When monuments and memorials are erected, history shows, it’s almost always well after the fact, long enough for the painful act to be cast in a patriotic or heroic light.

It took nearly a century for the Alamo, site of a bloody defeat, to be rechristened “the shrine of Texas liberty.” The same was true for Abraham Lincoln, who waited almost 50 years to be immortalized in the city of his death. The shame in Dallas after the slaying of John F. Kennedy kept the Texas School Book Depository from becoming “The Sixth Floor Museum” for 26 years. And in Hartford, Conn., where a 1944 arson fire killed 168 people in a circus tent, there’s still no public monument to recognize what had been--until equaled by the Oklahoma City bombing--the worst mass murder in U.S. history.

But times have changed, and the victims of the blast here two years ago today are not about to wait for history to tell them what to feel.

Even before the rubble was cleared from the Murrah footprint, they had hurled themselves into the emotionally precarious task of reclaiming the site, commemorating a loss they were only just beginning to mourn. They’ve been at it ever since, meeting and debating, hugging and shouting, grappling with every last excruciating detail--from an inspiring “world-class” symbol anchoring the project to a special place for making “cherished children” feel at home.

“We’re desperately searching for some sense out of the senselessness, and this is one way we can find that,” said Kathleen Treanor, whose 4-year-old daughter, along with her in-laws, perished in the Social Security office.

The nation will get a better idea of what Oklahoma City has in mind today when three to five finalists culled from an international design competition are unveiled. The winner, to be announced on July 3, will be expected to transform the heart of downtown into a multimillion-dollar memorial complex, a place of remembrance offering “comfort, strength, peace, hope and serenity,” to an anticipated 1 million visitors a year.

Covering two city blocks, the project’s size and scale and spiritual magnitude is most commonly compared to that of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial or the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Besides a sculptural monument, highlighted by gardens and fountains, the site will host an information center, archives and possibly an anti-terrorism institute--all of which, its backers hope, eventually will be designated as a National Monument and maintained by the National Park Service.

“You will be walking into a sacred place,” said Karen Luke, vice chairwoman of the nonprofit Oklahoma City Memorial Foundation.

The unprecedented scope of the memorial is most certainly a function of the unprecedented crime that inspired it. The bombing, which killed 168 and wounded more than 500 others, brought home to Americans the realities of terrorism in a way unmatched by any other act of violence.

Grief Becoming Increasingly Public

But Oklahoma City’s response is also shaped by several other factors unrelated to the attack, from the victims’ rights movement to the confessional zeal of popular culture to Oklahoma’s own Dust Bowl-era identity crisis. Together, they say something about the increasingly public way in which America remembers its dead.

“Not so long ago, a memorial of this sort would have been considered improper, almost an affront to a community’s self-image,” writes Kenneth E. Foote in “Shadowed Ground: America’s Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy,” a study of memorial sites published by the University of Texas this month.

Now, however, “there’s much more of a sense that grieving is good, that it should be done in public, that it’s not something that should be tucked away,” Foote, a geography professor, added in an interview. “Sometimes it can go too far. But on balance, I’d say it’s a relatively good thing. It’s probably better to acknowledge that these events happen--even if the outpouring of grief is almost a little embarrassing in some cases--than to try to pretend that they don’t.”

The nation’s initial reaction was to rebuild. Within days, President Clinton vowed to make the funds available. “This building has been wounded . . . but it is not dead,” declared James Loftis, the local architect who designed the nine-story granite structure in 1973.

But it soon became clear that there would be no getting back to normal, much less any tolerance for a response that appeared to sweep the hurt under the rug. Even Loftis eventually submitted a memorial design. “When the question first came up, ‘What do we do with this building?’ I was thinking like an architect--technically it could be rebuilt,” he said. “But I came to the conclusion that, emotionally, it would really be a bad idea.”

Catharsis, more than lofty artistic notions, is what drove the Oklahoma City survivors and victims’ families to hatch their plans with such speed in the first place. As if to taunt their own fears, they held the charter meeting of the memorial task force at First Christian Church, the same site officials had used two months earlier to notify families of the dead.

“The first thing we talked about was whether we had the will to do this, even though it had never been done before in this fashion,” said Paul Heath, a Veterans Affairs psychologist who was injured in the bombing. “I can tell you that there were joy-filled tears rolling down people’s cheeks as they nodded, ‘We can do it. We may be crying and we may be grieving, but we won’t honor the evil that this act represents by letting it stop us from doing what we want to do.’ ”

Which is not to say that everyone agreed on what that process should entail.

From the beginning, the whole setup was unwieldy--more than 350 participants, divided among 10 subcommittees, all charged with institutionalizing history even as it was unfolding.

The questions to be resolved were often tedious, sometimes agonizing: Is it appropriate to honor survivors in the same area as the dead? Do the unborn children of pregnant victims merit special mention? Should the images of recognizable people be included in the design, such as baby Baylee Almon cradled by a firefighter, or is that demeaning to other victims? Should the 19 children who perished be given a separate tribute, or is that an affront to mourning parents whose children just happened to be grown?

‘Process Was About Healing’

“Usually, people recover first and then think about their perspectives,” conceded Robert M. Johnson, an attorney active in civic affairs who was appointed by Mayor Ron Norick to chair the effort. “But in this case, it was widely and strongly believed that the process was about healing, not just selecting a design.”

That fact soon triggered another sort of debate, a tug of war between those who favored a centralized, professional approach and those who demanded that the wishes of the victims’ families and survivors have greatest weight.

After just a couple of sessions, Marsha Kight, who lost her 23-year-old daughter, fired off a distressed letter to Gov. Frank Keating complaining that everything about the memorial was being shaped by bureaucratic hands--right up to the decision to hold some meetings at 4 p.m. in a bank boardroom, “a very uncomfortable environment.”

It’s enough to give family members the feeling that the project is intended “more for tourism and the benefit of downtown revitalization than for our healing,” Kight wrote.

A similar note was struck a few months later, after the memorial committee hired Washington architect Paul Spreiregen, the respected design consultant on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, to serve as technical advisor. “Paul is considered the guru, the best in the world,” said William Cleary, an Oklahoma oil executive, who led the effort to land his help.

Spreiregen, however, didn’t make a good impression. Especially when he insisted that the integrity of the selection process required that people with expertise, not just raw trauma, be the ultimate arbiters. “It was felt that he was too cold-blooded, that he wasn’t sensitive to the depth of emotion,” said Cleary, who resigned from the memorial committee after Spreiregen was replaced.

The group’s mission statement, unanimously approved last April to mark the first anniversary, left no doubt about whose vision had prevailed. Granting the greatest say to survivors and victims’ families, the document states, “is one way to honor those who died, those who survived and those who love them.”

A Sense of Good Conquering Evil

The sculptural part of the memorial, which will be paid for by an $8.8-million private fund-raising campaign that gets underway today, should be “powerful, awe-inspiring and convey the sense of deep loss.” But it should also “evoke feelings of compassion and hope, and inspire visitors to live their lives more meaningfully.” There should be a natural area set aside for reflection. There should be a participatory learning center that includes biographies, pictures and historical records. There should be a tribute to rescue workers that notes the spirit of unity and pride. Ultimately, there should be a sense of good conquering evil.

Lest anyone miss that point, the memorial team placed a multimedia exhibit in the Murrah building’s underground garage, re-creating the horror and heroics of the bombing for prospective designers.

As Jannie Coverdale, who lost two grandsons, put it: “We don’t want just a piece of cold marble out on the ground.”

And that they will not get.

Although the finalists remained a closely guarded secret until today, the entire field of entries was on exhibit here last month, more than 600 anonymous sketches, each displayed on a standard sheet of cardboard. Despite coming from all 50 states and 23 foreign countries, they shared a remarkable uniformity in their overt symbolism.

Many featured monoliths with fissures (broken hearts), dripping water (tears), glass towers (fragility) and rainbow-projecting prisms (hope), as well as outstretched hands, curling ribbons, rising flames and sorrowful angels.

A Wealth of Symbolism

The vast majority took very literal note of the blast’s numerology, proposing centerpieces with 168 pillars, 168 flags, 168 trees, 168 fallen logs, 168 fountains, 168 wishing wells, 168 garden plots and 168 windmills, which would allow the dead spirits to soar in “the breath of the blowing wind.” One offered a bell tower with 168 different chimes, rising from an acrylic pool with broken children’s toys molded into the plastic water. Another featured 168 burial mounds, each with a beacon that would blaze heavenward on the eve of each victim’s birthday. Another suggested a weeping angel with a tear dripping every 168 seconds.

The time of the explosion also figured prominently in the entries, from a clock tower frozen at 9:02 a.m. to another clock tower that would chime 168 times at 9:02 a.m. on the 19th of each month. Somebody designed a water tower that would drip at 9:02 a.m. every morning, filling a series of canals and irrigating a garden below. Somebody else crafted an obelisk aligned with solar patterns, so that at 9:02 a.m. every April 19 it would cast no shadow. Somebody else envisioned a tomb-like chamber constructed so that, at noon on each victim’s birthday, a shaft of sunlight would penetrate the walls and illuminate a personalized memorial.

“Oh, God,” said William W. Savage Jr., a history professor at the University of Oklahoma.

A veteran chronicler of the state’s efforts to shake its “Okie” legacy, Savage cast a jaundiced eye on the the memorial process almost from the beginning. He characterizes it as a calculated grab for a kinder, gentler--and economically more potent--image.

“Undeniably, it was a great tragedy and a great loss, but when you make a fetish out of it--revisiting the wounds and keeping them alive almost on a daily basis--you run the risk of turning this whole thing into a freak show,” he said. “In a sense, things like this are an exercise in the trivialization of the event.”

Such public displays of sentimentality certainly wouldn’t have been embraced a generation or two ago. The monuments of the earlier half of this century tended to be rigid, virile, unequivocally valiant affairs--”men building a great nation, winning wars, solving problems,” said John Bodnar, an Indiana University history professor.

“Everything was geared to the heroic, not the tragic,” added Bodnar, author of “Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century.” “A sense of loss, a sense of grief . . . would have been considered emasculating.”

The turning point, most historians agree, came after the Holocaust, which forced Americans to confront a horror that couldn’t be contained within neat, nationalistic parameters. The Vietnam War reinforced that notion, resulting in a memorial that sparked controversy because it initially took stock only of the deadly toll, not ideals of victory, bravery or honor.

Refusing to Be Paralyzed by Rage

“We’re more likely now to commemorate victims than heroes,” said Bodnar, who attributes some of this evolution to a media-driven culture that not only bombards us with painful events but encourages us to relive them in front of the cameras. “A process has been created that rewards victimization, and Oklahoma City just stepped right in.”

Given the magnitude of Oklahoma City’s loss, few people see anything wrong with that.

Crafting a loving and enduring tribute, after all, is a way of taking control of a tragedy--and its interpretation. The alternative--to be paralyzed by anguish and rage--is considered here as tantamount to defeat, a surrender to the terrorist’s twisted aims.

“It seems to me that a community has the right to memorialize a shattering event in any way it sees fit,” said Edward T. Linenthal, the author of “Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America’s Holocaust Museum,” who has been contacted by the Oklahoma City committee to consider writing a book about its memorial. “It would be much more problematic, in some ways, if they were to leave a gaping hole in the middle of downtown.”

To ensure that a universal, internationally renowned symbol fills that spot, (the displaced workers have found new office space at sites around town) the victims’ families and survivors eventually did turn to a sophisticated panel of architects and artists. Today’s finalists were selected, in part, by a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, a Native American painter, the founder of University of Washington’s department of landscape architecture and an urban design professor who worked to refurbish neglected neighborhoods in Los Angeles after the 1992 riots.

Yet it is the pretense of the project, more than the aesthetics of any particular design, that troubles some historians.

‘It’s Almost Like Trading on Death’

“It’s grossly out of proportion,” said Charles B. Strozier, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, who has written about the similarities between Waco cult leader David Koresh and accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy J. McVeigh.

“This wasn’t a genocide--it wasn’t an attempt to wipe out all Oklahomans,” Strozier said. What, then, was it about? That’s a question, he said, that may not be answered for decades, or that may produce evolving answers from one decade to the next, but almost certainly not before testimony in the trial of the suspects has even begun.

“There’s something a little weird about doing this all so soon, without a chance to reflect and ponder,” Strozier said. “It’s almost like trading on death.”

As much as Oklahoma City’s memorialists are offended by those words, they reluctantly acknowledge a pragmatic objective to their haste. In addition to the $8.8 million needed for the sculptural element, they hope to get $5 million from the Oklahoma Legislature for the learning museum, another $5 million from private donors for the anti-terrorism institute, and an unspecified amount from Congress to help maintain it all.

“If we delay too long, there are resources which may be taken from us, as badly as I hate to say it,” fretted Kathleen Treanor, the mother of tiny Ashley Eckles, in a letter to the families of other victims.

“Please know,” she added, “that we are losing the sympathy of the nation.”