I watched a documentary last night about the Oklahoma bombing thing, there is now a monumental garden with a named chair for each of the people who died.
My question:
Are these chairs intended for people to sit on and in doing so remember and honour the lives of those who perished?
Or are they meant to be left vacant to symbolise that the person they commemorate is gone?
Please understand that I mean no disrespect, irreverence or offence by this question.
I think they are meant to be left vacant.
The bottom part is glass, and is lit up at night, so I don’t think anyone is supposed to sit in them.
I have another question about the memorial.
Yesterday on the news, it showed people going right up to the chairs and leaving flowers and mementos. Other shots showed more people behind a small black chain, like a fence (to keep them back). Can anyone go out to the chairs, or only family members?
Really stupid question: Are they in alphabetical order or grouped some other way?
Watching the news yesterday, the memorial reminded me of the Vietnam Memorial in that it allows mourners to touch and interact with it and so with those remembered. Some people kneeled before the chairs and prayed. Others sat upon them. I would think that the designers and planners of this memorial knew people would sit in the chairs, and I think that is appropriate.
I too wonder about access to it.
The chairs can be reached by anybody. The chain is usually there just on days that the memorial staff wants to limit access to survivors and victim’s families and they can be sat in, though most people don’t. I believe the only people I’ve seen sitting on one were family members of the deceased.
More information and pictures can be found at the Oklahoma City National Memorial website.
To add one other thing: the chairs are on the site of the building (which was demolished) and in the locations where the victims were found.
That can’t be quite right; they were in very strictly regimented rows.
[nitpick]
Actually, they’re laid out in the order of the floor the victim’s bodies were found on.
[/nitpick]
The Memorial is really a beautiful thing and a humbling experience. The museum’s exhibits will make you cry. Everytime we’ve been, my daughter, who was nine at the time of the bombing, and I leave teary eyed. There’s something just so unnerving about a simple box of keys.
Teddy bears, ribbons, notes and flowers are still left on the fence by visitors and probably will be for a long time.