Charity Baseball and Bombing Sites and The Grassy Knoll, Part 1

Three of us arrived Thursday afternoon and evening and got settled into our rooms, thanks to C, who works for the hotel’s parent company and has made us all “sisters of different mothers.” Didn’t do much Thursday evening except catch up on chatter and rest after the travels (C from Kansas City; MH from Denver; Yours Truly from Anaheim). Friday saw us transported via hotel shuttle van to a bus stop which took us to the transit center in “Dowtown” OKC.

From there we walked up to the site of the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building. Our journey took us right by this piece on the grounds of the Old St Joseph Catholic Church.
This was placed on the site of the destroyed rectory. We mostly skipped the outdoor part of the memorial because of the rain and headed straight into the building which houses the museum. Enlightening and moving. This glass piece is in the museum gift shop; no photography, with or without flash, is allowed inside the museum.
Then we headed back outside and roamed around the site of the Murrah building itself. These "bookends" are on the sites of the crosswalks across 5th St, one labeled 9:01 and the other labeled 9:03. The blast was at 9:02.
The reflecting pool occupies what once was 5th St in front of the Murrah building. This blast-damaged fire escape was across the street from the Murrah building, in the building which now houses the museum (to the left and out of frame in this photo). Below is a view of the memorial chairs, one for each person killed in the bombing, one row for each floor of the building, viewed from the 9:01 bookend, in the rain as we crossed the site to the museum entrance.

After that we headed back to the transit center to catch another bus so we could do a bit of shopping, since we’d all arrived wearing/transporting spring/summer clothes and had decided we needed umbrellas and long-sleeved shirts or lightweight jackets. I got to visit a Hobby Lobby—only the second time I’ve ever been in one—and couldn’t find a thing to interest me! Only visited the papercrafting (scrapbooking, which I don’t do but do use papers and tools, and stamping) and not the stitching. And didn’t find a thing that wanted to come home with me. Okay, I didn’t look that closely at the papers, since that would be harder to transport without proper packaging. And while we ended up not needing the umbrellas, the long-sleeved shirts/lightweight jackets came in handy. Even when I got home!