The Oklahoma City National Monument and A Modern and Inclusive Historical Preservation

On the morning of April 19, 1995, domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh detonated a homemade bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA.  Shortly thereafter Mayor Ron Norick assembled a task force of 350 people charged with overseeing the memorialization of the 168 people killed, hundreds of those injured and the myriad of rescue workers and volunteers that joined in recovery efforts that fateful day and beyond.  The Memorial Task Force (MTF) set about fulfilling their mandate, producing a National Memorial managed by the National Parks Service (NPS) that dutifully incorporated the voices and experiences of a range of cultures, races and ages of people attacked. This short essay aims to contextualize modern historical preservation efforts undertaken by the MTF and NMM and illuminate on the path already being forged by historical sites and monuments like the Oklahoma City National Monument.

The quiet and peaceful memorial complex was completed on April 19, 2000, and opened to the public on February 19, 2001.  It’s features include an installation with a symbolic empty chair for each of the deceased, a long shallow water pond at the foot of a remembrance arch, and a museum that houses over 1 million artifacts, each one being carefully preserved in the vast archive located onsite at the memorial complex.  Benefactors, administrators, curators, and preservationists work in tandem at the National Memorial Museum (NMM) to expertly care for and display these artifacts. The artifacts include rescue worker boots, a plaster cast of the bombers’ Ryder moving truck wheel marks, children’s clothing from the daycare that was housed there, and oral testimony and other exhibits from a broad swath of people living across the United States who came to Oklahoma City to assist in recovery efforts.

“We have to listen to the people to whom these stories belong; in doing so, it is important to recognize that these stories cannot be told using the same methods and practices as before. An inclusive preservation practice recognizes that preservation is not just about buildings and structures but also intangible heritage, which is often only available through conversations with community members,” writes public historian Priya Chhaya for The Inclusive Historian, asking historical preservationists to look beyond traditional narratives to the lived experiences of everyday individuals that are closely related to historic sites and events.  Stories of the individuals that lost loved ones, business owners, and people who were psychologically stressed tell a diverse tale that resonates with visitors, personalizing the experience of the events of April 19, 1995. Featuring prominently at the NMM and interweaved with individual rescue workers’ stories helps deliver a compelling narrative for visitors that adds cultural and social inflection to stories that, for example, a slab of concrete or piece of twisted metal cannot tell.

“Amy Downs was one of the final survivors rescued. But ‘it took quite a few years just to work through the pain of losing so many of my friends, and the survivor guilt. Now it’s been (decades) since the bombing, and everything in my life has changed,” and “As a Virginia urban search and rescue team prepared to leave Oklahoma City, one of its members pulled a dollar bill from his pocket and hollered at Governor Keating: ‘None of us ever paid for one thing the whole time we were here. We’d go out to dinner and the check never came,’” are snippets from among thousands of interviews conducted by professionals in the social sciences in the aftermath of the attack. In concert with their donated clothes and other artifacts from the event, these oral contributions to the NMM are reflective of the generally genial society of Oklahoma and offer a stark contrast to the hardened and violent idealism of the terrorist that committed this lifechanging act.  Such contrasts are features of the NMM, which houses glass cases that weave their way through tight corridors to bring the experience of the Oklahoma City bombing to life for visitors.

“To their credit, our leading preservation organizations and agencies have taken steps toward the goals of inclusivity and diversity on our lists and in our ranks,” writes Ray Rast in the Forum Journal, explaining for historians the pace of change that characterizes the encompassing work of preservationists today.  In the context of the political and cultural climate in America today, NMM is a welcome respite precisely because it practices inclusivity and diversity, evidenced by a founding document titled “Intergovernmental Letter of Understanding” which outlines the relationship between the MTF and local, state, and federal officials, essentially giving the last word to survivors, directly impacted community members, and first responders.  As well, the MTF launched an international search for architectural designs for the entire site, landing on a design firm in Berlin, Germany. 

Not all historic places are well-enough funded to escape the ravages of time and the loss of the people’s voices that help mark them as important sites.  In a podcast titled 99% Invisible #238, reporter Zach Dyer investigates the “dollhouses” in St. Louis, pockets of homes in historically situated neighborhoods from which the brick has been stolen and recycled, and that are now dilapidated and uninhabitable, a blight.  “As whites rushed to the suburbs (in the 1960’s), the city’s population declined, and its tax revenues plummeted. By the 1970s, African Americans with means started moving out of the city too. Yet many of the neighborhoods that went vacant were built with high-quality and durable materials. Bricks can last for hundreds of years,” creating a black market in St. Louis that prolongs efforts at restoral or restoration, much less preservation. “Replicating those old brick homes would be cost-prohibitive, so buildings now use brick veneer. This clip-on brick works just like siding on a house,” notes Dyer.  Memories of place and history are critical to the story of America, but with time these memories start to disappear in places like St. Louis.  With modern historical analyses, and armed with stories that make history and the social sciences writ broadly more rich and diverse than ever before, preservationists can model their efforts on the NMM which provides a framework for understanding how to learn from everyday people to improve the way they preserve and present artifacts that tell stories.

Not unlike the approach taken by the NMM, in the Borderlands in Tucson, Arizona they maintain “a robust historic preservation ethos,” that includes “Native American and Hispanic aesthetics, values, and heritage”  These same qualities make Tucson “distinct, unique, and interesting,” Bill White, an anthropologist who maintains Succinct Research, a blog dedicated to helping students and professionals in the field, writes.  White explains that modern historical preservation involves “Networked Heritage” which starts with people – what they care about and what they say – and the myriad new stories that they contribute ends up combining to make a shared history that is unique, and marketable.  Echoing the voice of White, James M. Lindgren wrote in The Public Historian for an article titled “Virginia Needs Living Heroes: Historic Preservation in the Progressive Era,” that “while preservationists primarily valued history as a means to reinforce traditionalism, they built the historic preservation movement on narrow and class bound foundations,” also hinting at new methods in preservation that focus on individuals and their stories to bring about modern interpretations that leave behind, in the case of “Virginia antebellum interpretation and preservation among Virginia’s Civil War battlefields.

As historians start working more closely with interpreters, preservationists, and the public in efforts to draw out new narratives about the nation’s past, Americans can look forward to more robust and multifaceted aspects of our shared history.  The Oklahoma City National Memorial is representative of this change in preservation and display, making it a place which embodies the contributions of everyday citizens and first responders, is divorced from political influence by virtue of its founding principles and the “Intergovernmental Letter of Understanding,” establishing a model for like sites, and by having a broader approach to the conception and architecture of the site that tells a fuller story of us.