My Visit To The Memorial
The air in downtown Oklahoma City often carries a brisk plains wind, but as you approach the block bordered by NW 5th Street and N. Robinson Avenue, the atmosphere shifts. It becomes heavier, quieter, suspended in time. You are entering the Oklahoma City National Memorial, a place consecrated to the 168 lives lost on April 19, 1995. Finding Diane Althouse’s chair requires a walk into the Field of Empty Chairs—the emotional heart of the memorial. The field is vast yet intimate. One hundred and sixty-eight bronze and glass chairs sit atop stone bases, arranged in rows that mirror the building's original office floors where the victims worked. The scale of the tragedy hits you here; you can read every name etched into the limestone base of each chair. When you find the chair bearing the name Diane L. Althouse , you notice the details. Like all the chairs for the adults, it is constructed of dark bronze, heavy and permanent, sitting upon a glass base that glows softly from within ...