Oklahoma City bombing

===Oklahoma City National Memorial===
{{Main|Oklahoma City National Memorial}}
For two years after the bombing the only memorials to the victims were plush toys, crucifixes, letters, and other personal items left by thousands of people at a security fence surrounding the site of the building.<ref name="TouristsHistory105">{{cite book|title=Tourists of History|last=Sturken|first=Marita|page=105|isbn=978-0-8223-4122-2|date=November 2007|publisher=Duke University Press }}</ref><ref name="NYTVisitors">{{cite news|last=Yardley |first=Jim |title=Uneasily, Oklahoma City Welcomes Tourists |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/11/us/uneasily-oklahoma-city-welcomes-tourists.html |date=June 11, 2001 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090422200709/http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/11/us/uneasily-oklahoma-city-welcomes-tourists.html |archive-date=April 22, 2009 |url-status=dead}}</ref> Many suggestions for suitable memorials were sent to Oklahoma City, but an official memorial planning committee was not set up until early 1996,<ref name="Unfinished119">{{cite book|last=Linenthal|first=Edward|title=The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory|page=119|isbn=978-0-19-516107-6|year=2003|publisher=Oxford University Press }}</ref> when the Murrah Federal Building Memorial Task Force, composed of 350 members, was set up to formulate plans for a memorial to commemorate the victims of the bombing.<ref name="DMN"/> On July 1, 1997, the winning design was chosen unanimously by a 15-member panel from 624 submissions.<ref name="OKBMS">{{cite web |title=About the Designers |publisher=[[Oklahoma City National Memorial]] |url=http://www.oklahomacitynationalmemorial.org/secondary.php?section=2&catid=31 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110616153214/http://www.oklahomacitynationalmemorial.org/secondary.php?section=2&catid=31 |archive-date=June 16, 2011 |url-status=dead}}</ref> The memorial was designed at a cost of $29 million, which was raised by public and private funds.<ref name="TouristsHistory109">{{cite book|title=Tourists of History|last=Sturken|first=Marita|page=109|isbn=978-0-8223-4122-2|date=November 2007|publisher=Duke University Press }}</ref><ref name="29million">{{cite news|last=McLeod |first=Michael |title=Hundreds still live with scars of Oklahoma City bombing every day |work=[[Orlando Sentinel]] |url=http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-8332312_ITM |date=June 1, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121103230052/http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-120953680/hundreds-still-live-scars.html |archive-date=November 3, 2012 |url-status=dead}}</ref> The [[List of national memorials of the United States|national memorial]] is part of the [[National Park Service|National Park System]] as an affiliated area and was designed by Oklahoma City architects Hans and Torrey Butzer and Sven Berg.<ref name="NYTVisitors"/> It was dedicated by President Clinton on April 19, 2000, exactly five years after the bombing.<ref name="OKBMS"/><ref name="NPS">{{cite web|title=Oklahoma City National Memorial |publisher=[[National Park Service]] |url=http://www.nps.gov/okci/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110514123638/http://www.nps.gov/okci/index.htm |archive-date=May 14, 2011 |url-status=dead}}</ref> Within the first year, it had 700,000 visitors.<ref name="NYTVisitors"/>

The memorial includes a reflecting pool flanked by two large gates, one inscribed with the time 9:01, the other with 9:03, the pool representing the moment of the blast. On the south end of the memorial is a field of symbolic bronze and stone chairs&nbsp;– one for each person lost, arranged according to what floor of the building they were on. The chairs represent the empty chairs at the dinner tables of the victims' families. The seats of the children killed are smaller than those of the adults lost. On the opposite side is the "survivor tree", part of the building's original landscaping that survived the blast and fires that followed it. The memorial left part of the foundation of the building intact, allowing visitors to see the scale of the destruction. Part of the chain link fence put in place around the site of the blast, which had attracted over 800,000&nbsp;personal items of commemoration later collected by the Oklahoma City Memorial Foundation, is now on the western edge of the memorial.<ref>White, Zachary. ''The Search For Redemption Following the Oklahoma City Bombing: Amending the Boundaries Between Public and Private Grief'' (San Diego: [[San Diego State University]], 1998): 70.</ref> North of the memorial is the [[India Temple Shrine Building|Journal Record Building]], which now houses the Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum, an affiliate of the National Park Service. The building also contained the [[National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism]], a law enforcement training center.

{{Wide image|Oklahoma City memorial.jpg|800px|alt=A panoramic view of the memorial. In the center is a large stone structure shaped as a gate with "9:03" at the top. At the center of the gate is a large hole and through it a road can be seen. The Regency Towers building is visible on the right of the image in the background. The gate is reflecting in a pool of water in front of it, and grass and trees are visible to the left and right of the pool.|Panoramic view of the memorial, as seen from the base of the reflecting pool. From left to right are the memorial chairs, Gate of Time and Reflecting Pool, the Survivor Tree, and the Journal Record Building.}}