WARNING: This story contains anguishing images
Thirty years after the most fatal attack in the history of the United States, Former President Bill Clinton returned Oklahoma City on Saturday to remind people who were killed and comforted those affected by bombing.
Clinton was president on April 19, 1995, when a truck bomb exploded, destroying a nine -story federal building in the center of Oklahoma City. He delivered the opening speech at a memory ceremony near the National Museum of the City of Oklahoma.
Clinton, now 78, was widely praised by how he helped the city deal with his pain due to the bombing, which Killed 168 peopleincluding 19 children. He says it was a day in his presidency that he never forgot.
“I still remember as if it had been 30 minutes ago, arriving here with Hillary at that commemorative service and saying:” You have lost too much, but you have not lazy everything. Certainly you have not lost the United States, and we will be with you for a man “,” visit Oklahoma City only days after the bombing, when he spoke in a commemorative service for the victims. “
Clinton has visited the National Memorial Museum of the city of Oklahoma on numerous occasions in the years after bombing and spoke speeches in the main anniversaries.
On Saturday, Clinton also warned about the polia nature of modern politics and how such division can lead to violence, as he did 30 years ago. He said that there is much that the nation can learn from the “Oklahoma standard”, a term coined to refer to the city’s response to bombing joining in service, honor and kindness.
“Today, Oklahoma City, the United States needs you,” he said. “I want to have goodness that each American could see how life develops here, listening to thesis stories.”
Other speakers included the former governor of Oklahoma Frank Keating and the former mayor of the city of Oklahoma, Ron Norick, who were in office when the bombardment occurred. The family members of some of those killed in the bombing read the 168 names of those killed in the attack.
Saturday’s ceremony was originally scheduled to take place on the grounds of the monument, but was transferred inside an adjacent church due to heavy rains.
After the ceremony, a procession of bagpipe players from the Fire Department of Oklahoma City led many of those who attended the other side of the street until the construction of outdoor memorial on the land where the federal building was once. The monument includes a museum, a reflective pool and 168 empty glass, bronze and stone chairs recorded with the names of the murdered. Nineinue of the chairs are narrower than the others to represent the murdered children.
Among the main missions of the memorial is to help people understand the sensitivity of Political violence And teaching a new generation on the impact of bombing, said Kari Watkins, president and CEO of the memorial.
“We knew that when we built this place we would like to reach a generation of people who were born or did not remember the story,” Watkins said. “I think now, not only children are coming more and more, but teachers who teach these children.”
