Friday Miscallany | Athens Texas Photographer

Monday was the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing… so this week’s Friday Miscallany post is pre-empted as a belated memorial post. I’m re-sharing images captured at the OKC National Memorial taken last June (click here for the original post).

In our nation’s recent history, this week in particular is a sorrowful one — OKC on April 19, 1995 and the Columbine shootings on April 20, 1999. May they all rest in peace.

The rest of the text is from last July’s blog post …

On our last day of traveling, we took time out to visit the Oklahoma City National Memorial in downtown OKC. If you follow me on twitter (or see the twitter updates that post to my Facebook profile) — or run your cursor over the recently link on the menu at the top of the page, you’ll notice the following tweet or status update I posted late yesterday evening: “I never fail to get teary-eyed/emotional when I edit/view images I’ve captured from (now) three visits to the OKC memorial – like right now.” I have no shame in admitting that by the time I wrapped up the sneak peek file prepping, I had tears streaming down my face once again and a runny nose.

April 19, 1995 is one of the three events/reasons that lead to my choosing my graduate majors (of criminal justice and political science) and what used to be my dream job of becoming an FBI Special Agent. Ask me where I was when I found out what a fellow American did to the people of OKC and our country and I can tell you as clearly as I can tell you were I was when I witnessed the Challenger explosion, when Princess Di died, the attacks on NYC, the Pentagon, and Pennsylvania, and the Columbia tragedy. So to me, the least I can do when I pass through Oklahoma City is to take a few minutes and stop to remember those who lost their lives over fourteen years ago. I’ll be headed back to Oklahoma in a few weeks and I assure you, I plan to make another visit either coming or going (once I finalize what route I’ll be taking).

When we passed through there was a biker rally of some sort going on in Bricktown and near the memorial, so we had to detour to get to our ‘regular’ parking near the bus depot. Rather than describe each image as I normally do, I’ll let the images do the talking with the exception of one.

And Jesus Weeps …

On my first visit in 1999, all I had with me was a disposible film camera, yet of the three different times I’ve photographed the And Jesus Weeps statue at this particular angle, that first one is my favorite. You can view it and my other OKC Memorial images here(in my flickr photostream) — that image has never been retouched, only was scanned directly from the print.

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