By Aaron Zuckerman

We began the day by going to the Women’s Museum in Dallas. This museum shows the history and struggle for women’s equality in America. Many of us enjoyed spending time in the section that played songs written and performed by women. There was a lot of dancing.

After this museum we got on the bus and drove to Oklahoma City. Our first stop was at the site of the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building. We had time to reflect at the memorial. It was a great memorial that was very well set up, quiet and pretty. There are two big walls at opposite ends of a reflecting pool. On one wall is an engraving with the time 9:01 and the other had 9:03 on it. This represents the last minute before the blast and the minute after the blast. On one side are 168 chairs that represent the lives lost, including children. Each chair represents a chair not at the family table.

After this we got a presentation from one of the few survivors of the blast, Mr. VZ Lawton. He gave us a horrifying and detailed account of surviving the blast. Mr. Lawton and Chris Emery, a filmmaker who is finishing a documentary on the bombing, told us about a few various conspiracy theories that they feel may be more truthful than the story that we all know of Timothy McVeigh being the only bomber.

When we finished our meeting with them we went to dinner at the Spaghetti Factory, where we ate and celebrated Blake Engelhard’s birthday with some cake.

Then it was time for us to walk down the block and see the Oklahoma City Redhawks play the Iowa Cubs in a Triple A minor league baseball game. It was a pretty sweet game followed by an equally sweet fireworks display.

On our way to the hotel, Billy had the bus stop again at the Oklahoma City bombing memorial site. The memorial was very different at night. It was all lit up and affected the entire group in a big emotional way. On the way to the memorial the bus was filled with laughing and music and then at the memorial we were silent. We had a great wrap up where people reflected on the impact of the memorial. It was the best memorial I have ever seen. It really moved me and I sat there a long time thinking about what can happen between 9:01 and 9:03 in a person’s life and other related life questions. I was not the only one.