Families of those killed in bombing spend precious moments in memorial

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- In somber procession, they filed Wednesday into the Oklahoma City National Memorial as the names of their dead loved ones were read aloud. <br><br>They clutched flowers and each

Wednesday, April 19th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- In somber procession, they filed Wednesday into the Oklahoma City National Memorial as the names of their dead loved ones were read aloud.

They clutched flowers and each other, gathering among chairs meant to symbolize the 168 people killed in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Some said they hoped to feel the presence of those lost on April 19, 1995.

Others simply wanted to find resolution to five years of pain.

"I just feel a whole lot happier about things," said 72-year-old Charles Tomlin, after visiting the chair bearing the name of his son, Rick Tomlin, who died in the blast.

Tomlin, of Harlingen, Texas, said he felt his son's spirit at the site on this fifth anniversary, but he shied away from sitting in the stone-and-bronze chair.

Dr. Robert Markowitz stepped out of the site onto a sidewalk bustling with uniformed rescue workers and fellow mourners. He recalled the horror of the minutes after the bombing, when he rushed to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building to help with the triage effort.

"I'll never get over it," he said. "I was only two blocks away and the sound was horrible. And when I showed up, I saw things that affected me permanently."

But he said the chairs offer the emotional healing so many people need.

"It's an overwhelming experience," Markowitz said of visiting the chairs. "I think at night when the bases light up, it's really going to have a presence," he said.

For Fran Ferrari, a visit to the new memorial was as much a chance to honor co-workers who died as it was to thank those who saved her life.

"Everybody talks about rescuers being firemen and police, but my rescuers were my co-workers," Ferrari said, recalling how fellow employees carried her out of the bombed-out building on an office chair.

"They stayed with me and kept me safe," she said.

One of the last people out of the memorial Wednesday morning was Richard Williams, the former assistant manager of the Murrah Building. He said he knew virtually everybody in the building.

He wore a peaceful smile and grabbed three red roses from the buckets of flowers outside the memorial gates.

"We've just been in there remembering the good times," he explained of his lengthy visit to the chairs of lost friends. "I will probably be out here until midnight watching the people."

He said it is important that others realize the chairs represent real people who died in the bombing.

"If we forget this, we are losing something," he said.