Onlookers, last-minute details mark last days of monument work

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- They came in their Sunday best or in shorts and T-shirts to visit a site that changed their lives or that they had only heard about. <br><br>With the opening of the Oklahoma City

Monday, April 17th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- They came in their Sunday best or in shorts and T-shirts to visit a site that changed their lives or that they had only heard about.

With the opening of the Oklahoma City National Memorial still days away, hundreds of people spent a cloudless Sunday afternoon gazing over its grassy, meticulous grounds, once the site of the worst terrorist attack on American soil.

Some tried in vain to connect the quiet landscape, dominated by trees and a black reflecting pool, with the gritty images of smoke and horror they saw on their televisions on April 19, 1995.

"It's not the way I pictured it," said Kristin Welbaum, who was visiting from Minneapolis. "It's been so cleaned up and made into such a monument that you don't get a feel for the devastation until you look across to the Journal Record Building," she said, pointing to the still scarred building face that looked across the street at the former Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

For others, like Monica and Harold Swink of Oklahoma City, the memorial offered a welcome reprieve from memories still filled with pain.

"We came down a couple times right after they stopped searching for victims and it's not hard to remember that," said Monica Swink. "It's one of those things that will be burned in your mind forever. And that's why it's so nice to have this calmness."

But all was not calm at the site Sunday. While a handful of workers scrubbed and swept the site in preparation for its Wednesday dedication, memorial officials led media tours and coordinated last-minute details.

The last few weeks of preparation have meant early mornings and late nights for site coordinator Hardy Watkins. Sunday, between interviews and supervisory inspections, he compared the layout of the site's 168 granite-and-bronze chairs, representing bombing victims, to a map which had a few chairs out of order. The site's bathrooms, still surrounded by yellow tape, need finishing touches. The memorial's entrance is still missing a chunk of concrete, ripped out last week because officials wanted a color change.

"You can see we're really focusing on the details at this point," Watkins said. "A lot of people feel some ownership of this site. So when they come on the grounds they're going to have an expectation and our hope is to surpass that expectation. We're feeling good about where we are."

Designers Hans and Torrey Butzer, whose concept for the project was picked from among 624 entries, led tours of the site and explained how they matched the memorial's features with hints of its tragic roots.

A display featuring the names of bombing survivors is mounted on a cracked and damaged portion of the former federal building's foundation. A message spray-painted on the outside of the Journal Record Building still calls for justice, five years after it was crafted by a rescue worker in the days after the bombing.

The Survivor Tree, badly damaged in the bombing and once surrounded with the fiery wreckage of cars, is now featured as the promontory of the site, surrounded by the words: "The spirit of this city and this nation will not be defeated; our deeply rooted faith sustains us."

Torrey Butzer said it is rewarding to see that the vision she shared with her husband has been so closely fulfilled.

"The hard part for us is going to be leaving it and sort of being finished with it and going onto other things, because this has become such a big part of our lives," she said.

Bob Johnson, chairman of the memorial trust, stood out over the site and proclaimed it a place of lasting serenity for those scarred by the bombing.

"I'm very optimistic that those who still feel anger resulting from the tragedy here five years ago will find a place of solitude, a place where they can reflect on what has happened and reflect on the positive things that can come out of this," Johnson said.

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On the Net:
Oklahoma City National Memorial Foundation Site
http://connections.oklahoman.net/memorial/