Twenty-five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the gap between memory and history is becoming one of the biggest challenges facing memorial museums.
The documents, photos and personal belongings that sit inside the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum tell the story of the terrorist attack that occurred before many of today’s students were born. Leaders say preserving firsthand accounts and teaching the lessons left behind after acts of terrorism is growing increasingly important.
“We’re teaching a new generation of students who were not alive,” said Kari Watkins, president and CEO of the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum. “Some of you probably weren’t alive on September 11, 2001, and also teachers who weren’t alive.”
As the country prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of 9/11 on Friday, Watkins will be joining leaders of memorial institutions from around the world in New York City to commemorate the attacks.
Oklahoma’s connection to Sept. 11 goes back to the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Nine first responders who had traveled to Oklahoma City to help after the 1995 bombing were killed. Six Oklahomans were also killed in the 9/11 attacks— three in New York and three at the Pentagon across the Potomac River from Washington.
“The cities of Virginia and Washington, D.C., and New York City stood with us in our darkest hour,” Watkins said. “And we stood with them and we continue to stand with them.”
In the years since the Oklahoma City bombing, the museum has used what it has learned to help communities around the world that have faced the same difficult question: how do we preserve the memory of a tragedy while also educating memory of a tragedy while also educating people who did not experience it firsthand?
One of those partnerships is with the 22nd of July Centre in Oslo, Norway.
Lena Fahre, director of the 22nd of July Centre in Oslo, visited the Oklahoma City Memorial this week before traveling with Watkins to New York. Norway experienced its own terrorist attacks on July 22, 2011. Fahre said leaders from both the Oklahoma City and 9/11 Memorial museums traveled to Norway early in the process to help develop its memorial.
“Never again starts with understanding,” Fahre said. “That’s really what we’re trying to do, to understand and to prevent new attacks and also to work together so we don’t lose hope and humanity.”
That challenge becomes incredibly difficult as time passes.
Fahre said 15 years after the Norway attacks, there is already a generation in Oslo that has little memory of what happened, despite the attack happening in their very city. She said there is a responsibility to tell the true story and help teachers address extremism in an effort to prevent future violence.
Oklahoma City is experiencing that same generational shift.
Watkins said every new Oklahoma City Thunder player tours the memorial before putting on a uniform. The OU football team also visited the muse-um this summer, and Watkins estimated that only 15 to 20 of roughly 150 people in the group had been or even knew about the memorial.
“We have to reach them where they’re willing to learn the story,” Watkins said.
One way the museum does that is through the people who experienced the attack.
Its roughly 10,000-square-foot collection includes photographs, documents, trial records, personal stories and first-person accounts. Watkins said several million artifacts are held within the collection, allowing visitors to learn through the experiences of victims’ families, survivors and first responders.
Those voices have helped guide the memorial since its start. The families and survivors helped develop its mission statement and continue to play a role in how the stories are preserved. Watkins also acknowledges that grief looks different for every person and that people choose when and whether they are ready to participate.
For Fahre, preserving those individual experiences is equally important.
“When it comes to such a trauma, it’s important to understand that every victim’s voice is equally important,” Fahre said.
The memorial leaders will continue that international collaboration Friday with the release of an 11- to 12-minute documentary featuring five sites in four countries. The documentary focuses on the mission of teaching remembrance and honoring those who were killed, those who survived and those changed forever.
For Watkins, however, remembering the attack is about more than preserving what happened; it is also about preserving what happened afterward.
“There’s a line in our mission statement that says that this place should teach the brutality of the attack and the tenderness of the response,” Watkins said. “And I would say that’s something that we all share in our memorials and museums.”
As the people with firsthand memories of the attack grow older and newer generations only understand it from what they learn through museums, classrooms, photographs and stories, leaders say there is a responsibility to make sure the lessons do not disappear with them.
“We have to honor the victims by trying to get the new generations to have hope for the future,” Fahre said.
Gaylord News is a reporting project of the University of Oklahoma Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication. For more stories by Gaylord News, go to GaylordNews.net.
