Photo illustration © Kimberly Johnson
A collection of mini snow "persons."

UPDATE -- plenty of snow in the Northwest, too
by Kimberly Johnson
Tacoma, WA

Tom Miller
Madera, CA

Dan Mellon
Alta Loma, CA

Oh my goodness ... surely you don't expect even the most clever of us all to GUESS the picture this time! I gave up before I hardly looked at it -- except that it looks like it could be Dake's yard on the farm. Not even facial features to puzzle over.

Editor's Comments: The three ladies are probably visiting at Grandma Greer's house (1940s?) -- and in the distance I think you first see the railroad tracks and then on the horizon is our farm. Sarah Crowder was a sister of Grandpa Ed Greer ... the other two are our grandmas -- Grandma Mary Cheney (Dake) Greer and Grandma Angeline Jane Doyle Mellon. --DMA

It is about time that I did some guessing. I know the lady on the left is our Grandma Greer and the one facing the camera is our Grandma Mellon. But I cannot guess who the other one is. I have eliminated a couple choices, as I don't remember either Aunty Elizabeth or our mom ever wearing a hat. But being that lady is, and Grandma Mellon is, maybe they came to visit together. Also if you could see real good, maybe you could spot one of the Dake kids wayyyyyyy across the railroad tracks and in a field at our farm.

Gert Dake Pettit
Howard Lake, MN

Editor's Comment: I am quite sure you are right that it was a visit by the two ladies at Grandma Greer's house -- note the garden they are sitting beside. Grandma always had lots of flowers and a vegetable garden, too. Right nearby must be where Uncle Isom's car was buried after he jumped out of it and it was totaled out -- see Bulletin #141 and #142 in the Archives for that story. However, Grandma Greer did not live there when that event occurred.

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A New Grin (or two) When I send little tidbits along for The Bulletin, my main purpose {and mine!} is to get a laugh, or at least a grin from people. A little thing you can throw in somewhere, should get a grin or two. Ginn really likes this story. While living in Winnipeg, both my folks had to work to make ends meet, I was probably 9 or 10 years old at the time. Mom would get up and make breakfast, the folks would eat, then wake me for school, and leave for work, feeling I was old enough to take the responsibility of getting ready for school and eating breakfast. In the winter, breakfast was oatmeal, or porridge, as we called it. I would get up, put the pot back on the stove to reheat while I brushed my teeth and got dressed. Not once, not twice, but three and sometimes four times a week, I would dawdle, and by the time I returned to the stove, breakfast was burned. I got in so much hot water the first two times that I just couldn't let the folks know I did it again. And again! What to do? Aha! I'll hide the burnt oatmeal. Where? I buried it. In a snowbank. In the front yard. This worked great, until spring, and the snow melted. It took the folks a while to figure out what all those little piles of black-and-grey stuff was scattered all over the front yard. I think they got to laughing so hard they forgot to punish me. Capt. Jack Adair Coon Rapids, MN

© "Capt." Jack Adair

When I mentioned that I would be driving through Oklahoma City, she immediately responded that I could not pass through without stopping at the memorial that has been built downtown on the former site of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which was destroyed by a bombing in 1995.

Based on her recommendation, which was seconded by others I met that day, I decided to add the memorial to my itinerary. As I drove across Oklahoma on Saturday afternoon, I debated whether I should attend the Oklahoma - Colorado football game or stop in Oklahoma City, visit the memorial and continue on the road toward home. I decided I would try to do both, even if it meant my stop at the memorial would be a late night visit.

After the football game was over, I drove to Oklahoma City and followed the signs leading to the memorial. The downtown area was largely deserted. I drove down empty streets until I found a vacant parking lot across the street from the entrance to the memorial.

As I walked across the street toward the memorial, a bitter wind stung my face in the night air. I approached the entrance, a towering stone square bearing the following inscription:

"We come here to remember those who were killed,
Those who survived and those changed forever.
May all who leave here know the impact of violence.
May this memorial offer comfort, strength, peace, hope, and serenity."

As I emerged through the opposite side of the entry gate the entire memorial came into view all at once. It was dark and deserted. At the center of the memorial, directly in front of me, was a black pool of water the width of a city street, stretching the length of a city block, where it reached a second entry gate.

The gates bookending the pool were twins, with the exception of the inscriptions on their inner walls. The gate through which I had entered was inscribed "9:01," while the other was marked "9:03." The bombing occurred at 9:02 a.m. According to the memorial's designers, 9:01 represents the time where innocence is left behind. 9:03 is where the healing in the aftermath of the tragedy begins.

I walked around the right side of the pool, which runs the length of the space once occupied by Fifth Street, the street that was located immediately in front of the Murrah building, the street on which the Ryder truck loaded with explosives was parked that day. I knelt down and touched the ice cold water. It was less than an inch deep, leaving my fingers to rest on a bed of cold, black granite. Although it is intended as a reflecting pool, in the darkness of night it swallowed light rather than reflecting it, creating the appearance of a pitch black bottomless pit.

I stood and continued to walk along the edge of the reflecting pool. To my right was a grass berm on which rows and rows of lighted chairs were situated, stretching the entire length of the memorial. There were 168 chairs, to be exact. One for every man, woman and child killed by the bomb. They were arranged in nine rows, one for each story of the Murrah building, representing the floor on which each victim took his or her last breath before the floor disintegrated beneath them.

When I reached the end of the pool, I turned left, walking toward a large elm tree illuminated by spotlights. A nearby plaque identified it as the Survivor Tree. It has stood in that same location for decades and was a witness to the destruction that occurred across the street when the bomb exploded. The trunk of the tree rises from the ground at nearly a 45 degree angle and is topped by sprawling shade branches. The old tree cut a dramatic appearance with its trunk and lower branches lit brightly, while the wind-whipped upper branches faded into the surrounding darkness.

I walked back past the end of the pool toward the rows of lighted chairs. There, I noticed a thick, jagged piece of concrete -- The Survivor Wall, the only remaining piece of the Murrah Building. The wall once formed the corner of the building at Fifth Street and Robinson Avenue. Each of us who remembers the endless news footage from the bombing in 1995 can still picture the way the building looked after the bombing. The entire midsection of the building's Fifth Street side was gutted, with broken concrete and twisted steel sagging from what remained of each floor. With that image in your mind, look to the lower left corner of the picture and that is where the Survivor Wall stands.

Although I had obviously already realized I was at the site of the Oklahoma City bombing prior to that moment, somehow seeing the actual corner of the building struck me very vividly. At that point, those images of destruction came back fresh in my mind. I looked out at the reflecting pool and saw a normal city street, as it would have looked that morning at 9:00. Then I imagined the chaos that ensued just minutes later, and in the following hours and days.

I looked up from where I stood and remembered that gaping hole that had been ripped into the building, that image we all saw so many times. And it had all happened right there where I was now standing. All of those 168 people died right there where I was now standing. Shivers coursed up and down my spine, but these shivers were not a result of the cold night air.

I began to walk back toward the gate, looping around behind the grass berm across the Murrah Plaza, a raised walkway that offers a vantage point from which visitors can take in a view of the entire site. The plaza is topped by an American flag, which flies on the Murrah Building's original flagpole next to the Oklahoma State flag and the City of Oklahoma City flag. As I reached the end of the plaza, I stood for a moment and took one last look down over the memorial. The wind whipped the flags behind me. The snapping flags and the clanging of the metal brackets of the halyards against the flag poles interrupted the silence of the night.

Finally, I exited the memorial and crossed Harvey Avenue, where I noticed a separate, smaller memorial I had overlooked when I had first entered. This memorial was erected by the St. Joseph's Catholic Church on the site of a rectory that was destroyed in the blast. It consists of a white statue of Jesus with his back turned to the site, his head bowed and his right hand covering his face. The base of the statue carries the inscription "And Jesus Wept," a reference to the shortest verse in the Bible, in which Jesus grieves the death of his friend.

As I returned to my car, I was grateful to the woman who had recommended that I visit the memorial. Although it was difficult to imagine what had happened on that site, and somewhat eerie visiting in the darkness and solitude of night, there was also a peacefulness surrounding the site. What was once a scene of unspeakable death and destruction, an ugly crater and a bombed-out building, is now a beautiful, peaceful tribute to those who lost their lives that day. In that way, as its designer intended, it truly has become a haven where healing in the aftermath of the tragedy begins.

January Special Days
January 1---New Year's Day
January 15---Martin Luther King Day

Thanks for the birthday and anniversay wishes! We spent our anniversary flying out to Bend, Oregon, where we spent a week with Eric's family. The day after we arrived was my birthday; we didn't do anything too exciting, but my sister-in-law, Andrea, made a delicious meal of steak and shrimp, with rich chocolate cheesecake for dessert.

Hope your 2007 is off to a good start!

Melanie (& Eric) Shockey
Brookings, SD

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I missed getting The Bulletin ... and I know it's out, since Mavis wrote that it was such a nice Bulletin and told of the pictures of Dwight's family that were in it! I suppose my subscription is past due ... since I haven't sent in for a while?

Thanks for resending, Dorothy. For some reason I had trouble for about 24 hours with AOL.

Sent by Melanie Lehtola

Dear Aunt Dorothy,

EDITOR'S POLICY: If you wish to subscribe to The Bulletin, simply send me a statement of that fact. If you wish to keep receiving it I hope you will contribute to one of the columns that are running in this family epistle (at least occasionally!). My e-mail address is dma49261@juno.com

This Bulletin is copyright Dorothy M. Anderson; the contents are also copyrighted by the authors and photographers and used with their permission, and the contents are not to be used for any commercial purposes without the explicit consent of the creators.