Michael Duncan

I wandered around the Norman Music Festival on Sunday and shot some pics.  NMF brings in ”alternative everything” music to stages set up on closed downtown streets.  It is a huge success, drawing at least 30,000 people to see more than 100 quite talented bands and artists perform in the two-day festival. 

But I’m not so sure how many of those attending really appreciated how good some of the bands were.  I can’t say I was a big fan of a lot of the music, especially groups like The Sword and Dirty Projectors, but as someone who spent a long time playing in high school and college bands at least I recognize accomplished musicians from those who are panhandling with bad chords.

And, being the old trumpet player I was of course most impressed with the latin sound of Grupo Fantasma, an Austin band that will make your booty move — or you are legally dead.

I’ll post some more images from the festival tomorrow.

A new look for Texans.  Saw this guy at the Stockyards in Fort Worth on Saturday.

Frankly, it’s a little scary.

Great evening of music and friends at the third annual Norman Music Festival tonight.  While the kids were dancing to something called Electric Six, the old folks got a nice present from their past with Leon Russell taking the stage.  I shot this pic to prove Leon really does have eyes behind those dark sunglasses he usually wears.

His music capped a busy weekend for me.  A rodeo, a train trip to Texas and finally about five hours on Sunday at the NMF.

I’ll post more pics from the festival through the week.  But, man, it’s late and I’m tired.

Thank you to those who have commented here and in person regarding these photographs.  This is the last set of images from this week’s anniversary ceremony at the Memorial to be posted here on the blog; but, other photos can be found in the Portfolio section of this website.

The rescuer who was likely the first to arrive at the Murrah Building was an Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper. 

I don’t know his name.  I just know that less than 15 seconds after the bomb went off, after glass pieces had fallen from the downtown buildings, he was rushing his patrol car northbound on a downtown street, one-way southbound Robinson Avenue, to get to the source of the explosion and the smoke.

I know this because I heard the wail of his siren start up. 

I looked through the dozens of tinted chunks and shards of glass that had covered my now cracked windshield and saw the blur of his black and white patrol car and heard the roar of its engine as it blew through the intersection in front of me. 

I can only imagine the horror meeting him seconds later when he got three blocks away to Robinson Avenue and 5th Street.

More came behind him.  There were police and fire personnel. Deputies. EMTs. Nurses and doctors from local hospitals.  (And at least one lawyer I know  — yeah, believe it or not,  himself a former firefighter — who rushed to the scene and climbed fire ladders to help a victim from the Murrah Building wreckage.)

Most police and other emergency personnel that I know create an unemotional wall of protection to guard against lasting effects of exposure to catastrophic and tragic events met in the line of duty.  But those who responded to the Murrah Building bombing have become a part of the story as much as others who were immediate victims, and so, became victims too. 

It makes perfect sense that each anniversary of the bombing the first who are there are those in uniform.  Such was the case earlier this week at the 15th anniversary memorial service, as seen in these photographs I took that morning:

Pipe Sergeant Kevin Donnelly leads the procession from the podium along the Oklahoma City National Memorial reflecting pool at the conclusion of ceremonies marking the 15th anniversary of the Murrah Building bombing on Monday.

Some other photographs I took at the service:

Longtime Chandler publisher Don Ferrell and hundreds of other family of those killed in the Oklahoma City bombing joined the field of chairs at the conclusion of Monday’s memorial services.  

Ferrell’s beautiful daughter, Susan, 37, was a lawyer for the U.S. Housing and Urban Development who had a passion for dancing, love for her friends and cats, and an infectious smile.

Dale Clark lost his sister, Kimberly, 39, in the Murrah bombing. 

She was a legal assistant in the HUD office on the 8th floor of the Murrah Building.  She was a long-distance biker and traveler.  She was also a petty officer first class in the U.S. Naval Reserve.

Other scenes of family at the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing:

I photographed the memorial service on the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. Through this week I will share some of the photographs I took.

As time passes, memories fade. Did this really happen, or was it some awful dream? Was the bombing as horrific as we remember? Did people really die at that moment I heard that thundering boom?

The reality of the bombing was seen Monday morning when the family of Lakesha Richardson Levy passed to all to see and touch a boot worn by the 21-year-old airman on April 19, 1995. Lakesha was in training to be a lab technician in the 72nd Medical Group at Tinker Air Force Base. She had gone to the Murrah building on a simple errand to obtain a Social Security card.

This wasn’t some symbolic structure erected after the fact. This was real. The leather sole embedded with the dust from the Murray Building.

And, it wasn’t the only evidence of the reality of the bombing there Monday morning.

There clinging to the chair that marks the loss of Lakesha’s life was this young man, now 17, but only two years old when his mother died. His family said the toddler would walk through the hallways of the medical group at Tinker looking for his mother, like he was playing hide and seek, trying to find his mom.

This is Corey Levy today:

Fifteen years ago today I was driving to work and had come within a block of my office when an awful booming sound shook the ground, shards of glass rained down and a billowing trail of gray smoke spread across a bright blue sky over Oklahoma City.

Soon we would know 168 people, including 19 children, died a couple of blocks away at the Alfred P. Murrah federal building.

It doesn’t seem like it has been 15 years.

Every work day I drive that same path and come to the same spot on the street where I sat waiting for the light to turn green that morning.  I have avoided being there at 9:02 a.m.  But there is no avoiding the impact the Oklahoma City Bombing had on the city and the many who experienced the changes that began that day.

It is with that background, that image, that memory of the sound of death that I view and hear today’s shouts of anger coming from certain political groups, who seem to minimize the possible consequences of their talk (Kill Obamacare, Target Pelosi, Obama loves baby killing, Obama: The New Face of Hitler, Guns Tomorrow!).  It was this sort of talk that influenced a Desert Storm veteran to calculatingly plot and blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City because he believed the government was conspiring against the people.

That Ryder rent truck full of explosives is an example of the power and force of words.

I have spent my entire adult life crafting words to either inform or influence people.

I began as a journalist who believed the greater good is advanced by an informed populace.  I continued as a lawyer with the notion that the legal system plays an important role in fostering and stablizing the advancement of civil liberties, so that we don’t degenerate into shouting matches and fisticuffs — or worse — on the streets.

So I know the effect that words can have on people. And, I know the effect words of hatred and violence can have on people.  People like Timothy McVeigh.

And so, on this anniversary of the most significant event to occur in the history of our state, I am saddened and discouraged by the emergence of such inflammatory talk among people who are angry with the government.  Because, I know what can come of it.

I am all for robust debate, in fact I often thoroughly enjoy it.  I am all for people rallying in protest when they want.  I am all for effectuating change when change is needed.

But I am also mindful there is a narrow ledge we as a society can find ourselves stepping from if we let the rhetoric of politics devolve into words of hatred, racism and violence.  And one step is all it takes for another April 19th to occur.