Lecture for The Men's Dinner Club of Oklahoma City

My trip to Oklahoma in November 2019 was to give a lecture to the Men's Dinner Club of Oklahoma City. I took a few pictures of the venue and the people.

This dinner club was established just a few months after Oklahoma became a state (in November 1907), with Oklahoma City as the capital, stealing it from the former capital at Guthrie.

About 150 people were in attendance in the Sam Nobel Special Events Center at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. Unfortunately, the lecture was held after hours and I could not see the museum. But it looked like a real treasure not to be missed.

Five triptych's of western art were on display in the lecture hall. This one portrays Monument Valley in Utah and Arizona. The triptych's  painted by New Mexico artist Wilson Hurley.

A view of my opening slide inside the lecture hall.

I recognized this painting of Grand Canyon, viewed from  the South Kaibab Trail on Cedar Ridge.

A photo taken with the immediate former governor of Oklahoma who was in attendance. She is pictured to my left, Mary Fallin. He husband, Wade Christensen is to her left. The others were attendees in the photograph for the local newspaper but were unidentified to me.

This was a suit and tie affair. And I compiled!

While in Oklahoma City, I visited the National Memorial at the former site of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. This was the site of the bombing on April 19, 1995.

A reflecting pool (covered while under reconstruction) marks the site of 5th Avenue that ran on the north side of the building (on the left in this photo). The vehicle with the bomb pulled up in front of the building about half way down the length of the pool.

The northeast corner of the original building is preserved as part of the monument.

The chairs each represent one of the 168 people killed in the act of domestic terrorism. The nine rows of chairs represent which floor the person was employed on.

The Memorial is a moving tribute to a senseless act of destruction and murder. The perpetrator was a white nationalist intent on destroying the government. One wonders if the harmful idea that, "...the government is the problem," so callously stated by a former President of the United States, helped to fan this senseless act. As a country, we need to abandon this  harmful idea and the notion that it is proper politics. Indeed, many of our current problems stem from this worthless idea.