Road Diaries Revisited: Requiem

Reporting from Dallas, where on Friday the Orlando Magic will play the second of three games on this road trip, all of which I will be covering for Sun Sports and Fox Sports Florida.

I posted a previous entry a couple of days ago about the trip to Oklahoma City, and let me add this: while they are a group of novices, the fans in OKC will someday prove to be a powerful home court advantage for the Thunder.

They're new. One of the trivia questions on the video board in-game listed four NBA franchises and asked which one was not in the Western Conference (answer: Chicago Bulls. Yeah, that dumb). However, that newness will wear off someday, and as Stan Van Gundy said in the local paper the next morning, when it does, the fans in Oklahoma City will provide the Thunder with perhaps the best home court advantage in the NBA.

At the beginning of the game, they remain standing until the Thunder score their first points. It's very college, but it's cool, in an innocent kind of way. Even though OKC was throttled by the Magic -- thanks to the best game I have ever seen Dwight Howard play -- the fans remained completely invested. There's something to be said for that.

And it was indeed the best game I've ever seen Dwight play, and I would love to write more about that, and about the subsequent trip to Dallas, where our heroes will face off against the struggling Mavs on Friday.

But I'm consumed by something else, so I will beg for a sidebar.

On Wednesday morning, after the Sun Sports production staff met in the lobby of the team hotel in Oklahoma City, I found myself with a load of free time before I had to hop on the team bus to the Ford Center for the game. I had already worked out in the hotel gym, so that eliminated one of my favorite down-time activities. I was looking at several hours of nothin' in the middle of the Great Plains. Glamorous, I know.

I walked outside of the hotel on a cloudless, chilly, spectacular day in Oklahoma. I have never been there before. It's nice. Quiet, clean, pretty empty downtown. Pretty much what you'd imagine Oklahoma City to look like, if you've never seen it.

Like many of us on the east coast, I had one historical reference to Oklahoma City. It was 1995 -- I was two years out of college -- and I remembered it only vaguely. But I knew it was there, and I knew it was close. So I walked.

Downtown Oklahoma City isn't all that complicated, so it took me all of fifteen minutes to get there. I really didn't intend for this to get melodramatic, but I can't help but say this: something was drawing me there. I was pulled. Sounds hokey, I know, but bear with me.

I made a left turn off one of the main drags, passed an old brick church, and was confronted by a massive granite gate. Behind it was an open area, a grassy park with one huge tree on the right, sidewalks running throughout, and a soft calm across. I speak, of course, of the Oklahoma City National Memorial.

The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City is, as I said, a passing memory for me, as I was a first-year employee of the Orlando Magic at the time and far removed from all of it. I cannot explain why I was so drawn to that spot -- I think it had as much to do with the notion that, if I have to travel and be away from my family, I might as well see what there is to see.

That notion, while innocent, trivializes the impact of the Memorial. It is, quite simply, the most powerful place I have ever been.

If you're reading this, do me a favor and click on the link above or Google the memorial and read up on it. Better yet, if you have the means, find a way to visit. You will never view the world in the same way again.

Two aspects of that visit that struck me: one, the chairs. The Memorial features 168 chair statues on a green lawn that represent each of the Americans who lost their lives on April 19, 1995. There are large chairs that represent adults.

There are smaller chairs that represent children.

Second: along the far end of the Memorial property, there's a section of chain-link fence, the only remnant of the temporary barrier that ringed the disaster site after the event. I read in a brochure that as soon as that fence was erected around the property, it was almost immediately filled with tokens of goodwill from empathetic folk around the country. Once the memorial was completed, the designers wisely decided to leave one section of that fence intact, so that the good wishes could flow freely.

On the day I visited, I saw license plates from as far away as Maine and Oregon. I saw stuffed animals. Hats. Postcards. Keychains. Handwritten notes. Photos. Banners. Clothing. Whatever they had. Expressions of love, left there in a place of honor. They remain untouched and unmolested.

In this age of vitriol and venom, of partisan politics and divisiveness, that fence nearly broke me down. If you ever doubt, even for a moment, that in times of crisis, our humanity prevails...well, take a walk down the fence in Oklahoma City.

It is a living reminder of how good we are, even in the face of how awful some of us can be.

I cried a little bit on Wednesday. I'm not afraid to admit it. A few members of the Magic traveling party who have been to Oklahoma City before confided to me that, once they saw the Memorial, they couldn't bring themselves to go back. It's that moving. The park is incredible. Every inch was designed symbolically. It is, again, the most powerful place I have ever been.

Tomorrow, I'll write about basketball again, I promise. I'm in Dallas, and everything is bigger in Texas. We'll have a hell of a game. Forgive me the melodrama, which I didn't want to invoke, but cannot help it.

If you can do it, please go. You'll be better for it.