Endurance

 The most-revered symbol in Oklahoma City, sacred to many, is a tree: a sprawling, shade-bearing, 100-year-old American Elm. Tourists drive from miles around to see it. People pose for pictures beneath it. Arborists carefully protect it. This seemingly ordinary elm adorns posters and letterhead. Sure, there are other trees that are larger, fuller, greener, but no other tree is equally cherished or more lovingly cared for as is this one. You see, this tree endured the Oklahoma City bombing.

On the morning of April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh parked his death-laden truck just a few yards away from this tree. His twisted malice killed 168 people including 19 children under the age of 6, wounded 850, destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, damaged 324 other buildings within a 16-block radius, and buried this elm tree in rubble.

The force of the blast from the 4,000-pound bomb blew away one entire side of the tree and stripped the leaves and some of the limbs from what was left. Shards of glass and debris were shot deep into the trunk of this elm. Fire from the cars parked beneath it blackened and scorched it. No one expected the tree to survive. It was yet another casualty of despicable terrorism.

But then something unexpected happened. The elm began to bud. Sprouts pressed through damaged bark; green leaves pushed away gray soot. Life resurrected from an acre of death. People noticed. The tree modeled the resilience of the victims. So they began hanging signs of remembrance on it. They gathered under its branches when McVeigh's guilty verdict was read.

And they gave that elm a name: the Survivor Tree. It had taken the full brunt of the explosion, absorbed the fury of stark evil, yet it remained. Saplings from the Survivor Tree were sent Columbine High School after the massacre there, to New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani after the September 11, 2001 attacks, to Virginia Tech after the shooting in 2007 - each becoming a tangible symbol of hope that something good and beautiful lies beyond the unthinkable.