Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon tagged posts

This past weekend I volunteered for the 17th consecutive year with the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon. It all started with a spur-of-the-moment decision on race day for the inaugural marathon in 2001 to head downtown and see what I could do. Three years later I was in charge of hundreds of “course marshals” and since I moved to Arizona, I’ve gone back every year to help out with the Relay Information Booth (which I created) and by driving the lead vehicle, and then a “sag wagon,” on race day.

This year we had a new sponsor for the lead vehicle, so it wasn’t “skinned” with a graphic wrap like it has been in years past.

Besides HAM radio operator Tom Webb, a friend from my Air Force days, to keep us in touch with Race Control while we were out on the course, and Jon Hulsey, the Course Co...

Pete DeMaster.

LaKesha Levy.

Cartney McRaven.

165 others.

The 167 killed people killed in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, and the one person who died three days later when a piece of debris from the building fell on her while she worked to recover the bodies of the others.

Each is now memorialized by one of these chairs (this is my friend Pete’s) in the Field of Empty Chairs in the footprint of the Murrah Building on the grounds of the Oklahoma City National Memorial.

Over the weekend I was in Oklahoma City volunteering with the Memorial Marathon that’s put on each year to honor those killed and injured in the bombing, and those whose lives were changed forever. Including mine.

Each of the people who died had a story,...