Broken Arrow High School Uses Art To Teach Next Generation About OKC Bombing

From paintings to sketches, mixed media and collages, Broken Arrow High School students are honoring victims of the Oklahoma City bombing through art. Art teacher Jennifer Brown came up with the idea earlier this year.

"I would like for people to be able to come to see what the life of these people was and also the remembrance of the devastation," Brown said. "I just started thinking about how these 15, 16, 17-year-old students may not even know what happened. As a 60-year-old person, I can remember where I was, what I was doing when I heard about it."

Wanting to teach all of her students about the bombing's history, Brown decided to print off photos and biographies of all 168 victims. The assignment was to create a piece of art they felt visually represented each victim.

"I decided that it would be better if they were all the exact same size, so that is a limitation. They're all going to be 12-x-16, but as far as medium goes, they were allowed to do whatever pretty much they wanted," Jennifer said.

The class started the project in January. Jordan Tabberer, 17, chose Dana and Christopher Cooper, a mother and son who died together. Dana was the director of the America's Kids Daycare and her 2-year-old son would go to work with her.

"Dana was going to be a teacher. She was taking early childhood learning classes," said Tabberer.

Tabberer's first task was doing research on both mother and son.

"One of his descriptors was he was very handsome and had a beautiful singing voice," Tabberer said.

Using pastels, Tabberer chose to draw Dana's hand and her son's.

"I wanted the hands to show that she was reaching out to him kind of and on the ribbons, it's going to be musical notes and the alphabet," Tabberer said.

Across the table, senior Abby Muttoni chose victim Margaret Goodson, who worked in the Social Security Administration office with the disabled, because she wanted to help people. Abby learned Margaret was in a motorcycle club and loved taking rides to Arkansas.

"I decided, 'Let's go for some mountains and get her motorcycle here, and some birds over here and get her driving up the mountain and thought it'd be a pretty little shot,'" Muttoni said.

Abby and Jordan say they grew up hearing about the bombing and learned even more through the project, but not all of their classmates were as familiar. German exchange student Felicia Stoeffel had never heard of the bombing before the project was assigned.

"We talked about it a little bit and my host mom told me about it," Stoeffel said.

She created a collage for her project, because her victim, Olen Bloomer, loved the outdoors. Bloomer worked on the fifth floor of the federal building in the U.S. Department of Agriculture office.

While not every student knew about what happened on April 19, everyone in this class learned their victim had a story that deserves to be told and that evil robbed 168 families of someone they loved. Whether it was a teacher, a child, a wife or an outdoorsman, all of their lives were cut tragically short.

"People died who lived here and whose family lived here," Muttoni said.

"I think it allows us to connect with other people in Oklahoma. It's a good thing to know about. Don't let this happen," Tabberer said.

Broken Arrow High plans to display these pieces of art together and in some cases, donate them to victim's families.