OKC National Memorial and Museum kicks off 'Journey of Hope' across Oklahoma

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) - The Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum is taking stories from the Murrah bombing beyond its walls.

It’s a journey of hope across the state to inspire people to live up to the Oklahoma standard and their first stop was at Deer Creek Middle School.

"I just knew that if I was in their shoes, then I would have been affected by it deeply,” Deer Creek Middle School student Jace Robertson said.

The history hit close to home for kids who weren’t even alive on April 19, 1995. Thursday, students at Deer Creek Middle School got the chance to hear and learn about how our lives changed forever.

"I think it was just pretty crazy that like, someone would do something like that,” student Layla Yeung said.

They were the first stop in the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum’s “Journey of Hope.” They’re traveling across all of the state’s 77 counties and sharing their 30th anniversary message for next year which is “A day of darkness, years of light.” It’s an effort to inspire everyone to embody the Oklahoma Standard.

"So, I feel like that was a great message for them to to take away today and carry on,” school principal Jenny Richards said.

Former Deer Creek seventh grade teacher Cheryl Baldwin Taylor shared her story from that day. She and her students felt and heard the explosion in class from miles away.

"The kids were overwhelmed with fear, grief, with sadness,” she said.

Baldwin Taylor was a volunteer at the Myriad after the bombing. Her students wrote poems for first responders that she said carried them forward. It was a story that touched the hearts of young one’s in attendance.

"Sometimes you think I'm so young, but I'm only in middle school, I can't do very much,” Yeung said. “But then you hear about something like that and you realize that you can do great things even when you're young."

The students also planted their own survivor tree in front of the school.