The Survivor Tree-Oklahoma’s Symbol of Hope and Strength

In this most American of stories, a family plants an American elm just as a new capital city is taking root–the little tree grows as Oklahoma City grows until 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, the day America fell silent at the hands of one of its own. With branches tattered and filled with evidence from the bombing, the charred elm faces calls that it be cut down. Yet in the end, as the rubble of the Alfred P. Murrah Building is cleared, the solitary tree remains–but only because of a few who marvel that, like them, it is still there. The next spring when the first leaf appears proving the tree is still alive, word spreads like a prairie wildfire through the country and the world, and the tree becomes a universal symbol that no matter what happens, one can endure. The tree is also given a new name: The Survivor Tree.