wfn.org | Native American Memorial Service

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"UNITED METHODIST DAILY NEWS 97" by SUSAN PEEK on April 15, 1997 at 14:24
Eastern, about DAILY NEWS RELEASES FROM UNITED METHODIST NEWS SERVICE (30
notes).

Note 30 by UMNS on April 21, 1997 at 16:03 Eastern (2093 characters).

Produced by United Methodist News Service, official news agency of
the United Methodist Church, with offices in Nashville, Tenn., New
York, and Washington.

CONTACT: Linda Green                            218(10-34-71B){30}
         Nashville, Tenn. (615) 742-5470            April 21, 1997

NOTE TO EDITORS: The following story can be used as a sidebar to
UMNS #217 {29} 

Native American consultation 
observes bombing anniversary

                          by Robert Lear*
       OKLAHOMA CITY (UMNS) - Plaintive notes of Lance
Silverhorn's Kiowa flute filled the somber air April 19 here as an
international gathering of about 70 persons remembered the 168
people killed two years earlier in the nation's worst act of
terrorism.
     The service in Bishop Angie W. Smith Chapel at Oklahoma City
University was one of a number held throughout this western plains
city on the second anniversary of the bombing of the Alfred P.
Murrah Federal Building.  The worship also was the concluding
event of an interfaith consultation on the heritage and future of
native peoples in the U.S.
      A number of those killed in the bombing were Native
Americans, including Raymond L. Johnson, husband of Anne Marshall,
an associate general secretary of the United Methodist Commission
on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns and convener of the
committee that planned the consultation here.
     Memorial songs by the six Grayhorse Singers were accompanied
by solemn beating of a traditional drum that reverberated off the
dark wood and brick of the chapel nave.  Tribal hymns and a
ceremonial blessing and "cedering" as the worshippers passed from
the solemn service into the warm spring sunshine carried out the
tradition of native peoples.
     The homily was given by the Rev. Julienne Judd, a Native
American United Methodist pastor and close friend of Marshall and
her late husband. 
                               # # #
     *Lear is a retired news director of the Washington office of
United Methodist News Service, living in Wernersville, Pa.

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