Christians Under Attack

NORMAN, Okla. -- The father of a University of Oklahoma student who died after a homemade explosive he was carrying detonated near a packed football stadium said the placement of a memorial to the young man on campus wasn't his idea.

 

A football fan attending OU's Red-White game on April 7 spotted a stone paver outside the student union with Joel Henry Hinrichs III's name on it.

 

"I was just kind of horrified," Jenny Clemons told The Oklahoman. "I don't think he has any business being out here."

 

The school's student affairs division arranged to have the stone placed, an OU alumni affairs employee said. Families pay for such memorials, which cost about $150, officials said, but Hinrichs' father told the newspaper the school offered to place the stone and never billed him.

 

Hinrichs, an engineering student, died Oct. 1, 2005, when his bomb went off as he sat on a campus bench not far from Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, where a night game was being played.

 

The FBI investigated whether the 21-year-old Colorado Springs, Colo., resident tried or intended to enter the stadium but reported finding no conclusive evidence.

 

Joel Hinrichs Jr., the student's father, said OU's dean of students, Clarke Stroud, offered to have the stone placed. In an e-mail, the father told The Oklahoman the dean "very kindly understood that Joel's act was one of loneliness, not of aggression, and offered to have the stone placed in the memorial courtyard; he also indicated that the wife of the university president might select a tree to be placed on campus, also in Joel III's memory."

 

The father said he asked to pay for the stone and tree "but was never told anything." He said he repeated his offer to the dean in an e-mail Monday after being contacted by The Oklahoman.

 

"They never sent me any indication of cost, or even that they had moved forward," Joel Hinrichs Jr. said.

 

OU President David Boren said in a statement that Hinrichs had committed suicide, but added that a tree was not planted on campus.

 

"Instead, the university gives the opportunity for those who desire to purchase pavers in the union courtyard for students, graduates, or friends of the university... The university tries to be sensitive to all the families who have lost sons or daughters while they were students."

 

Clemons, 50, a hospital nurse, said she was in the stadium when the explosion occurred.

 

"... I feel like ... if he'd been successful he would have killed a whole bunch of us at the football game," she said.

 

The stone is engraved "Joel H Hinrichs III" and is toward an end of the patio west of the union.

 

Other patio stones honor CBS anchor Katie Couric, actor and Oklahoma native James Garner and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, all of whom were given honorary doctorate degrees when they spoke at OU.