April marked the second anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on American soil. Two Iowa State professors may get the chance to help keep the memory of those 168 people killed in the attack alive.

The professors have been selected as finalists for an international design competition to create the Oklahoma City Memorial, a memorial to the victims of the April 19, 1995 bombing at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

The ISU team of Susan Herrington, assistant professor of landscape architecture, and Mark Stankard, assistant professor of architecture, is one of five finalists.

Finalists were selected from all over the world including teams from Texas, New York, Germany, Illinois and Iowa.

The professors’ design was “a real collaborative effort,” Herrington said. Before designing could begin, Herrington said, team members had to research Oklahoma and the bombing, which Stankard worked on.

Herrington and Stankard’s final design proposal creates several experiences from the bombing to appear at the memorial site.

One area of the design features sidewalks with a surface display of quotes from those who survived the bombing.

Also included in Herrington and Stankard’s plan is a children’s play garden. The garden would contain 19 types of trees that together form a large circle.

Herrington said the different types of trees were chosen to commemorate each of the 19 children killed in the bombing.

In the plan, the circle of trees surrounds a spiral garden where children could play. A tree stands alone in a clearing, and poses as a resilient stage of hope, Herrington said. Other memorials would be incorporated.

Officials in charge of the memorial foundation said their goal is to create a memorial that will keep the memories of those killed alive forever.

“The common thread throughout is that each of the selected entries creates a place of remembrance that is timeless, not just an icon whose meaning and importance diminishes as memories fade,” an Oklahoma City Memorial Foundation spokesman said.

Herrington’s emphasis in landscape architecture has been with children’s gardens and day care centers, which is one reason why the bombing and the competition interested her, she said.

“We’re very proud of their work,” said Steve Sullivan, acting manager of ISU News Service.

Herrington earned her bachelor of landscape architecture degree in 1986 from the State University of New York in Syracuse. She later received her master of landscape architecture degree from Harvard in 1991.

Stankard received his bachelor of architecture in 1980 from the University of Notre Dame.

In 1985, he was an exchange scholar in the Ph.D. program at Princeton University. In 1987, he earned his master’s degree from Cornell University.