A Majestic Symbol of Progress for Oklahoma

Today, 16,000 people watched the dedication of the 155-foot-tall dome that finally completed the 85-year-old Oklahoma Capitol building. Anyone who has visited the pre-dome Capitol and seen the new domed Capitol can appreciate what a difference there is. The dome gives the seat of our state government a majesty that can serve to raise our expectations of what our state can be. We owe our appreciation to Governor Frank Keating for leading the effort to raise the private money to fund the dome. We also owe appreciation to all the donors that made it a reality. All but $1.8 million of the $21 million cost came from private citizens and corporations. For decades our Legislature didn't have the backbone or vision to fund the completion of the Capitol. So, again, someone else had to do what the Legislature should have done.

We can't blame the decades of waiting entirely on the Legislature however. There's been a plentiful supply of crabby, vision-less citizens that frothed at the mouth every time someone talked of finishing the Capitol with a dome. It's these vociferous nay-sayers that Legislators run from. I was having a conversation with one such woman recently when the topic of the Capitol building came up. She suddenly launched into an epitaph-laden explosion of spitting emotion over the use of tax monies to build a dome. How dare the Governor spend money on "his dome" instead of on schools. She wasn't interested in the facts about private funding I tried to tell her about. She cared nothing about the kind of symbolism that lifts a people to a higher level, gives them a point on which to hang their pride, and shows the world that we are proud of who we are.

The Dome is that.