When Bud Welch lost his 23-year-old daughter, Julie, in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, he was consumed by grief at the loss of his only daughter and rage toward the perpetrator, Timothy McVeigh. Over time, however, Welch discovered that his anger wasn’t helping him to heal. Connecting with McVeigh’s father, Bill, he found peace and argued against McVeigh’s execution. Jeanne Bishop ’81, ’84 JD, a Cook County assistant public defender, explores the friendship between these two fathers in her new book, Grace from the Rubble: Two Fathers’ Road to Reconciliation After the Oklahoma City Bombing (2020). Bishop has dealt with tragedy in her own life. She lost her sister, Nancy, her brother-in-law and the couple’s unborn child to murder in 1990. Bishop’s first book, Change of Heart: Justice, Mercy and Making Peace with My Sister’s Killer (2015), discusses her journey toward forgiveness.
Caravans of Gold: Fragments in Time
Crossing the Sahara Desert from the 8th to the 16th centuries, caravans with hundreds of camels carried gold, textiles, jewelry and other goods across the desert. To share this little-known story, the Block Museum of Art has put together Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time — a first-of-its-kind show that celebrates West Africa’s historic and under-recognized global significance and showcases the objects and ideas that were exchanged at the crossroads of Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.



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