The first John Steinbeck Awards Evening was scheduled for May, 1995 in Oklahoma City. The bombing of the Murrah building on April 19 put an end to those plans. The Federation suffered significant financial loss as a result, and it was not until October 1998 that a John Steinbeck Awards Evening took place; this time in Kingman, Arizona. From that year on, the evenings were produced annually in one Route 66 community after another until the last one in San Bernardino, California in September 2005. By that time, Route 66 communities were vying to have the evenings and they would build three-day, communitywide Route 66 celebrations around them. Shortly after that last event, Mary Lou Knudson suffered a debilitating stroke and died three years later. She had been the one who managed the myriad of details involved in producing the large events.