Rebuilding spirits

Federal building workers return to work in aftermath of bomb

From Correspondent Gary Tuchman

August 10, 1995

OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma (CNN) -- At the Oklahoma City Federal Credit Union's new location, a brutal windstorm has broken the front windows. The windows can be repaired, but the credit union's broken heart cannot.

This is the same credit union that was located on the third floor of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, destroyed in the April 19 explosion. The office was directly above the building's day care center. Most of the employees at the credit union today are new -- out of 34 employees, 18 were killed in the blast.

"A lot of people ask me, how can you cope with the loss of 18 close personal friends," said Florence Rogers, president of the credit union. "I don't know the answer to that, but I have a lot of strength I didn't know I have."

Terri Shaw, one of six employees seriously wounded in the explosion, has only recently returned to work. "I fell from the third floor to about the first level of the basement," she said. Shaw cracked the first vertebrae in her neck, suffered a concussion, cracked an ankle and was left with a hole in her foot. Her wounds were serious, but what she learned about her office friends while in the hospital was devastating. "Once I came to, I wanted to know about my friends," she recalled. "Every time I would ask someone's name, they were very up front and told me, and it was very hard." Hard, Shaw added sadly, because she was invariably told "that they didn't make it."

Spirits have picked up at the credit union since Shaw's return. Employees are encouraged that four more injured employee will soon return. But at home, Shaw's son wasn't as happy about his mother's return to work. "My son believed that when I came back to work, they were going to blow up this place because they bombed my other work (place), and he didn't want me to come back to work," Shaw said. "When I went to pick him up, he said, 'How are you, are you OK,' and he's only 7."

Throughout the Oklahoma City area, other workplaces are going through similar reunions, and many of the wounded are going through similar emotional turmoil. Terri Shaw is typical of most -- she says the reality of losing friends still hasn't truly sunk in. "I mean, I know they're gone," she said as tears slipped down her cheeks, "but maybe I try not to think about it too much."

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Rebuilding spirits

Federal building workers return to work in aftermath of bomb

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