Life goes on for young survivors of Oklahoma City bombing

OKLAHOMA CITY — It was 10 years ago today that Timothy McVeigh unleashed a life-shattering hell on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City.

Nineteen children perished, as did 149 adults. Hundreds more were injured when the fertilizer-and-fuel bomb pulverized the nine-story federal office building, leaving a massive pile of crumbled concrete, twisted steel and shattered glass.

Six survived when the yellow rental truck exploded just beneath the windows of their second-floor day-care center.

Some spent weeks in intensive care. Others required years of therapy. All will forever be scarred.

Now, the surviving six have spoken — many for the first time — about a cataclysmic event that thrust them into the American consciousness, but about which they have no memory.

Brandon Denny and Rebecca Denny

Brandon and Rebecca Denny were the only siblings in the America's Kids day-care center to survive the Oklahoma City bombing.

"God must think a lot of our children to have left them here," said their father, Jim. "I can't explain why he took the others."

Neither Brandon, 13, nor Rebecca, 12, remembers anything about the blast now. But it wasn't always so.

Three years after the bombing, Brandon abruptly turned to his father one day and asked: "You know what that bomb sounded like?"

"No," Jim Denny replied, "what?"

"BOOM! Ssssswwwwwooooossssshhhhh," said Brandon, imitating the thunderclap and burst of energy, felt as far as 70 miles away.

When Rebecca was 2 or 3, she told her mother, Claudia: "I don't want to go to the bad building."

STEVE SISNEY / AP The six children who survived the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing pose in front of the Survivor Tree at the bombing memorial. In the first row, left to right, are P.J. Allen, Christopher Nguyen, Rebecca Denny and Joseph Webber; standing are Brandon Denny and Nekia McCloud.

"What bad building?" Claudia asked

"The one with thunder, lightning and fire."

Later, she added: "You know what, Mommy? I was lost in the rocks, and I couldn't find you."

Brandon spent 45 days in intensive care, then 55 in a rehabilitation center. He was home for three weeks, then back for another 26 days in ICU as he battled a brain infection.

He had four major brain surgeries. A fifth inserted a plate in his head. He has a permanent shunt in the back of his head. He now suffers seizures. He wears a full ankle brace to school every day and a brace to help stretch his right hand.

He has learning lab twice a day for math and reading. Twice weekly, he undergoes speech therapy. Once a month, it's physical and occupational therapy.

"When Brandon lost part of his brain," his father said, "it affected not only his right side — his gait and right hand — but also his comprehension skills."

Rebecca spent 10 days in the hospital. A piece of one of the blue plastic barrels in which the bomb was packed sliced through her left cheek, between the eye and cheekbone.

Brandon's health needs were so acute that Jim Denny quit his job as a shop foreman with a company that built oil well drilling tools. Their yearly income slashed by about $35,000, the family decided to sell their home in 2002. They now rent a small brick home in southwest Oklahoma City, not far from Will Rogers World Airport. Rebecca, a precocious redhead, said she often is asked whether she remembers anything about the blast.

"It sometimes gets a little annoying," she said. "But I'm kind of expecting them to ask me about it around this time.

"It has a big effect on everybody's life in this family. We have to accept the fact we can't go back and change anything. We just have to live with it. That's the way I see it."

Brandon doesn't say much. He often stared blankly when asked questions by a reporter. He occasionally slips in a quip while his sister is speaking.

"They ask me (about the bombing) a lot," said Brandon. "They ask me 20 times a day."

Pause.

"I'm pulling your leg."

"Before this happened, Brandon was the real outgoing one," Jim Denny said, "and Rebecca was the laid-back one. Rebecca went from a follower to a leader, and Brandon went from a leader to a follower."

Despite the hardships, Jim Denny said his family is "about as normal as normal can be — whatever normal is."

"We have our own normal," Claudia Denny interjected.

"And it's good," Jim Denny said.

Nekia McCloud

Nekia McCloud has no memory of the Oklahoma City bombing, but she lives with the after-effects every day.

At 14, Nekia McCloud's life is in serious transition.

She clings to her childhood passions, spending hours riding her pink bicycle, playing with her Barbie dolls and feeding the ducks at Oklahoma City's Dolese Park.

She also stretches toward adulthood: She grins and drops her head shyly when asked if she's interested in boys. She delights in Natalie's Goin' Crazy and Bow Wow's rap. And she's picked out her first car, a Nissan Altima. White. Definitely white.

"I like it," she said, "because it's fast."

Indeed, there are few visible signs that Nekia suffered severe head trauma and other injuries a decade ago in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Yet, it's a reality that hits home every weekday, when she arrives by bus at Western Oaks Middle School and heads to classes for seventh-graders with learning disabilities.

"We've come a long way, considering," said her mother, Lavern McCloud, a clerical worker for the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission.

"She had to completely relearn everything from a baby stage. They didn't know if she'd ever walk and talk again."

She said Nekia's injuries didn't require surgery, but there was an almost dizzying schedule of doctor visits and therapy sessions. And she still attends special reading classes at Southern Nazarene University in Bethany, Okla., not far from Western Oaks.

She even talks of someday becoming an English teacher. And she displays an amazing knack for bowling, routinely rolling scores of 250.

"It's my prayer," her mother said, "she'll be able to learn like a regular kid."

Joseph Webber

The only visible sign that Joseph Webber escaped death 10 years ago is a long, thin scar creasing his face from his left eye to his jawbone.

"People ask me, how'd I get this?" he said.

He tells them he survived the Oklahoma City bombing. He shrugs. It's a fact of his life, but it's not part of his memory. Most of what he knows about it, he knows from his parents.

"I'm glad I don't remember it," he said.

Joe Webber is now 11, the oldest of four brothers and a fifth-grader at Bishop John Carroll Catholic School in north Oklahoma City.

Among his highest priorities: sketching wildlife and jet aircraft, playing baseball (right field) and basketball (center), and reading (his latest book: "The Lost Years of Merlin").

He ponders a career as either a mechanical engineer — designing airplanes — or as an ornithologist, reflecting his passion for birds.

Still, the older he is, the more curious he's become about the truck bombing.

He toured part of the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum, where he saw video footage from the chaotic minutes after the blast, when he was loaded into an ambulance, parents Dan and Dawn alongside.

"I think one of the blessings about the age he was, he was just so young," said Dan Webber. "I sometimes think Joe is a lot calmer and more grown up" for his age because of what he endured.

A decade ago, though, his family feared for his future: The attack left him with two ruptured eardrums, a broken jaw and left arm, facial and body lacerations and a concussion.

His jaw was wired shut for six weeks. His diet consisted of milkshakes made from the nutritional supplement Ensure.

"We might have tended to be more overprotective for a while, but we tried to keep everything in proper perspective," Dan Webber said.

"We've tried hard for it not to be something he dwells on all the time."

P.J. Allen

P.J. Allen is philosophical about surviving the Oklahoma City bombing.

"Sometimes I do wish this hadn't happened to me," the 11-year-old said, "but then I think about all the things I've gotten to do."

He met Oprah Winfrey and appeared on her television show. He was photographed with two presidents. And he became fast friends with the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, who still writes him letters and sends presents.

Still, he will forever bear the scars and physical woes of the fiery explosion that virtually incinerated his lungs and inflicted third-degree burns over the upper 55 percent of his body.

His left arm was broken in three places. Rocks were embedded in his head. For days, he fought an on-and-off 104-degree-plus fever, treated with ice blankets and Tylenol.

"My mom prayed to God, and he gave her strength to accept my death or strength to fight on so I could live," said P.J., referring to Deloris Watson, the grandmother who is raising him.

Now a full-time student at KIPP Reach College Preparatory School in northeast Oklahoma City, an ever-smiling, often-rambunctious P.J. said most of his classmates know of his brush with death.

"Some of them still ask me about the bombing," he said. "They asked me about, like, why do I have scars? I say that's where I was on fire.

"They ask me why I breathe so loud. Every day I breathe a lot harder than others."

He lived for years with a tracheotomy to improve his breathing. On a typical day, he still needs three 30-minute breathing treatments. He carries two inhalers.

Unlike some of the young survivors, P.J. hasn't shied away from the bombing. "I want to know all the details," he said. He was especially interested, his grandmother said, in what became of Timothy McVeigh, who was executed for carrying out the attack.

Despite the labored breathing and scarred lungs, his grandmother said, P.J.'s health is good. He is rarely sick. And he does well in school, especially in math and science, where he routinely scores A's and B's. He hopes to be an engineer: "I want to be able to take things apart and make things and fix things."

He loves to play basketball, especially on a team coached by his aunt. He plays center or forward. He loves defense, stealing the ball and blocking shots. But it's not always easy, given his compromised lung capacity.

"Sometimes I find myself getting real tired," he said. "Sometimes I'm hoping somebody will get fouled so I can take a break while they're shooting free throws."

Christopher Nguyen

It was the start of Little League season, and Christopher Nguyen wanted his hair just like his teammates': a keep-your-head-cool buzz-cut.

When he returned home from the barbershop, he glimpsed his newly shorn black locks in the mirror. He shot out of the bathroom, screaming and crying.

"Look at how the barber messed up my head," wailed Chris, then about 7.

He had never seen the scars — the permanent evidence that he survived the Oklahoma City bombing.

"I don't remember anything," said Chris, now a 15-year-old freshman at Bishop McGuinness, a Catholic high school in north Oklahoma City. "Everyone always asks me if I do. I wish I could say something more interesting, but, no, I don't."

It's probably a blessing that his memory is blank. Among his injuries: a broken jaw, ruptured eardrums and a bruised brain.

When he came home from the hospital, he slept with his parents, awakening many nights with shrieks and tears — perhaps from the pain of his injuries, perhaps from flashbacks.

It was only recently that a network television crew showed him its video of his battered, bandaged body in the hospital. "He looked like a little mummy head," said his mother, Phuong.

He wept as he watched, his parents said, finally retreating to a bathroom to regain his composure.

Despite everything he's endured, Chris Nguyen seems every bit the typical teenager.

He isn't addicted to video games but is known to spend time on the computer, instant-messaging friends. He grins often as he talks, revealing new braces locked into place over Christmas break.

He doesn't know what he wants to do with his life but exudes a passion for art — especially free-form sketching — and an interest in public service stirred, he said, by meeting firefighters and other rescue workers who helped bombing survivors.