U.S.

Survivors Recall Bombing

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

April 19, 2000 / 9:16 AM EDT / CBS

Tax day had just passed and Susan Walton needed to deposit money into the bank to cover her check to the IRS -- she owed this year.

Earlier in the morning, the sign language student had driven her husband to work and studied for a college exam. Her visit to the credit union in the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City began as routine as any other.

But that's where Walton's memory of April 19, 1995 ends.

More than a week after the explosion that left her buried under tons of shattered concrete and glass, she finally began to realize the unfortunate fate in the Oklahoma City bombing would forever cripple her.

"(Doctors) are to put a rod in my heel because the heel was broken. And it's hard, you can't repair a heel," Walton told Bryant Gumbel Wednesday on CBS News' The Early Show. "Then they are going to fuse the anklebones, because it's just the way they have healed."

Walton and credit union employee Patti Hall were two of the most severely injured survivors from the bombed Murrah building. Both women endured dozens of surgeries to repair physical wounds and years of therapy to heal the emotional ones.

"The people I worked with -- everybody in the building -- we were a family. We weren't just a building of people," Hall recalls emotionally on The Early Show "I remember someone's hot salsa, members would come down to get a bite of that. We had Halloween contests … It was our -- it was my whole life, really."

The most deadly outcome from the bombing happened at the third-floor Federal Employees Credit Union, where 21 people died, including two pregant women.

Doctors would hospitalize Hall for two months –- five weeks were in a comatose state. She would have 16 surgeries to repair 40 broken bones and have 27 pins and plates inserted into her fractured body. Doctors say she needs two more surgeries.

Walton has had 25 surgeries and needs more, she says. Her injuries included a skull fracture, nerve damage behind both eyes, a fractured jaw, a ruptured spleen and more. And just like Hall, Walton began her therapy in an oxygen chamber, diving 54 times -- the maximum before permanent brain damage occurs.

"They took a piece of bone from my skull. I have a dip in my head and (the doctor) rebuilt my gums to have implants to have my pretty smile back," Walton says. "They have taken a rib to rebuild my jaw socket.

"I kind of characterize my recovery as a two-step. I have taken two steps forward and one back all along the way."

For many survivors, remaining buried beneath the charred rubble of the Murrah building lasted several hours. And for a few it lasted days. But Hall and Walton were among the most seriously injured that were extracted by emergency rescue crews within the first few hours of the explosion.

"I remember someone walking on our faces and somebody hollered out, 'You're walking on our faces.' I was able to gemy hand up so they could find us." Hall says. "I remember laying out on the concrete and I remember I saw a helicopter and I said, 'Oh, am I going in that?' Then I'd pass out again."

To have gotten this far is a medical miracle. But both agree that beyond learning how to walk and talk again, they feel a spiritual strength helped them recover through the mental and physical scars.

"I think -- I think I'm stronger than I realized," Hall says. "I think God gave me pure guts – and strength."