Oklahoma City bombing victims feel neglected because of Sept. 11 compensation fund

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ The day the planes tore through the towers, Oklahoma City bombing victims relived some of the pain they've harbored for seven years. <br><br>Within weeks, many empathetic souls

Monday, August 26th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ The day the planes tore through the towers, Oklahoma City bombing victims relived some of the pain they've harbored for seven years.

Within weeks, many empathetic souls traveled to New York to cry with those who lost loved ones in the terrorist attacks. They escorted families to ground zero, holding hands as they stood before the smoking heap of metal and concrete.

Within months, another emotion was beginning to stir.

Some Oklahoma City bombing victims are feeling neglected nearly a year after the terrorist attacks because Congress did not include them in a compensation fund with an expected average payout of $1.65 million for relatives of the Sept. 11 dead.

Oklahoma City families do not begrudge the Sept. 11 families anything, said Dan McKinney, who lost his wife, Linda, in the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building that was bombed in 1995. But Congress hasn't acted fairly, he said.

``The way I look at it, a terrorist attack is a terrorist attack,'' he said. ``People just don't realize that there wasn't money given out after the bombing.''

The government paid death or disability benefits to federal employees or their families after Timothy McVeigh gutted the Alfred P. Murrah Building with a truck bomb, killing 168 people.

Cafeteria employees, parents of children killed in the day care center and those who died while visiting the building did not receive federal benefits.

Other federal aid given to the state for the victims totaled about $75,000, according to the district attorney's office. Oklahoma City collected about $35 million in charitable donations, mostly to the Red Cross.

Kathleen Treanor, who is leading the fight for equal compensation for Oklahoma City victims, said some have called her greedy.

``Most of them are people who could not possibly understand because they have not walked a mile in my shoes,'' said Treanor, whose 4-year-old daughter and in-laws were killed while visiting the federal building. ``I've grown a pretty thick skin in the last seven years.''

She said she is seeking the money because it's only fair. ``I feel overlooked,'' she said. ``I feel shoved aside.''

Treanor said she immediately wanted to go to New York after the attacks. Memories of the bombed-out Murrah building flooded her mind and chills went down her spine as she stood at ground zero.

This year has been particularly rough for one of the smallest survivors of the 1995 bombing, P.J. Allen.

``I thought they killed the bad guy,'' said the frightened 9-year-old, whose lungs were scorched in the 1995 blast.

P.J., who has a permanent tracheotomy and gives himself breathing treatments, knew that the terrorist bomber who hurt him had been executed three months before Sept. 11.

``I think September 11 had a large impact on him and his sense of security,'' said Deloris Watson, his grandmother. ``He felt the only bad man was Timothy McVeigh. Once he was dead, he didn't think anybody would hurt him.''

Since Sept. 11, the little boy is more clingy. He won't fly on an airplane and he wants to know why the ``bad men'' are back.

Watson said she would use her share of the money for P.J.'s medicine, education and future. The boy's lungs, scarred black, are too weak and prone to infection for him to attend public school.

While Watson cares for P.J. around the clock, the Red Cross helps her with the house payments, and the school district sends a teacher three hours each day. They survive on a monthly $512 Social Security check.

``He's been doomed to a life of poverty unless this compensation bill is passed,'' she said.

``There's no envy,'' Watson said. ``There's no jealousy. I know what it's like not to be helped and I don't want another family to have to suffer the way we've had to suffer.''