Bombing survivors trying to cope five years after

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- If you didn't know him, you might think Paul Heath was a tour guide. <br><br>"I'm Dr. Paul Heath. I was in the building. Would you like a bumper sticker?" he asked people

Tuesday, April 18th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- If you didn't know him, you might think Paul Heath was a tour guide.

"I'm Dr. Paul Heath. I was in the building. Would you like a bumper sticker?" he asked people milling around the site of the former Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

Some took the green stickers bearing the date of the bombing. Others stared at him. A passenger in a car that had slowed near the site opted to not even roll down the window.

"It isn't a rejection of me personally, it's a rejection of my coping style," Heath said.

The coping style for the psychologist is one of immersion.

He has photographs of the building before and after the April 19, 1995, explosion, chunks of concrete from the building, poetry he's written about his feelings -- all "treasured trophies of grief" he calls them.

Heath was on the south end of the 5th floor Veterans Administration office near a utility closet when the explosion occurred. Heath, the building's medical safety officer, heard injured co-workers scream for help.

"I remember saying, `God, help me get the others out."'

Heath continued to take the lead, helping form the Oklahoma City Murrah Building Survivors Association. The quality comes natural, he said. ". . . I'm the one who's called in my family to provide aid, comfort and assistance. I've always been the rescuer-type person in groups."

For most of those who lost loved ones or who survived the blast, dealing with what happened five years ago has been a quieter, less involved endeavor. Mental health and physical health care providers, as well as clergy and family, friends and co-workers with sympathetic ears have shared the task of helping people cope.

"What we see with the bombing victims is kind of two steps forward, one step back," said Gwen Allen, director of Project Heartland, a program created by the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse to provide services to bombing victims.

"They will go along and be doing fairly well and be coping with issues and working and have productive lives. Then something will happen, some trigger event, and they will backslide a step or two and things are bothersome to them and they're not coping well."

Counselors see about 100 clients a month, 10 to 25 of whom are coming in for the first time, Allen said.

The victims' family members and survivors have battled anger, grief, depression and anxiety, all of which have led to troubled marriages, substance abuse and job loss.

Media attention to bombing-related events, such as the trials of bomber Timothy McVeigh and conspirator Terry Nichols and the approach of five years since the explosion, increases anxiety, Allen said.

From June 1, 1995, when data collection began, through Jan. 31,2000, Project Heartland provided services to 10,268 clients and 259,758 other recipients who were affected by the bombing, the tornadoes or both.

Project Heartland defines clients as those directly affected by the bombing, such as those who lost loved ones, those who were injured and their loved ones. Other recipients are those receiving bombing-related services, such as rescue workers and those attending seminars or debriefings related to the bombing.

Allen said another issue facing survivors has been job stress, whether it's been from unsympathetic bosses or colleagues, or fear.

Many are having to deal with the possibility that they will have to move into a new federal building planned for downtown. Allen said some don't want to move into such a building. "Some of them don't want to work in a big group like that and be seen as a potential target," she said.

Grief tends to be the most prevalent emotion, Allen said.

Holidays and anniversaries are difficult for those who lost young children or grandchildren in the bombing.

"I don't think anybody who loses a child . . . really ever gets over it," Allen said.

Jannie Coverdale has not.

She had dropped grandsons Aaron and Elijah off at the day-care center in the federal building on her way to work. The boys and 13 other children in the center were killed when the other floors collapsed on them.

Alone in a small apartment decorated with portraits of the boys and angels -- an adopted symbol of the children killed in the bombing -- Coverdale still ached.

"On the first day of school this year, I saw the children going back, and my boys weren't there," she said.

Her son, the boys' father, also isn't around. His job as a truck driver takes him all around the country, she said.

"I felt so sorry for him, I guess I still do," Coverdale said. "I'd see my son just sit up and cry like a baby. And he'd ask me, `Mama, do you think my boys knew I loved them?"'

Like Heath, Coverdale attended both trials in Denver and keeps abreast of both men's cases. She is still angry at McVeigh and Nichols; at the government and at fringe groups. Even God.

"I feel like a child that feels like his parents have let him down, those parents that he loves so much and trusted so much, just let him down. That doesn't mean that that child stopped loving his parents. It hurts."

Weekly therapy sessions have kept her out of a mental hospital, she says. The loss of her grandsons is somewhat eased by a young neighborhood boy to whom she has grown close.

It is not just the mental trauma that has challenged services in Oklahoma. A total of 168 people died from the blast, but the number of people injured was about 31/2 times that, state officials said.

A study of long-term health outcomes among bombing survivors found that about 55 percent developed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), such as sleep disturbances, guilt, memory problems and flashbacks.

The report, published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association, also found that 45 percent of the survivors developed other psychiatric illnesses such as chronic depression o rdrug and alcohol use disorders.

Sheryl Brown, a state Health Department staff epidemiologist wh oparticipated in the initial study by the department, Washington University and the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, helped conduct a follow up study of 494 bombing victims.

"One of the things we learned is that 11/2 to 3 years later, people were still picking glass out of their heads," Brown said. "We also learned in the follow up study that there were about 72 percent of hospital patients we had interviewed that said they suffered with chronic pain.

"Of course, the largest percent were in the hospital group. They had the most serious injuries."

Martin Cash was one of the severely injured.

Cash was standing about 3 feet from his desk in the VA office when the north side of the Murrah Building "fell off."

"My vision just went bright red. I thought, `My God in heaven, I'm having a stroke!"' he said.

Cash realized that his left eye had been knocked out and was hanging on his cheek. Heath, who worked with Cash, took the injured man's belt and hooked him onto the belt of another injured man and led the pair out of the less-damaged south side of the building.

"I just looked up toward the sky on that wall of elevators and it just, I don't think I've ever seen the sun so bright," Cash said.

The VA employee of 22 years also had a head injury and a wrist injury. He underwent seven hours of surgery and spent 11 days in the hospital. His physical therapy and rehabilitation concluded in late 1995.

"A lot of people talked about the word `closure.' Probably it doesn't exist. You move to a different level," Cash said.

"The fact that you can't see on your left side, you have to remember that. If you're driving or walking around a doorway, you have to understand that. So you think about it, which brings up thoughts of other people, friends you had. It brings it all into focus."

Cash only went to counseling for about three months, finding involvement with family and the survivors' group a greater help. He also has worked on habeas corpus reform, which shortened the appeals process for death row inmates, including McVeigh.

"With McVeigh's execution, there's going to be a strong feeling that there is justice, that this system does work, which was his(McVeigh's) very point.

"He didn't believe the system worked and thought he could change it by violence."