For Social Security Workers, a Sense of Security Was Shattered : Recollections: Room 111 in the federal building was near the epicenter of the blast. Its surviving inhabitants will be bound forever by tragedy.

In the collective memory of the Social Security Administration workers who toiled there and the citizens who came seeking help, Room 111 of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building will forever be preserved as it was at 9:02 a.m. on the morning of April 19.

History will remember that room as the epicenter of one of the nation’s worst tragedies--a bomb blast that sent political reverberations across the United States.

In reality, it was not unlike hundreds of other Social Security offices around the country, with its beige-carpeted waiting room, four walk-up customer windows and numerous little partitioned cubicles along the window.

It was here that more than 60 people--many of them middle-aged women with decades of government service--came every day to interview people seeking Social Security benefits, to fill out necessary paperwork, to gossip, to celebrate birthdays and to share their handmade crafts and baked goods.

Unlike other government offices that were destroyed in the blast, Room 111 was also a bustling public place where scenes of human frailty were played out on a daily basis. Here, disabled and elderly citizens and their relatives came at some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives, and foreign-born visitors struggled with a confounding bureaucracy that did not speak their language.

Today, Room 111 lies at the bottom of hundreds of tons of concrete and rubble. After a week of digging from the top down, rescue workers finally are pawing through the debris from the Social Security office, where more bodies are expected to be found. At that point, the final death toll will be known.

But for the community and surviving workers who now spend their days attending funerals and eulogizing lost friends, recollections of the final weeks, days and minutes they spent in Room 111 will serve as a living membrane that connects them to each other and will not release them from the most frightening experience of their lives.

Every day, the doors of Room 111, located immediately on the left inside the front door of the giant federal building, were opened precisely at 9 a.m. By that time, all of the workers had been at their desks for at least half an hour, and some had been there since 7 a.m.

Like most government offices where people have worked for many years, Room 111 was decorated with an incongruous combination of no-nonsense, light oak office furniture and colorful personal mementos such as family photographs, plants and leftover holiday decorations.

Visitors to the office could easily recognize the marks of a close-knit community whose members went to lunch, took weekend excursions and marked important passages together. A bulletin board listing all upcoming birthdays hung on the wall of the room where they gathered during their twice-daily, 15-minute breaks.

“We were all friends,” recalls one worker. “When you spend eight hours a day with someone for 20 years, they become your second family. We knew each other’s quirks and moods. We could finish each other’s sentences. It was stressful at work--we were understaffed and overworked--but we all said the people we worked with made up for it all. That’s why nobody left. There was very low turnover.”

Sixty-one employees showed up for work at the Social Security office on the morning of April 19. When the door opened, between 30 and 40 citizens quickly gathered in the waiting room, most of them queued up in the roped-off line that snaked back and forth in front of the customer service windows.

Many of the claims representatives, such as 55-year-old Ethel Griffin, a plump, 25-year veteran of the Social Security Administration with a sweet smile and light brown hair, were already closeted in their slate-blue cubicles along the huge, plate-glass window at the front of the building. One of them was meeting with Joe Mitchell, who arrived early seeking retirement benefits.

Other workers, however, were still getting settled in for the day.

Rogene Hughes, 47, who came to the agency a year after Griffin, was running late for her 9 a.m. appointment. Because she had been off for a couple of days, she was still finishing up some paperwork at her desk, leaving her first visitor sitting in the waiting room.

Likewise, Suzanne Welch, 53, was working at another employee’s computer at the rear of the office, near the break room. In the recesses of her mind, Welch--with 34 years on the job--was happily anticipating the trip that she and one of her co-workers would soon be taking to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

Among those assembled in the waiting room were Luther Treanor, who came to file for retirement benefits, along with his wife, LaRue, and their 4-year-old granddaughter, Ashley Eckles; Dana Bradley, 21, with her daughter, Peachlynn, 3, and son, Gabriel, 4 months, her mother, Cheryl, and sister, Felicia, all of whom went to get a Social Security number for Gabriel. Joe Mitchell’s wife, Lee, 54, also waited there while her husband had his appointment.

What none of these people knew at the time was that a Ryder rented truck laden with high explosives was parked at the curb outside, ready to detonate at two minutes after the hour. It was to be a stunning, grisly moment of random selection in which some inside Room 111 died and others lived, depending on where they happened to be sitting or standing at that instant.

“I saw a flash of light, heard a loud noise, then there was smoke and darkness,” recalls Hughes. “I was still sitting at my desk, but could sense things were falling around me. People were yelling, ‘Get out! Get out!’ ”

Griffin and others sitting near front windows died instantly. Griffin’s daughter-in-law, Jayne, was told by the authorities that the “whole area was blown back and all of the floors came down on top of her.” Fifteen of her co-workers are believed to have suffered the same fate, along with many citizens gathered in the waiting room. Had Hughes gone out to meet her visitor, she would have died.

Instinctively, the survivors clawed their way to safety, leaving everything behind. Welch and Hughes were among those who followed the sound of panicked voices into the darkened break room and then through a door to daylight.

“I remember going through the break door,” says Welch. “I just remember climbing over that furniture and being outside. I’ve tried, but can’t seem to remember how I got there.”

Outside, the Social Security survivors began accounting for one another and searching for missing co-workers. Within an hour, according to Hughes, they had determined that 15 did not escape. “We knew before officials did,” she said.

At first Griffin’s husband, Bruce, 58, an architect, felt his wife might have survived on the strength of her strong will. But rescue workers found her remains--including her diamond tennis bracelet and the emerald and diamond rings she always wore--on Sunday, and he now takes comfort in knowing that “it was over in an instant. She didn’t feel any pain.”

The Treanors perished along with their granddaughter. Joe Mitchell survived, while his wife died in the waiting room. Dana Bradley escaped with her sister, Felicia, but her mother and children were lost.

In the aftermath, the survivors of Room 111 have kept in close touch, talking regularly on the telephone and attending the funerals of their lost co-workers. On Wednesday, the priest who presided at Griffin’s service read a eulogy written by her friend Hughes.

On Tuesday, the day Welch had been scheduled to leave for Mexico, she attended the funeral of the woman who was to have been her traveling companion.

The first time the survivors reassembled was Friday, when the Social Security Administration summoned them to a meeting to discuss the terms of the administrative leave they will be given until a new office is established, including the continuing pay and benefits. They also were told how to go about getting counseling, how to file for workers’ compensation if they were injured and how to obtain compensation for their lost valuables.

“It was hard,” Hughes says of the meeting. “But it was good to see with our own eyes that some of us made it OK. We all hugged each other and cried. We kept looking for more to come. We knew they wouldn’t. It was obvious many were missing.”