Kids Put Blast Behind Them in Tiny Steps

The wheezing echoes like a foghorn, one raspy gasp after another, signaling his presence long before he comes into sight. It is an unsettling noise, guttural and frantic, a battle for air that sounds all the more tortured coming from such a tiny child.

But P.J. Allen, the most critically injured toddler to survive the federal building attack here last April 19, is as delightful and bedeviling as a normal 2 1/2-year-old boy can be. Sprinting through the house, he seems mercifully unaware of his condition, of the singed lungs that rob him of oxygen, of the tracheotomy tube that delivers each breath through a small, surgically fashioned hole in his neck.

“This is P.J.’s ball,” he puffs, buffeting a visitor with a well-aimed pitch. Only after several hours of whirlwind play does he finally require a break: Performing a ritual repeated six times a day, around the clock, P.J.’s grandparents tether him to a vaporizer, pumping a soothing medicinal mist into the incision at the base of his throat.

“People ask, ‘Will he ever have a normal life?’ ” said Deloris Watson, P.J.’s grandmother and legal guardian. “Well, this will have to be normal for him. This is as normal as it’s going to get.”

The Lucky Ones

A year ago, even such a grave prognosis would have been considered optimistic. As one of just six children pulled alive from America’s Kids, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building’s ravaged day-care center, P.J. was little more than a bundle of gauze, his charred body sustained only by an ominous maze of wires and tubing.

It was an image of fragility, a violation of innocence, that struck at the heart of Oklahoma City’s loss. With 168 dead, 19 of them children, these six were the lucky ones--a notion sometimes hard to reconcile with the swollen, expressionless faces framed like masks by their swaddled heads.

Today, as a cavalcade of tributes and prayers marks the one-year anniversary of the bombing, the six youthful survivors remain symbols--of Oklahoma’s regenerative spirit and of the many shattered lives that may never fully mend.

Each of the six has overcome imposing obstacles, testing the limits of technology and faith. Finally freed from the paralysis of catheters and ventilators, some have graduated to trampolines and pony rides. Silenced by the loss of brain tissue, others have learned to speak anew, thrilling their parents with “mama” and “papa” as if it were the first time. P.J., who wasn’t even supposed to live, now chases his dog, taunting him with a stuffed dinosaur.

“We know he’s got a special purpose here,” his grandfather, Willie Watson, said. “We’re just going to have to find out what it is.”

As inspiring as their stories are, they also mirror all that is unresolved about Oklahoma City’s recovery, the physical wounds as well as the psychic scars.

Some of the children still have debris lodged in their bodies, metal pins joining their bones, chunks of skull missing under their scalps. Others still require plastic surgery to restore disfigured faces and occupational therapy to retrain deadened limbs. A few have been rushed back to the emergency room, infection threatening to undo all of their gains.

Even if those wounds were to heal, the memory of what they have endured will not soon fade. The media spotlight, shunned by some of their families and embraced by others, has transformed several of the children into pint-sized celebrities. It also has ensured that their identities, like so many other aspects of life in post-bombing Oklahoma, remain inextricably linked to the horror of last April 19.

“In the back of our minds, we know these kids are never truly going to be free from all this,” said Pam Brown, a nurse in the pediatric intensive-care unit at Children’s Hospital, where four of the six children were treated. “They’re always going to be ‘the six who survived.’ That’s a lot to carry through life.”

None of the children has been showered with more attention than 4-year-old Brandon Denny, who was pulled from the rubble along with his 3-year-old sister, Rebecca. Her wounds were mostly superficial, the explosion having scorched her left side like a sandblaster. But Brandon was less fortunate, losing portions of his brain when the bomb ripped a hole through the back of his skull.

A photo of Brandon, lying bruised and bandaged in a heartbreaking cradle of life-support machinery, appeared on the front page of The Times four days after the attack. He spent another 40 days in the intensive-care unit, then 55 days in a rehabilitation center, only to return last September for emergency surgery to remove a 2-inch fragment of particle board that had been floating inside of his head.

Still, he is now able to walk, albeit with the aid of a brace on his right leg. He has begun to talk again, even if he struggles to string together sentences. More important, he can throw his arms around his father and kiss him on the lips, finally returning the affection that Jim Denny lavished on his son in those first anguished days.

“This is kind of the success story out of all the death and destruction,” said Denny, who used to coo to Brandon, gently stroking his twitching legs, as the silent boy clung to life.

“This is hope and healing right here,” his wife, Claudia, added.

Eager to share their joy over Brandon’s continued recuperation, they have been granting interviews nearly every day for the last month, even jetting to New York this week courtesy of NBC and CBS. While the kids wrestled in the lobby of the Central Park hotel provided by the networks, the Dennys talked of their Oval Office meeting with President Clinton, their backstage visit to the set of “Home Improvement” and the coveted medallion presented by Mother Teresa.

“There’s always going to be evil people in the world, but these kids are meeting all the good ones right now--and I want them to remember it,” said Jim Denny, 51.

Changed Lives

He estimates having received more than $65,000 in private donations, some of which helped buy a new three-bedroom home, but most of which has been placed in a trust fund for the children. Their medical bills, well in excess of $300,000, have been covered by insurance. Last month, Denny quit his job as a toolmaker, hoping to launch a career on the lecture circuit delivering testimonials about family and faith.

“If we had one child survive, that would have been the most miraculous thing, but we had two,” he said. “We were the fortunate ones. ’95 couldn’t have been a better year for us.”

Just then, Brandon hobbles over, a mischievous grin on his big-cheeked, blond-topped face. With his right arm, which remains partially paralyzed, he takes a swing at his father, who has taught him to punch as a form of physical therapy.

“Daddy, you fall down,” Brandon commands.

“Ouch, you hurt me too much,” says Denny, collapsing in mock pain.

“I knocked you down,” Brandon cheers.

“From the very beginning,” says Denny, dusting himself off, “all I ever wanted was a little boy that’s alive.”

Shunning the Spotlight

As much as Brandon Denny shines in the public eye, 5-year-old Nekia McCloud has been sheltered. Although she also suffered a devastating brain injury, her recovery has scarcely been chronicled, which is exactly how her mother, LaVern, wants to keep it.

They still live in the same modest brick cottage, unadorned with commemorative plaques or celebrity photos. The toy room contains a little basketball hoop and a motorized Barbie car, but not the hundreds of stuffed animals that fill some other homes. If it weren’t for the faint scars on Nekia’s forehead, there would be scant evidence that she withstood the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

“I didn’t want to expose her to all that,” said McCloud, 33, who has relied on Red Cross assistance since losing her receptionist job last year. “It’s OK to remember what happened, but to just keep dwelling and dwelling on it is not something that I choose to do.”

Like the others, Nekia has made considerable progress, although the blow to her frontal lobe erased many of the basic skills she had learned as a toddler. She did not take her first step until coming home from the hospital, five weeks after the bombing. Her speech now resembles baby talk, a cobbled vocabulary of little more than 25 words.

“Mama, I luh you,” she says, bouncing across the living room. “I luh you, boo-boo.”

An unexpected side effect of Nekia’s injury has been the impact on her sense of danger. While her mother has grown predictably more protective, Nekia has become almost oblivious to the hazards of the world, as though the bombing propelled her back to a more innocent state.

When they run errands together, Nekia sometimes darts into the street, refusing to hold her mother’s hand. At the supermarket, she takes off down the aisles, blind to the precarious stacks of cartons and cans. During a recent trip to a fair, she refused to mount anything but the fastest rides.

“When we go out, she has me so stressed,” said McCloud, a single mother raising two other children, ages 10 and 14. “It’s like she’s just not aware of what could happen.”

As if to prove her mother’s point, Nekia jumps on a plastic Big Wheel tricycle, then barrels down the driveway, riding off the curb and into the street. With McCloud giving chase, Nekia pedals to the corner Grab ‘N’ Go, through a parking lot, past a tree-trimming crew and by a barking dog--without so much as a flinch.

“Slow down!” McCloud hollers. Then catching her breath, she laughs at the good fortune of still having a daughter to provoke her maternal instincts. “I suppose she’s just a normal--well, almost normal--little girl,” says McCloud, who plans to avoid today’s ceremonies.

The families of the other two survivors, Joseph Webber and Christopher Nguyen, also were expected to skip the April 19 tribute. Overwhelmed by the media and uncomfortable about upstaging the parents who lost children in the blast, they had previously announced their intention to be out of town.

Painful Reminder

For P.J. Allen, neither the ceremony nor a vacation fits into the reality of his new life.

With his skin still vulnerable to sunlight and his lungs easily choked by blowing dust, he is forced to pass much of his time inside the tinted and filtered confines of a solarium, built onto his grandparents’ home by private donations. On Easter weekend, after spending too long outside preparing to hunt eggs, P.J. ended up at Children’s Hospital in the convulsive throes of an asthma attack.

“New York, Chicago, the White House--we turned it all down,” said P.J.’s 44-year-old grandmother, who has raised him since birth. But she also is resigned to the fact that P.J.’s story will capture the media’s imagination, even if he can’t venture out.

“That’s just part of being caught up in all this,” she said. “At least he’s alive to get the attention.”

Times researcher Lianne Hart in Houston contributed to this story.

* ANTI-TERRORISM BILL: The House approved a compromise anti-terrorism bill. A16