Laura Jane Garrison

Laura Garrison, 61, had worked hard for her family all her life, but preparing retirement papers at the Social Security office brought her to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. She had helped lay to rest one sister a month earlier. She had a special bond with one of her brothers, William, who suffered a neck injury as a young man during a football game. “Laura would come down to the hospital at least three days a week to take care of him,” said Samuel L. Washington, another brother. “She was a quiet sister, devoted to her job and her family.” Garrison was a Luther High School graduate. She lived in California for a while, but did not want to raise her three children on the coast and returned to Oklahoma. An admissions clerk at Oklahoma Memorial Hospital, Garrison planned to retire in July. She and her husband, Fred, had two daughters at the time of her death, Tracy Rushing, 39, and Kerry Hatcher, 35; as well as one son, Harold Taylor, 34.