TAKE 5 : `IT JUST GRIPPED YOUR SOUL'.

Byline: Ray Richmond Daily News Television Writer

Network television journalists are typically a cynical, imperturbable lot, going about their business of reporting death, corruption and scandal with a nod and a shrug.

But correspondents on the scene in Oklahoma City when the bombing took 168 lives a year ago Friday say this worst terrorist act on American soil gave a group of jaded reporters the emotional jolt of their lives.

Here are the stories of four as told to Daily News Television Writer Ray Richmond:

Erin Hayes, ABC News 

For Hayes, it was Oklahoma City's bleakness that made covering it especially painful. There was little positive to point to. No happy ending. No miracle found breathing and stable inside the rubble. It never got better, only worse day after day as body counts piled up and hope evaporated.

``This was the hardest story I've ever worked on, and I'm a tough old bird,'' Hayes, 38, said.

``I know how to cover disasters. I sat through Hurricane Hugo for two weeks and was here for the Midwest floods, where I had to swim through sewage and contracted a strep infection that wouldn't go away. Hardships don't bother me. But Oklahoma City was so emotionally draining.

``You would see grown men weeping all the time,'' she recalled. ``That included hardened veteran reporters and cameramen who covered the Vietnam War. Something about this story just grabbed everyone by the throat and wouldn't let go. It just gripped your soul.''

Roger O'Neil, NBC News 

For one of the very few times in O'Neil's career as an NBC News correspondent, he sensed none of the typical joking or ghoulish banter commonly seen among journalists as a distancing mechanism.

``This story was beyond any of that foolishness,'' O'Neil said. ``It was like a war, but it wasn't like a war. In war, you expect innocent kids to die. But they're wearing uniforms. Here, you had little kids die inside a nursery just because their parents dropped them off, and federal employees die just because they went to work that day.''

It was while briefing his fellow press corps members after touring the flimsy hull of the grotesquely damaged Murrah building that O'Neil broke down in sobs.

``I just lost it,'' he said. ``I think the thing that got me was having to talk about the fact I had just seen an individual bring 23 mums and set them down in front of the building for the missing children. But I wasn't embarrassed. It's just something that happened. I'm a human being.''

O'Neil happens to be a father of two.

``The thing you could never get out of your mind first and foremost was those kids,'' he said. ``You knew they were on either the first floor or second floor and would be the last ones the rescuers could get to, and after a week they hadn't. It was just ... it ... it's still hard to talk about it.''

Bonnie Anderson, CNN 

Anderson, CNN's first correspondent on the scene in Oklahoma City, has covered terrorism and wars in both Beirut and Baghdad. Yet she was reduced to tears several times while filing reports from Ground Zero.

``I've been at this for 20 years and seen the worst that mankind has to offer,'' Anderson said. ``But I had to catch myself more than once in Oklahoma City to avoid choking up. If the anchor asked me a question, I was afraid I'd break down entirely.''

While caught by surprise at the feelings that welled up inside her, Anderson made no apologies. Particularly after interviewing Edye Smith.

Smith is the mother who lost her two toddler sons in the bomb blast. Her incalculable pain was almost too raw to watch. She opened up her home to put an all-too-human face on the tragedy, showing us home videos and snapshots of her kids at play, the closet where their clothes still hung, the toys they would never again enjoy.

``What am I supposed to do?'' Smith asked on CNN between anguished sobs a mere three days after the bombing. ``Do you give their clothes away? Do you take the pictures of them down? Do you tell people that you had children and they died? Do you tell them that you never had children? God, please tell me what do to!''

Scott Pelley, CBS News

It takes a lot to penetrate Pelley's tough hide.

Based in Dallas, the CBS News correspondent was there 10 years ago to watch the space shuttle Challenger explode, which he still calls ``the most painful thing I've ever seen.'' He also covered the Mexico City earthquake that claimed more than 10,000 lives.

``I saw a baseball stadium where the infield and outfield were literally covered with corpses,'' Pelley recalled.

But what made the Oklahoma City tragedy different for Pelley is that it was ``a man-made outrage. The Mexico quake was a natural disaster. The Challenger was human error. This was deliberate and made no sense then or now. The viciousness of it was astonishing.''

What depressed and affected the generally unflappable Pelley most about being in Oklahoma City was the way it reinforced the fact that ``there is evil in this world that can never be explained away.

``We like to forget it, but it's as true today as it was in the 1930s and '40s. Evil is around us. And every once in a while, it comes back with a vengeance.''

Revisiting tragedy in Oklahoma City

TV programs marking the anniversary of the Oklahoma City tragedy:

Tonight: ``ABC News Turning Point: Rebirth: The Untold Stories of Oklahoma City,'' profiling those who lost loved ones in the bombing a year ago. 10 p.m., KABC (Channel 7).

Friday: A daylong comemmoration of the bombing live from Oklahoma City, 5 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Daylight Saving Time, on CNN, with reports and events throughout the day. At 6 p.m., Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating hosts ``Larry King Live.''

CAPTION(S):

5 Photos, Box

Box: Revisiting tragedy in Oklahoma City (See text)

Photo: (1) The images of senseless injury and death in the Okalahoma city bomb blast a year ago made it ``the hardest story I've ever worked on,'' says ABC News correspondent Erin Hayes.

Associated Press

(2) Erin Hayes

(3) Roger O'Neil

(4) Bonnie Anderson

(5) Scott Pelley