OKLAHOMA CITY -- Jane Graham says she will quit her job rather than move to a new federal building next to the site of the bombing that killed 35 of her co-workers and buried her under rubble.

She says she does not have the strength to park in the same garage she did before the 1995 bombing, then walk past the field of empty chairs that represent the 168 people killed seven years ago.

"There is no way I can go back," she says. "I will do my job to the best of my ability until the move, and at that point, I won't go."

Graham and the rest of the U.S. Housing and Urban Development workers -- who include 55 bombing survivors -- learned by e-mail this week that HUD Secretary Mel Martinez has changed his mind and that they will have to move into the new building after all. The department had said last summer that employees would remain in an office eight blocks from the Oklahoma City National Memorial.

After the bombing, HUD and about a dozen other federal agencies found office space in scattered places downtown. The new federal building being erected next to the bombing site will bring many of those agencies back together when it opens in the spring of 2003.

HUD officials in Washington said Thursday that they decided to go ahead with the move because of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The department "will not bow to terrorists nor will we let them deter us from serving the public," HUD said in a statement. "Every American has had to rethink the rights and freedoms we have and how we can best take a stand against those who would seek to limit those freedoms."

Agency officials refused further comment.

Target fears

Some HUD employees do not want to work so close to the site of the bombing. And some fear that the new building will become a target for yet another terrorist attack.

With the department's decision, the federal building will be at least 98 percent full. Among those moving in are the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Agriculture and a credit union.

No federal law enforcement agencies -- not the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, or the Drug Enforcement Administration -- will be tenants. The ATF and the DEA were in the Alfred P. Murrah Building.

Designers have tried to create a more secure site than the old building. The three-story building will sit 50 feet from the street. At the nine-story Murrah building, Timothy McVeigh was able to pull a truck bomb right up to the entrance.

The front of the new building will be made of laminated glass designed to stay in its frame in an explosion. It will be flanked by trees, a park and waist-high cement plugs to keep out vehicles. Security cameras will cover the area and parking will be prohibited on surrounding streets.

The building will have no plaque or memorial to remind occupants of the bombing, which was the worst act of terrorism on American soil before Sept. 11.

Rob Roddy, a HUD employee who survived the blast probably because he was at a ninth-floor computer training session and not at his desk, at first did not want to go near the new federal complex.

"I thought we would be a target if somebody had some sick, twisted idea of finishing the job right," he said. "But I've come to terms with it. I've found peace with the situation."

Now, he said, it calms him to look across the memorial -- the bronze entrance gates, the reflecting pool and the lone elm tree to survive the blast. Roddy, unlike some of his co-workers, does not avoid the place.

"I know a number of my co-workers are upset about moving," he said. "I can certainly understand that. We're all at different places on this healing path."

Graham, 61, takes alternate routes so she does not have to drive by the memorial. She said she believes the department's decision to move into the new building has more to do with making sure offices are filled than with standing up to terrorists.

She said she is offended by the notion that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks somehow require HUD to be in the new building.