In Memoriam

[nystate]

Today, 16 years ago, Pan Am flight 103 was blown from the sky over Lockerbie, Scotland by a terrorist bomb. The attack killed 270 people, including 35 Syracuse University students on their way home for Christmas.

This post is in memory of those who died in the air and on the ground. May they rest in peace.

[Brent]

I thought today was the anniversary. I was only 5 months old.

[Rainband]

That was a very sad day!!

[Stephanie]

Thank you for the reminder!

[nystate]

It has been sixteen years. Sixteen years since 259 people fell from the sky.

They and eleven people living in a small Scottish town, that’s little more than a statistic now.

They’re victims in a worldwide struggle that has spanned 5 decades. A struggle where, too often, the blood spilled is that of innocent bystanders, whose only crime is being in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

They remember the day at Syracuse University. 35 young people, S.U. students, traveling home after studying abroad, were among the 270 who died.

Their classmates have long since left. Many of those who guided and taught them in their days here have moved on. Their names are etched on a campus memorial, their images frozen in time.

They had studied in business and economics, journalism and the arts.

They would be in their mid to late 30s now, the prime of their careers.

Much of the lingering sorrow focuses on what they could have been, what they could have accomplished had December 21st, 1988 been just another day.

“We feel as if we've been deprived of what they would have brought to this world. And so, in part, this is about reclaiming that,” said Reverend Thomas Wolfe, Dean of Hendricks Chapel.

Chimes sounded 35 times, one for each of the faces. Each of the people and the loved ones they left behind.

The university says despite what happened, it still believes in overseas studies.

“We continue to be very committed to sending our students abroad and to bringing about a global understanding of what it means to live in this world,” Rev. Wolfe said.

The hope is that studying and working overseas will bring understanding that will make monuments like this part of the past, not the present and future.

Sixteen years is a very long time. Some of the sorrow might have eased if December 21st, 1988 marked a turning point when the world said, enough.

Instead, it's just another date, another set of statistics in a struggle that shows no signs of ending.

The names of the 35 S.U. students are not the only ones on the memorial at the Place of Remembrance.

Also engraved in the stone are the names of a young married couple, from the town of Clay, who were also aboard Pan Am flight 103.

http://www.news10now.com/content/all_news/?ArID=33629&SecID=83

[azsnowman]

What a GREAT thread....thanks for posting this!

Truly a tragic thing.....I just finished studying this case a few weeks back in my Criminal investigation class, one of the largest crime scenes in modern times

Dennis