December 21, 1988 and the Disenfranchised Grief of Pan Am 103
It's been 36 years but, like the Challenger explosion and 9/11, the day is present as if it were yesterday.
I remember it vividly.
I remember Ron Curtis, the unflappable Syracuse newscaster. Always a rock, he was our city’s Cronkite having his JFK assassination moment, balancing his responsibility to the community with the raw emotion felt as a parent.
A Syracusan.
A human.
I remember the television in our kitchen, a 5-inch black and white under the cabinet model.
I remember this voice….a voice that for years was responsible for nourishing us with the news at dinnertime. This was the voice that told us that an airplane had exploded over a town in Scotland that no one had ever heard of, and that no one would ever forget.
I (personally) don’t know anyone who died on this flight, but I didn’t need to. Indulge me for a second here, but Pan Am 103 is Syracuse’s 9/11, but on a much smaller scale. We all felt it. Everyone on the plane, including 35 students from Syracuse University and a couple that lived near me in Liverpool, died. The wife of that Liverpool couple worked at the Wegmans on Taft Road and was a face that I recognized from grocery shopping with my parents.
My only connection to the students came as a result of my work at the college many years later. As the communications contact for the women’s volleyball team, I became acquainted with the story of Alexis Tsairis — a Newhouse student and volleyball player that had a team award named in her memory. A longtime friend of mine once told me that his brother was traveling home from Europe and was supposed to be that flight.
He missed it.
It’s a little tougher these days to find a local with memories of the tragedy. After all, a lot can happen to a local population in 36 years. Companies like GM, Chrysler and Carrier — among other manufacturers — dissolved their local presences in the 1990s, scattering lives across the country as people followed their jobs or sought new ones. Our Baby Boomer parents aren’t as young as they once were and a number of them are no longer with us. Our collective memory bank is slowly drying.
The grief remains. We mark the moment with solemnity, but in a manner different from how we commemorate September 11. Both were terrorist acts committed against the West by people with a bastardized interpretation of their faith. Justice has not been served in either instance, though a trial for the individual accused of making the bomb is scheduled to begin in May 2025. But, the scope feels different. The attacks on 9/11 rattled the entire nation with points of impact in the New York City and Washington, D.C. metro areas, and rural Pennsylvania.
Pan Am 103 feels more insulated. There were 190 Americans on the plane and 37 of them had roots in the community where I have lived all of my life. There is a permanent link between Syracuse and Lockerbie, Scotland, a rural town in southwest Scotland. Syracuse University has curated it with academic opportunities and athletic outreach. Why? The sleepy town was ripped apart when a plane exploded in the skies overhead, raining down unimaginable horror in their fields and killing 11 people on the ground.
“What could I do to say I was sorry?” Roy Simmons Jr. told a journalist in the aftermath. Syracuse University’s famed lacrosse coach would make many journeys to Lockerbie to nurture this connection. “What could I do to have this village see intelligent, vibrant students alive? All they knew about Syracuse University students, they found them in the fields.”
The grief lives on. For the parents, who may still bargain or experience depression, but have accepted. For the institution, which keeps the eternal flame burning bright. For Lockerbie, which continues to heal but still bears the scars of that night. And, for the remaining gatekeepers of these memories, a group of Boomers and Gen X’ers that remember a shaken Ron Curtis reporting from the SU Quad in 1988.
On the occasion of the 25th anniversary, Sean Kirst wrote a column for Syracuse.com and The Post Standard about Syracuse University’s Pan Am 103 archives and its curator:
Box 004 contains personal artifacts carried onto Flight 103 by Alexander Lowenstein, one of the SU students who died while flying home after several months abroad. Peter Lowenstein, Alex’s father, said he and his wife, Suse, were told their son wore the sweater into Heathrow Airport on the late December day when he left London. The family believes Alex removed the sweater and stowed it in an overhead bin. After the bomb went off, a burst of wind carried the sweater away from the fire and shattering violence. It drifted, somehow undamaged, to the ground.
Like much of Sean’s work, it’s a must read.
At 2:03 p.m. EST on Saturday, Dec. 21, services will take place in Syracuse, N.Y. and Arlington, Va. Candles will be lit and prayers will be said. Bells will toll. Tears will be shed.
I find the phrase “Never forget” to be meaningless, a cop out because it requires no effort.
Saturday we will remember, as we do each year.
Final thoughts on finality…
“We live neither in the valley of the shadow of death nor atop the mountain of redemption, that we live instead in a desert of shifting sands where the best we can do as we seek to come to a better place and a better time is to press our bodies against those who falter and are about to faint, hold them close and upright until we come to the next resting place, there to regather our energy and then to resume the journey.”
— Rabbi Charles Sherman
Dirt Nap is the Substack newsletter about death, grief and dying that is written and edited by Jared Paventi. It’s published every Friday morning. Dirt Nap is free and we simply ask that you subscribe and/or share with others.
We are always looking for contributors and story ideas. Drop us a line if you have interested in either space at jaredpaventi at gmail dot com.
I’m all over social media if you want to chat. Find me on Facebook and LinkedIn. I’m also on Bluesky, and doom scroll Instagram at @jaredpaventi.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or chat live at 988lifeline.org. For additional mental health resources, visit our list.
Thanks for this. I was graduate student at SU when that happened. I was still at school, wrapping up stuff, despite the fact that it was mostly cleared out for the holiday. Not sure why, but there is a memory seared into me. I was walking across campus that night, wafting snowflakes were illuminated under the path's lights. It seemed surreal knowing I was headed to TA's office in the history department (Maxwell School), just living my life, assuming I had so much time ahead. Just like those fellow Orangemen and women when - just like that! Strange how memory works. How strong this one still is after all those years.