In Remembrance

It's the 22nd anniversary of the bombing of Pan Am 103. Thirty-five Syracuse University students returning from a semester abroad in London perished along with 224 others, plus people on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland. I was a student at Syracuse and spent a semester in London that year.

Ask anyone who attended Syracuse in 1988/1989 about the months following the bombing. It was as if the thousands of students, faculty and staff were in a collective state of paralyzing grief. One of my professors wrote the names of two deceased students on the chalkboard and said something like, "they were supposed to be in this class and they will be" and the names stayed up there all semester. At the memorial service, the student government president commented on how on a campus as large and diverse as Syracuse the loss of 35 students could be felt so deeply.

I often wonder if the students who go to Syracuse now appreciate the story behind the memorial in the photo. Probably not. It might be one of those things you have to live through to truly understand. I know that even after all these years whenever anything goes wrong on one of my flights, which frequently happens, I remember Pan Am 103 and the world shifts back into perspective.