25 years after the terror attack on Pan Am 103: We will never forget, or stop praying for the families & friends of those who died.

December 22, 2013 By in Epicenter

panam103(Washington, D.C.) — Today, Lynn and I are praying for the families and friends of our 35 Syracuse University classmates who were murdered by a terrorist bomb over Lockerbie, Scotland. They were flying home from a semester abroad in London on Pan Am flight 103. The devastating attack occurred twenty-five years ago today in 1988.

It was our first personal exposure to Middle East terrorism, and it rattled us. I was a senior at S.U., having just studied abroad in Israel the year before. Lynn was a junior at S.U. She was a creative writing and Jewish studies major at the time. She had originally entered S.U. as a drama major, but switched in her sophomore year. Had she remained in the drama program, she very likely would have done the fall semester of her Junior year in London with her colleagues, and been on that flight back to the U.S. She knew people on that flight, and impacted her — and all of us at S.U. — very deeply.

Please join us in praying for all those affected by that terror attack, not just the families and friends of the Syracuse students, but those related to all of the 270 people who perished in the air, and on the ground in Lockerbie. We must never forget what happened, and we must never stop praying for those dear families and friends.

Here’s a bit of the coverage today:

“Families of some of the 270 people who died in an airliner bombing 25 years ago gathered for memorial services Saturday in the United States and Britain, honoring victims of a terror attack that killed dozens of American college students and created instant havoc in the Scottish town where wreckage of the plane rained down,” reported the Associated Press. “Bagpipes played and wreaths were laid in the Scottish town of Lockerbie and mourners gathered for a moment of silence at London’s Westminster Abbey, while U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told victims’ relatives at Arlington National Cemetery that they should take comfort in their unity even if time cannot erase their loss.”

“We keep calling for change, and fighting for justice, on behalf of those no longer with us. We rededicate ourselves — and our nation — to the qualities that defined the men and women that we lost,” Holder said.

“The events marked the 25th anniversary of the explosion of Pan Am 103, a New York-bound flight that exploded over Lockerbie less than an hour after takeoff from London on Dec. 21, 1988,” the AP noted. “Many of the victims were American college students flying home for Christmas, including 35 Syracuse University students participating in study abroad programs. The attack, caused by a bomb packed into a suitcase, killed 259 people aboard the plane, and 11 others on the ground also died. The Arlington ceremony took place beside a cairn of 270 blocks of red Scottish sandstone, a memorial structure dedicated to the attack. Wreaths flanked the structure, the ceremonial “Taps” was played and victims’ relatives recited the names of the people killed. Former FBI director Robert Mueller, said he would never forget the haunting sight of the victims’ personal belongings — a white sneaker, Christmas presents, a Syracuse sweat shirt, photographs — at a warehouse in Lockerbie when he traveled there to investigate the case as a Justice Department prosecutor.”

“Whitney Davis lost her younger sister Shannon, a Syracuse student, and friends in the explosion,” reported the AP. “She said she learned of the attack after returning home from Syracuse, which she also attended. There was initial hope that survivors would be found and uncertainty that the explosion was an act of terror. But the grief was immediate.”

“I was angry. I was in disbelief. Mom was in shock, my brother was not saying much and I just was throwing snowballs at the sky and wondering how this could have happened,” said Davis, of Bend, Ore., who brought her 8-year-old daughter to the memorial in Virginia. “It’s important that she know who her aunt was and who her aunt could have been.”

To read the rest of the story, please click here.

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