Chaos descended on the calm, shattering the quiet of Lockerbie, Scotland, for years to come.

Syracuse University and Lockerbie, two communities on separate ends of the world, once nameless and faceless to one another, were joined by a shared grief on Dec. 21, 1988. Thirty-five SU students returning from studying abroad were among the 259 passengers killed when a terrorist bombing destroyed Pan Am Flight 103.

Chunks of the plane’s falling debris landed in Lockerbie, killing 11. In the years since, the small Scottish town, replete with decaying castles and striking scenery, has become synonymous with the disaster. For some, the mention of Lockerbie still drudges up recollections of the bombing that captivated the spotlight more than two decades ago.

But Lockerbie, beyond that fateful day, exists. It exists in the compassionate nature of the townspeople. It exists in the people’s bond with the land. It exists in those who were told of or still remember the tragedy but are not defined by it.

Lawrence Mason, a professor in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, has journeyed to Scotland 15 times in search of this identity. As the tragedy lingered and years passed, Mason sought to look outside the disaster that tainted the town’s humble and quiet existence. In his search, Mason found a sense of serenity at Tundergarth, the site opposite where the plane’s nosecone fell and many of the victims’ bodies were recovered, he said.

‘How could evil of this magnitude have fallen and impinged on this ground,’ Mason said. ‘It’s so spectacularly beautiful and serene and spiritual.’

Mason taught eight of the students who perished in the disaster and was especially close with Julianne Kelly and Alexia Tsaris. When Mason returned from photographing Lockerbie during one of his trips there, he showed a photograph of Tundergarth — rays parting the gray skies and reflecting pools of sunlight on the sweeping green expanse — to Tsaris‘ mother. At that moment, Mason learned he photographed the spot where Tsaris‘ body was found.

‘If Alexia could have chosen a place to die, this is the place she would have chosen,’ Tsaris‘ mother told Mason.

Mason included the photo in ‘Looking for Lockerbie,’ a book he collaborated with Melissa Chessher, chair of the magazine journalism department, that details how Lockerbie was affected by, but also removed, from the disaster.

In December 2001, Chessher began a sabbatical in Lockerbie, researching and interviewing for the book as she lived among the townspeople. Chessher said she was ‘immediately charmed’ by the quintessential small town and was struck by its idyllic nature.

During her stay in Lockerbie, a lawn chair factory opened miles in the distance to the dismay of Chessher’s neighbors, who complained of light and noise pollution despite being reasonably far from the factory.

‘It’s just softer, rounder, greener, quieter than any place I’ve ever been in, in America,’ she said, adding that she was fascinated by the number of grazing sheep.

Since 1988, images of Pan Am Flight 103’s charred wreckage have become almost inseparable from thoughts on Lockerbie. Seeing people in Lockerbie, their lives not bogged down by the weight of the tragedy, was refreshing, she said.

‘I just found it to be compelling in its ordinariness,’ Chessher said.

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When Judy O’Rourke visited Lockerbie a little more than a decade earlier than Chessher in May 1990, she packed the largest bottle of aspirin available. Before leaving for Lockerbie, O’Rourke said, she became physically ill at the mention of ‘Pan Am’ or ‘Lockerbie.’ Unsure of what to expect, she braced for the worst, but she was pleasantly surprised by the comfort she found in Lockerbie’s kind and welcoming spirit.

‘The town was still very much in recovery. But they were extremely, extremely compassionate and welcoming about it. And it just set the tone for years and years of relationships between us,’ said O’Rourke, a member of the Remembrance Scholarship selection committee and director of undergraduate studies at SU.

O’Rourke’s visit to Lockerbie was prompted by the university’s desire to cement the first pair of Lockerbie Scholarships, a yearlong scholarship awarded to two Lockerbie Academy students. The first pair of scholars graduated in 1991 and the scholarship has been awarded annually ever since.

Samuel Gorovitz, a philosophy professor, played a large role in creating the scholarship that was created to bind two communities that ‘developed profound respect for each other.’

In the beginning, Gorovitz said, it was ‘an act of tremendous courage’ for the parents of the first scholars to send their children to SU, considering the distance and mainstream coverage of New York centered on violence in the Bronx.

One of this year’s scholars, Fergus Barrie, wasn’t alive when Pan Am 103 rocked the quiet country town forever, but decades later, it is still affected by the repercussions of that day.

Barrie, whose home is six miles away from Lockerbie, said he was on vacation in New York City and visited Rockefeller Center when an older man, recognizing Barrie’s accent, asked where he was from. After being pressed, Barrie responded with ‘Lockerbie,’ altering the course of the conversation.

‘As soon as I said Lockerbie, his face completely changed,’ Barrie said.

Barrie said he believes the sequence of events surrounding the bombing is intriguing. To the east and west of Lockerbie are stretches of field. Had the plane gone down miles in either direction, Lockerbie would have been unaffected, he said.

‘No one would be killed in Lockerbie,’ Barrie said. ‘It’s weird how everything happened the way it did.’

Months into his first semester at SU, Barrie said the differences between university life and life in his hometown are apparent. In the quiet seclusion of Lockerbie, Barrie said, he could remain holed up in his home and go days on end without seeing another person.

Life at SU and the United States is a far cry from the slower paced, more agriculture-based existence in Lockerbie, Barrie said.

‘I haven’t seen a cow or sheep for three months. It’s a little strange,’ he said.

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One of Lockerbie’s traditions, the Gala, is usually held on a Sunday in June every year, Barrie said. The Gala is a town-wide celebration with a carnival-like atmosphere, in which a parade marches through the community and the townspeople join in on obstacle courses and street games.

It was at one these Gala’s, 19 years after the disaster, that Mason, professor in Newhouse and co-collaborator of ‘Looking for Lockerbie,’ said he felt the town was no longer weighed down by the sorrow of that day. Pipe bands played in the background as children sat smiling on their parents’ shoulders and many waved the Scottish flag. A generation after the bombing, he felt Lockerbie was fully healed.

‘You figure a generation is 20 years. This was roughly 19 years,’ Mason said. ‘It seemed to me there were enough children who didn’t have the horror of this experience, who put smiles back on faces of their parents, grandparents and had innocence and joy in their lives.’

dbtruong@syr.edu

Published on November 9, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Debbie: dbtruong@syr.edu | @debbietruong