Volume 34
Fall-Winter
2008 |
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On the evening of December 21, 1988, Pan
American Flight 103 flew into the winter
solstice skies over London’s Heathrow airport as
it began the final leg of a journey that originated
in Frankfurt and was to conclude at New York’s
JFK airport. The plane carried 259 people; in
addition, its cargo hold carried a suitcase that
contained a radio cassette player filled with
Semtex explosives. The bomb exploded at 7:03
p.m., breaking the plane into pieces. Passengers,
their personal effects, and flaming debris rained
onto Lockerbie, a small village in southern Scotland.
All on board were killed, as well as eleven
Lockerbie residents who died when one of the
plane’s wings incinerated their neighborhood.
Beyond the private tragedies of 270 dead, the
Lockerbie air disaster was politically significant.
Pan American World Airways was globally perceived
as the American flagship, even though it
was in actuality a private carrier. Although the
bombing of Pan Am 103 was a continuation of
a number of terrorist attacks on United States
interests, this attack was the first time in modern
history that a large group of American civilians
were the direct target of a terrorist attack. The
bombing of this plane resulted in the United
States’ largest death toll from a terrorist attack
until September 11, 2001.
Syracuse University Remembrance Quilt, which commemorates the thirty-five Syracuse students lost in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103. Photos courtesy of the author.
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Three thousand miles from the flames and
wreckage of Lockerbie, Syracuse University
faced its own devastation. Thirty-five students
of this central New York university were on
board Pan Am 103, returning from a semester’s
study in Europe. On the evening of December
21, the plane was filled with youthful passengers:
the median age of all the victims was 29
years, and the mode age was 20 years. Although
many colleges and universities lost students as a
result of the bombing of Pan Am 103, Syracuse
University’s loss of thirty-four undergraduates
and one graduate student was one of the largest
simultaneous student death tolls in United
States’ collegiate history. This extensive loss of
life ensured that the university would publicly
commemorate their students. On the evening
of the disaster, students, faculty, and staff joined
in a candlelight vigil. Over subsequent years, the
university held memorial services, constructed
a Place of Remembrance, and instituted a
Remembrance Scholars program. Each year,
thirty-five seniors are designated Remembrance
Scholars and charged with creating activities and
traditions that commemorate the lives of the
thirty-five SU students lost on Pan Am 103.
Colleges and universities have unique
temporal contexts. Department curricula
rely upon historical knowledge and disciplinary
understanding. Collegiate traditions and
rituals provide a group identity that transcends
normal temporal boundaries. Yet colleges and
universities are transitory in nature; students
flow into and out of the university community
as they matriculate and then graduate. In 1998,
although the bombing of Pan Am 103 was a
defining event for the school, it was “history”
to undergraduates who were between the ages
of eight and twelve when the disaster occurred.
Maurice Halbwachs, the first sociologist to use
the term “collective memory,” explained that
all collective memory is constructed and organized
by social groups; individuals then do the
actual work of memory (1950). Halbwachs also
noted the difference between autobiographical
and historical memory. Autobiographical
memory is memory of events that a person
has experienced, which tends to fade and disappear
unless group members occasionally meet
and reinforce those memories. Consequently,
Halbwachs concluded that autobiographical
memory is “rooted in other people....Only
group members remember, and this memory
nears extinction if they do not get together
over long periods of time” (Coser 1992, 24).
Historical memory occurs when one does not
have personal experience of an event; it is created
through discourse, visual imagery, rituals,
and celebrations that commemorate the event.
Historical memory is thus a memory that is
stored and reproduced by social institutions.
The annual Remembrance Week at Syracuse
University creates and reinforces both autobiographical
and historical memory.
As the 1998 Remembrance Scholars gathered
to discuss potential commemorative activities
for the upcoming tenth anniversary, one of
the scholars convinced her peers to create a
remembrance quilt. There are many types of
quilts, including patchwork, crazy, mourning,
victory, and friendship quilts. Historically, quilting
has provided a sense of social solidarity and
group identity. Remembrance quilts began to
appear in the United States in the early 1800s.
Individual blocks were made by the women of
a community and were joined to create a quilt
for someone who was leaving the community. In
essence, the remembrance quilt was to remind
the owner to remember those left behind as a
result of a life transition.
The remembrance quilt concept was transformed
by the advent of the NAMES Project’s
AIDS Memorial Quilt in 1987. Cleve Jones, a
gay activist from San Francisco, created the
first panel for his best friend. As organizer of
the NAMES Project, Jones wanted to create grassroots communities of local support, as
well as a national memorial that would visually
represent the immense toll of the AIDS epidemic.
The three-by-six-foot panels have been
made by friends, family members, lovers, and
strangers to commemorate those lost to AIDS.
A number of people with AIDS have created
their own panels prior to their death (Sturken
1997, 188). The AIDS quilt was composed of
1,920 panels the first time it was displayed in
Washington, D.C., in October 1987; currently,
there are more than forty-six thousand panels.
The Syracuse University Remembrance Quilt is
different than traditional remembrance quilts,
since those remembered were unable to make
their own blocks. Just as the majority of the
AIDS quilt panels were created by community
members to commemorate their dead, the Syracuse
community gathered together to quilt individual
blocks in order to remind themselves of
those who had been lost from the community.
In a letter dated September 14, 1998, Remembrance
Scholar Kimberly Hamilton described
the quilt project to the parents of the Syracuse victims and requested “information such as a favorite color, special talent, or longtime hobby.
...We would also encourage you to send any
items, fabrics, or photographs you would like
incorporated in the quilt. No suggestion is
out of the realm of possibility.” None of the
Remembrance Scholars had quilting experience
and did not realize the immensity of the task
that they had assumed. The quilt was to be
presented at the tenth anniversary memorial
service that would be held a mere three months
and one week from the date of the letter. “Had
I not been naïve about quilting,” Hamilton later
recalled, “I might never have proposed the
idea. It has taken much more work than I ever
imagined and at times has been very emotional”
(Bédy 1998).
Boxes containing a variety of personal objects
began to arrive on campus. Several family
members sent single earrings that were found in
the wreckage; their matches were never found.
Another family sent an intramural field hockey
shirt that had been recovered from the debris.
Prior to its return to the family in 1989, the shirt
had been washed multiple times by women in
Lockerbie to remove the fuel and mildew that
was embedded in the material. A mother sent
fabric that she had purchased with her daughter
in London; they had planned to use it in a quilt
project when her daughter returned. Photos
abounded. A mother sent a piece of wallpaper
from her daughter’s childhood bedroom. Pajamas,
a favorite shirt, a dusty Boston Red Sox
cap, a cassette tape of a song written for one of
the victims—all of these items were entrusted
by grieving families to be incorporated into the
quilt.
The Syracuse University Remembrance Quilt
is not only a memorial for the bereaved and
the university community, but also a work of
art. Howard Becker claims that the existence,
form, and representation of all works of art
are determined by cooperating networks that
comprise various “art worlds” (1982). Although
many public commemorative projects are created
in an environment of conflicting intentions,
the Syracuse University Remembrance Quilt
was created in an intensely cooperative art
world of beginning and experienced quilters.
The Remembrance Scholars approached two
Syracuse University staff members who were longtime quilters, as well as a group of quilters
that met in the university chapel. A flyer inviting
students, faculty, and staff was distributed
throughout campus. Twenty-nine students (including
three males), six staff members, and a
faculty member’s spouse answered the initial
call. Individual quilt blocks were designed using
the information and artifacts sent by the
victims’ parents. Students and staff worked to
sew and then quilt each individual block. One
staff member decided that she wanted to place
at least two stitches in every student’s block. A
janitor worked on a block representing a young
man from his hometown. Ten women who were
members of a local quilting guild volunteered
to devote an entire December day to completing
the quilting, although they had no direct
relationship with Syracuse University and had
not known any of the students lost on Pan Am
103. Their participation was symbolic of the social cohesion that resulted from the loss of
so many students and is typical of the quilting
community.
The quilt’s finished size is 87 by 91 inches.
The quilt is composed of a center panel measuring
36 by 58 inches, surrounded by thirty-six
individual blocks. The design of the center panel
is based on an illustration created in 1989 by art
student Jonathan Hoefer. A dove of peace is
formed by the names of the thirty-five students.
The Remembrance Scholars approached a university
staff member, an experienced quilter, to
create the center panel. Initially, she was hesitant,
reasoning:
This is a painful thing for all of us, I have grieved privately for the thirty-five students
who were lost in that terrorist attack. One
side of me shies away, saying, “It’s time
to let it rest, it’s history, why bring it up
again?” And the other side of me understands
that those families do not want their
children to be forgotten. What a tragic
thing to have so many talented young lives
so cruelly thrown away, and what agony
those families have had to endure. This
is too worthwhile to ignore, and I can see
they need a lot of help to pull this off. I
just wish they had started last February,
not in mid-October!
The machine-appliquéd work took her more
than eighty hours over twenty-four days.
Thirty-five blocks are individual commemorations
of the students, arranged alphabetically
by last name. Letters that family members sent
in response to the quilting project are folded accordion
style and sewn into light orange borders
adjacent to the student’s block. A local sewing
store volunteered to embroider the students’
names on the blue lattice beneath the blocks.
The individual blocks are poignant reminders
of the vibrant interests and activities that filled
the lives of the students who were killed in the
bombing. A pocket of a favorite shirt holds a
cassette tape. Favorite authors and quotations
are interspersed with athletic logos, flowers,
musical instruments, and theatrical symbols.
On the upper right-hand corner of the quilt,
two blocks are intertwined by blue and red
bandanas tied together. Eric and Jason Coker
were twins. When they were small, their mother
dressed Eric in blue and Jason in red in order
to identify them at a distance. As college students,
they continued this differentiation when
they donned blue and red bandanas while they
worked for a landscape company. Although
they had matriculated at different colleges, they
both chose to study in the Syracuse University
London Program during the fall 1988 semester.
To mark their semester together, they decided to
receive symbolic tattoos; Eric chose the symbol
for the English pound, while Jason selected the
British flag. Those tattoos were used after the
crash to identify the twins, so that their bodies
could be returned to their family. These important
symbols are included in their quilt blocks.
Their childhood is also embedded in their quilt
blocks. Eric and Jason grew up with a beloved
dog, Shad, and a representation of his doghouse
crosses their blocks. Eric and Jason were individuals
who had strong individual interests and
talents, yet they were tied together in both life
and death, as surely as the two bandanas unite
their blocks.
The quilt’s thirty-sixth block is an embroidered
dedication, using words borrowed from
the university’s permanent memorial:
This Remembrance Quilt is dedicated to
the memory of the 35 students enrolled
in Syracuse University’s Division of International
Programs Abroad who died
with 235 others as the result of a plane
crash December 21, 1988, caused by a
terrorist bomb.
The dedication wording is not the only component
borrowed from other memorials for the
Pan Am 103 victims. Steve Berrell’s and Karen
Hunt’s quilt blocks include quotations that are
also found on their plaques at Lockerbie’s Dryfesdale
Cemetery. Wendy Lincoln’s quilt block
includes the dancer’s silhouette that marks the
headstone in her hometown cemetery. Cindy
Smith’s block includes an angel representing
the mahogany angel that was carved in her
memory and is used every year in her hometown
crèche.
The quilt was completed in time for the tenth
anniversary memorial service. Its usual home
is Hendricks Chapel at Syracuse University,
but it has traveled to a number of different
sites. After an exhibition in Lockerbie in 2000,
a local representative wrote the following in
the remembrance book that accompanies the
quilt:
“Remember us when you see these
blocks.” During its three week stay with
us the Remembrance Quilt has brought
with it an enormous wealth of feelings,
thoughts, information, and love. The love
contained within it is overwhelming and is
tangible. We in Lockerbie wish to include
our love into the quilt’s embrace and so
with our love we send it back to you.
The Syracuse University Remembrance Quilt
celebrates the individual lives lost on that winter
solstice evening. The comfort and warmth that
the quilt provides to family members and the
Syracuse University community is unmatched
by the many other memorials that dot the
United States and Scotland. As Shannon Davis’s
mother stated during an exhibition of the quilt
shortly before the fifteenth anniversary of the
downing of Pan Am 103, “Looking at the quilt
and knowing it’s coming close to the fifteenth
anniversary, of course, my heart still aches for
Shannon not being with us. But when I see the
quilt, I understand something bigger than us is
at work” (Bodwicz 2003)
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Dee Britton is a lecturer in the Syracuse
University Department of Sociology and
formerly served as visiting professor at
Colgate University and Hamilton College.
She has lectured on the commemorations
of the Pan Am 103 bombing
throughout the United States and in Italy,
Sweden, and Spain.
Detail of the quilt’s center panel. The names of the students form a dove of peace.
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The individual blocks are poignant reminders
of the vibrant interests and activities that filled
the lives of the students who were killed in the
bombing.
References
Becker, Howard. 1982. Art Worlds. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Bédy, Zoltan. December 7, 1998. Personal
Artifacts Form Remembrance Quilt. Syracuse
Record.
Bodwicz, Marty. August 13, 2003. Shelton
Woman Finds Comfort in Quilt. Huntington
Herald.
Coser, Lewis. 1992. Introduction: Maurice
Halbwachs, 1877–1945. In Maurice Halbwachs,
On Collective Memory, 1–34. Ed. and
trans. Lewis Coser. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Halbwachs, Maurice. 1950. The Collective Memory.
New York: Harper-Colophon.
Sturken, Marita. 1997. Tangled Memories: The
Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the
Politics of Remembering. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
This article appeared in Voices Vol. 34, Fall-Winter 2008. Voices is the membership magazine of the New York Folklore Society. To become a subscriber, join the New York Folklore Society today.
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