Pan Am Bombing Victims Mourned on 2 Continents

Relatives of the dead of Pan Am Flight 103 mourned on two continents today for the 270 people killed exactly a year ago by a bomb that blew the plane out of the sky and sent flaming wreckage raining onto tiny Lockerbie.

About 150 people--local residents and relatives of U.S. victims--gathered in a rain falling from leaden skies for a service at Lockerbie’s Dryfesdale Cemetery on the first anniversary of the Dec. 21, 1988, disaster.

The plane was blown apart by a terrorist bomb at 30,000 feet, showering the Scottish border town with liquid fire and pieces of aircraft. All 259 people aboard the plane--many of them going home for the holidays--and 11 people on the ground were killed in Britain’s worst air disaster.

Mourners, their eyes brimming with tears, also marched in New York City in memory of Flight 103. Hope Asrelsky of Manhattan lost her daughter Rachel, 21, in the explosion.

“She was coming home for Christmas, and like all of them she didn’t make it,” Asrelsky said.

“Christmas will continue to be a hard time,” she said, her voice cracking. “Our lives have changed, totally changed. We lost an important person. All of us have. Every last one. These weren’t worthless people. They were the very best people that were taken.”

Representatives of Pan American World Airways, which today placed notices mourning the dead in international newspapers, attended the service at the Lockerbie cemetery.

But the chairman of the group representing British Lockerbie victims, Jim Swire, stayed away. Swire, who lost his daughter in the disaster, said he was too upset to attend.

More mourners and sympathizers were expected to jam Lockerbie streets for an evening memorial service.

Pan Am held its own services today at London’s Heathrow Airport, West Germany’s Frankfurt Airport and New York’s Kennedy Airport. The airline flew its flags at half-staff all day.

The mourners in Manhattan marched through icy winds and a light snow to a vigil at the Pan Am Building on Park Avenue, clutching red tulips and carrying placards that read: “When will we take a stand against terrorism?”

“I want to know why this terrorist act that could have been so easily preventable wasn’t preventable,” said Mary Ellen DeSantis, whose 25-year-old nephew was killed.