A Poignant Tribute to Many Lives Lost : Memorials: The people of Lockerbie have not forgotten the 259 passengers and 11 locals killed by a terrorist bomb on Flight 103.

Seven years ago on Dec. 21, a terrorist bomb blew Pan Am Flight 103 from the sky, killing 259 in the plane and 11 on the ground.

Little evidence of the tragedy remains. Visible wreckage of the Boeing 747 was long ago removed, although bits and pieces were scattered over 20 miles and continue to turn up.

Just this year workers finished rebuilding the row of houses that the fuselage destroyed. A pile of gravel remained in one yard.

But the Scots have not forgotten. They have seen to it that the cost of the crime will never be forgotten.

Their tributes, long in place, seem more poignant than the cairn of 270 Scottish sandstone blocks President Clinton dedicated last month at Arlington National Cemetery.

A large section of a local cemetery has been set aside as a memorial, and there is a second shrine in a quiet churchyard outside of town opposite the pasture where the cockpit crashed to earth.

Allan Adams had moved to this village of 2,500 in the rolling grasslands near the English border early in December 1988. He sought a slower pace and serenity but soon found horror instead.

Adams, who manages the Mid Annandale Comrades Club on High Street, was in his parlor at 7 o’clock on a Wednesday evening, Dec. 21. His son had come home from work and had just sat down with a cup of tea. They were joined by the family dog.

Suddenly, a great roar filled the room, “like a truck coming through the house,” Adams recalled. The sound was so ominous that his son set his tea on the floor, an instant before an explosive crash shook the house like an earthquake.

Amid the chaos of that chilly Scottish night, Adams made an odd observation: “The dog drank the tea.”

Why do people remember such mundane things at such terrible times? Maybe that’s how they hang onto reality. To sanity.

With 244 passengers and 15 crew members, Pan Am Flight 103 was Britain’s worst air disaster--and peaceful little Lockerbie’s introduction to terrorism.

Lockerbie is situated low on a gently sloping hill. Driving through the neat, winding main street there is nothing apparent to mark its entrance into history, save a small road sign at the main intersection directing strangers to the Garden of Remembrance.

Following the sign between hedgerows a mile west on the other side of the motor way that carries traffic between Glasgow and Manchester-Liverpool, one comes upon Dryfesdale Cemetery.

There are no souvenirs for sale, no tacky exploitation of the tragedy. On one side at the rear of the cemetery is the Garden of Remembrance, a tidy plot of ground with grass and flowers tended regularly and, apparently, lovingly.

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Although there are some headstones, few of the victims are actually buried there. Many were never found or identified. On a rustic stone wall at the rear are several personal memorial plaques placed there by friends and family of those who died: the crew, some of the many students and servicemen, who with their families were on their way home to the United States for Christmas.

The neatly etched memorials contrast with the others in the grounds that date to the 17th century, when people died from more natural causes.

Four miles up the hill at the Tundergarth Parish Church east of town, a small stone building that used to house the caretaker’s tools now bears a small sign: “Remembrance Room.”

There are three large volumes on the shelves inside. One is simply 270 pages of each victim’s name in elegant gothic lettering, listed alphabetically.

Another is a painstaking production of biographies of each victim, also one to a page, most with a photograph, illustrating that each of the 270 was not just a statistic but an individual personality with dreams and plans.

Finally, there is a 2 1/2-inch-thick guest book that is almost filled. Entries blaze with heartbreak and rage at the perpetrators who are believed to be safely hiding in Libya.

Standing at the door, one can look across the road to the meadow where the cockpit landed.

“By that bit of heather there,” Adams says, indicating the spot.

Now sheep graze there again.

Why would Lockerbie go to such lengths to chronicle such a horror? This Scottish village didn’t ask for such notoriety. Wouldn’t it just as soon forget?

“Perhaps,” Adams says. “But we lost 11 of our own, too.”