Candlelit vigil honors Pan Am Flight 103 victims, starts 37th Remembrance Week
Students and community members gathered outside Hendricks Chapel Sunday for a candlelit vigil honoring the 270 victims of the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing, 35 being SU students. The event marked the start of SU’s Remembrance Week. Taite Paradise | Contributing Photographer
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With a Sunday evening breeze and the glow of electric candles, guest speakers Linda Euto and Corri Zoli urged the Syracuse University community to honor and “find meaning” in the memories of the victims of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing.
Students and other members of the SU community surrounded the front steps of Hendricks Chapel at an annual vigil honoring the lives of the 270 people — including 35 SU students — killed in the 1988 terrorist bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. Speakers at the vigil reflected on this year’s Remembrance Week theme: “Look Back, Act Forward.”
“To look back is to refuse forgetting,” Euto said. “It is to say these lives mattered, their laughter, their work, their promise, their presence mattered, and by remembering them, we resist the numbness that tragedy tries to leave behind.”
The ceremony, kicking off Remembrance Week, included remarks from Euto and Zoli — who knew two passengers on the flight — the university’s 35 remembrance scholars, a performance by the Black Celestial Choral Ensemble and a closing prayer by Hendricks Chapel Vice President and Dean Brian Konkol.
Scholars Jacquelyn Trotman and Annaliese Pillitteri opened the vigil, calling Remembrance Week a “difficult,” but necessary time to acknowledge the lives lost in a “senseless act of terrorism.”
Every spring, SU selects 35 rising seniors to become Remembrance Scholars for the following academic year, paying tribute to the students studying abroad in London and Florence, who were killed on the flight.
“In this tragedy among the students, flight crew and civilians, we lost sisters, brothers, friends and family,” Trotman said in her opening remarks. “We as scholars have the incredible privilege to carry forward the legacy of these individuals, to commemorate the lives of those who were lost, and to act boldly with their memory toward a kinder future.”
Euto remembered her friend Wendy Lincoln, who was killed in the bombing, as a talented artist and dancer who could “light up a room” with her laughter. Zoli remembered her SU roommate Miriam Wolfe as an aspiring actress and a “force of nature” who could “do it all.”
“Every time we listen to someone’s story, every time we teach with kindness, every time we make space for another, we act forward,” Euto said. “We make the world just a little less cold and a little more full.”
The Remembrance Scholars continued the ceremony by each sharing the 270 names of those killed in the attack and lighting their candles as they walked across the chapel’s front steps.
Pillitteri said the ceremony serves as a space to connect with attendees as she and other scholars work to educate the SU community about the importance of Remembrance Week.
“This ceremony is so important for people to know and understand why we do this,” Pillitteri said. “It’s because we’re looking back on these people and honoring them, and we’re moving toward the future, ending terrorism and ending any sort of hardship we’re giving to families and friends.”
Marc Pantano, another Remembrance Scholar, said the event fostered a sense of community on campus, adding that feeling emotions together is more meaningful than experiencing them alone.
“This was like one of the first times that everyone’s coming together, at least during the semester, to really be thinking about the same thing,” Pantano said.
Remembrance Scholar Ellie Allen said recalling the names of all 270 victims — not just the 35 students lost in the attack — made the ceremony more powerful. Unlike her fellow remembrance scholars representing SU students, she represents the flight crew aboard Pan Am Flight 103.
For Pillitteri, learning about the life of her assigned passenger, John Patrick Flynn, shaped “unfathomable” meaningful moments that have enriched her time on campus.
“You learn to hear their story and see it in a different light. Rather than hearing it from them, you see it through news, you see it through archives,” Pillitteri said. “Something about that is so beautiful, because you learn to love someone you’ve never met.”
Remembrance Week continues with more events on Wednesday, when scholars will hold their annual 35-minute “Sitting in Solidarity” vigil on the Shaw Quadrangle.
