It’s been 35 years since 270 lives were lost in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing. Thirty-five of those lost were students at Syracuse University.
Each year, a remembrance scholar is chosen to represent each life lost in Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988.
It’s places like the wall of remembrance on Syracuse University’s campus where those Remembrance Scholars can reflect. In the archives of the university’s library, they dive deep into the lives of those lost.
Hannah Starorypinski is a senior Remembrance Scholar. In Bird Library on Syracuse University’s campus, she delves into the life of Wendy Lincoln.
“You can read someone’s bio and know not that much about them, but in these letters, you just get so much more of a fuller picture of who Wendy was,” said Starorypinski.
Lincoln was an art student, remembered in many ways in the archive, including a poem, a graduation card and a photo.
“In almost every single photo while she was abroad, she was carrying cameras,” said Starorypinski. “It’s so easy to look at any terrorist attack and think ‘this happened to a lot of people; that’s sad,’ but then you look and someone and this happened to this person, and this person had a full life and that was taken away from them.”
Starorypinski says she has felt grief while learning about someone who died 35 years ago.
“[I’m] perhaps not even grieving Wendy as much as the life that she could have had," said Starorypinski. “There’s someone new every single year to remember and grieve Wendy, and carry on her legacy, and tell other people her story. We still remember every single year, and I think that highlights the gravity of what happened.”
On the 35th anniversary of the attack, loved ones are still waiting for justice to be served in the case. Abu Mohammad Mas’ud Al-Marimi appeared in D.C. circuit court last year. He is accused of creating the bomb used in the attack. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the maximum penalty is life in prison.
"In the decades since this horrific attack, the United States and our Scottish partners have not stopped in our pursuit of justice," President Joe Biden said in a statement marking the attack.