Published on SUNDAY, December 25, 1988
© 1988 The Arizona Republic

For many in this small farming community, the Christmas season ended Wednesday night. Today will be just another day.

By Saturday, Christmas Eve, sales in stores on the main street had dwindled to a near standstill in the wake of Wednesday night's crash of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed all 258 people aboard and at least 16 in Lockerbie, where 10 others are unaccounted for.

''Nobody wants to buy Christmas wrapping paper,'' one vendor said.

Others took down Christmas decorations.

At the Town Hall, turned into a temporary morgue accommodating about 80 bodies from the tragedy, the Christmas tree was taken down in respect for the dead.

Churches prepared services of grief and mourning instead of Christmas cheer.

The Rev. Alan Neal, rector of All Saints Scottish Episcopal Church, said that he thought residents had been strong but that the worst emotional pain was yet to come.

''People have kept up their spirits reasonably well, but I think the depression might set in after New Year's,'' he said.

Some townspeople said the only joy left in Christmas was for the children. Several mothers said they had been asked if ''Santa will know where to find us.''

''Christmas is not going to be Christmas at all, but just another day of the week, although people with children will make an effort,'' one mother said.

As the grim search for bodies continued on Christmas Eve, Lockerbie resembled a town under wartime occupation. Hundreds of soldiers and police worked in the town and surrounding fields.

Lockerbie also became temporary home to hundreds of journalists from around the world who wandered the main street talking into cordless telephones.

A team of psychologists and social workers was in the village helping townspeople, as well as some arriving American relatives of crash victims, come to terms with their grief.

''It won't be until all the media and the police and troops leave the town that people will really be able to come to terms with what has happened here and we can be left to bury our dead,'' said Eddie Gibb, manager of the Crown Hotel.

The local automobile association denounced ''morbid'' sightseers whose vehicles added to traffic congestion on the roads leading to Lockerbie and hampered emergency services.

It was to get a look at the worst catastrophe in recent Scottish memory. The worst previous tragedy in the region was a train crash May 22, 1915, about 12 miles southeast of Lockerbie. Two passenger trains and a troop train collided, killing 227 people, including nearly all the soldiers on the troop train.

It was Britain's worst train disaster -- as Wednesday's crash was its worst air tragedy.

Flight Sgt. David Whalley, a Royal Air Force officer who has dealt with plane and mountain disasters for 20 years said, ''If the cause of this crash is proven to be sabotage -- that one man can inflict this on other human beings -- it is beyond belief.''

The affliction was on the living as well as the dead. Some of the rescuers were in their late teens and early 20s.

''What our lads found was so appalling it is bound to have affected them. The crater (left by the fuselage destroying homes) is the worst,'' one rescuer said. ''They will likely need some counseling help after this.''