It was a chilly December morning. No snow on the ground, though.  I was playing the role of “Supermom” yet again.  The two year old was running around doing what two year olds do, and the baby was sleeping away the day.  Meanwhile, I had some packing to do, hair to wash, and cookies to bake before our ride came to take us to the airport.  Our sister was coming home today and everyone was excited!  It had been a little over three months since her plane took off for London, England and even though she would call every now and again it could not match the relief and excitement that everyone felt on this day: December 21,1988.

Pam lived fresh home baked cookies.  She especially loved MY oatmeal cookies.  My apartment was filled with the aroma of them as I was preparing a double batch to surprise her with at the airport.  I believe I was on the second dozen when the phone rang.  It was our dad calling from the apartment above mine.  He wanted to know what returning flight number Pam had left with us.  She had written it in pencil and I had put it in the china cabinet.  It had been there ever since she left so it was sort of faded.  From what I could tell though, it looked like Pan Am #103.  He asked if I were sure.  I wasn’t, but I said yes anyway so I could get back to what I was doing.

The phone rang again a short while later.  This time Daddy wanted to know if I was watching the news: CNN in particular.  I wasn’t.  I had lots of things to do so that when my mother and three other sisters got here they would not have to wait for my two kids and me to get ready. I turned on the television anyway.  I didn’t even have a chance to turn to CNN because every channel had a “ breaking story” about a plane that had taken off from London’s Heathrow Airport and went down in a ball of flames over a small village in Scotland called Lockerbie.  I couldn’t believe it!  I was certain they said Pan Am flight number 103, but I wasn’t certain that was HER flight number.  I had to call my mother and get the more definite information from her because you don’t just accept information like that about someone in your family.  It was now early afternoon, but I knew she hadn’t left Battle Creek yet.

Her phone rang.  My fourteen-year-old sister answered on the other end.  She didn’t sound upset or nervous or anything so I took that as a good sign.  I asked her if Mama was busy.  She asked me if this was about Pan Am.  I said yes and that was when she told me that their pastor was there.  I took that as a not-so-good sign.  My mother had been pre-occupied there just as I had been here.  She was preparing for her daughter to come home and, like myself, had no interest in watching television either.  She had heard nothing until her pastor came to her door.  When he got on the phone with me there was no clearer sing for me to see.  The faded flight numbers on the paper in my china cabinet did indeed read “Pan Am flight #103 to New York then to Detroit on the 21st of December 1988.

As I waited for my husband to arrive home from work, I tried to convince myself that Pam had missed her flight and was most likely trying to call home.  She was probably having a hard time getting through because of all the people tying up the phone lines trying to find out about their loved ones who actually were on the plane.  Yes, that sounded pretty good to me.  But as time went on the news reports began to show the flight manifest.  The Detroit stations showed all the Michigan passengers in alphabetical order and when the H’s went by I didn’t see her name.  I was a little excited so I called my mother again only to find out that she did see her name on the national news.  I hung up and watched again.  There was her name after all.  It was the only name out of order.  It was at the bottom of the list.  Just then my husband knocked at the door.  It was as if God knew that right at that moment I needed somebody strong to lean on, and here was my strength.  Maybe he could make sense of it all for me; tell me that I was just anxious to see my sister and was hearing things the wrong way.  (After all, these kinds of things just don’t happen in my family).  But he could offer no such words.  This was not a dream.  This was not my imagination.  He could not lie to me.  My little sister was dead.

Pamela Elaine Herbert was only nineteen years old.  A junior at Bowdoin College in Portland, Maine, she had decided to study a semester abroad at the London School of Economics.  Her first plan was to go to Italy and I am not sure why she changed her mind.  If she hadn’t changed her mind she would have been on a flight that returned home earlier that day.  Instead she chose London and was returning home with many other students from the Syracuse University program.

This was not an “accident”.  (I hate it when people call it that!)  This was a malicious and planned “incident”.  Nor was this a “crash”.  This was a deliberate “explosion” which destroyed the lives of many people.  And this is not an “anniversary”.  Anniversaries are celebrations of positive things in life.  This is a memorial of a very tragic event.  One of the only comforts came from knowing that the plane did not explode over the ocean as it is said to have been the intent, therefore, every body was recovered and returned to the grieving families.

As we come to the 10th Year of Reflection let us acknowledge that anger, plots of vengeance and retaliation, law suit settlements, court trials, and subsequent prosecutions will never change the internal and eternal memories we have of our loved ones lost on that day.  Remember the things that are just, pure, lovely, and of good report. And if there be any virtue, or any praise the think on these things.
 

VaNessa (Herbert) Drew
December 15, 1998