On a gray day in December, at a cemetery in Cherry Hill, U.S. flags fluttered over dozens of graves, covering the field of yellowed grass with a quilt of red, white and blue.
The dull hum of a jumbo jet sounded in the distance, but Stan Maslowski didn't notice. His thoughts were elsewhere, in a less tranquil world -- one begun 10 years ago when a terrorist bomb exploded in an airplane over Scotland.
He walked past the flowers, the flags, the rows of graves, and stopped at the headstone with a ballet slipper carved on the left corner.
Loving Daughter
Diane Maslowski
Aug 10 1958 - 1988.
Maslowski, 67, leaned to brush a leaf off his daughter's gravestone.
"When I came here, it used to be with grief," he said. "Now it's with bitterness."
His daughter was one of the 259 passengers who died 10 years ago today, on Dec. 21, 1988, when a terrorist bomb exploded on a 747 jumbo jet bound from London to New York. The blast, at 31,000 feet, rained wreckage and bodies on the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 11 people there.
There were 189 Americans on board; 41 were from Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The average age of the passengers was 27.
They will be remembered today at a service in Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington, and in Lockerbie.
They included college students and a professor, chemists and stock brokers. Many were coming home for the holidays. Searchers found presents, still gift-wrapped, in the wreckage.
A decade later, many families of the dead feel as incomplete as they did that first Christmas. There is little sense of closure, if closure is possible. Justice, or something close to it, has been elusive and bogged down in diplomatic wrangling.
"Before Pan Am 103 and after Pan Am 103," Maslowski said. "That's how we seem to measure life anymore."
Two Libyan suspects -- Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, both believed to be Libyan intelligence agents -- were indicted in 1991. But neither have been handed over by Moammar Gadhafi's government to face trial -- even though a neutral site, the Netherlands, had been agreed upon. This, despite U.S. and British trade sanctions imposed on Libya in 1992 and 1993.
And some relatives shake their heads each time the U.S. inflicts a harsh, swift blow against terrorists, or governments that sponsor terrorism.
Ten years too late, they say.
They point to this year's retaliatory air strikes in Sudan and Afghanistan days after the bombing of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and the swift indictments, arrests and extraditions of suspects in those bombings.
They also consider the latest bombing of Iraq for Saddam Hussein's refusal to comply with U.N. weapons inspections -- strikes that have U.S. airports and embassies on heightened alert for still more terrorist acts.
Washington should have taken this approach years ago when the trail of the Pan Am 103 bombers led to Libya, the families contend -- even if it meant destabilizing the Middle East.
"The United States has taken unilateral action for much less serious reasons," said Joe Horgan of Upper Gwynedd, whose sister-in-law's husband, Michael Doyle, was traveling on Pan Am 103.
"Ten years later, there's still no closure, no justice for 270 people," Horgan said. It was this, the worst-ever terrorist act against U.S. civilians overseas, that changed American attitudes, Horgan said: "We put a face on terrorism."
Horgan was watching TV when the news broke: a U.S.-bound jetliner had crashed in Scotland.
"I said, 'Oh, my God, Mike's coming home today,' " recalled Horgan, 45, a burly man with sandy hair who runs a construction company in North Wales, Montgomery County.
Less than 30 hours later, he was on a plane to Scotland to search for Doyle. When he arrived in Lockerbie, Horgan said, he saw "a gorgeous peace of earth desecrated by the crash."
The bomb had exploded in the front cargo hold. The nose cone landed in a field four miles away; the wing pocked a road. Fuselage chunks landed in backyards, on roofs, on cars.
There were parts of bodies embedded deep in the ground. There were watch straps, wedding rings, and pieces of Christmas presents, still in wrapping paper.
As the days passed, passengers' belongings were gathered and tagged inside a warehouse -- dubbed "the property store" to match them with bodies. Volunteers from Lockerbie washed tattered shreds of clothing, erasing, as best as they could, the traces of the bomb.
Horgan remembers a woman who ironed a Bible, page by page.
In the aftermath of Pan Am 103, the grieving families organized to seek prosecution of the Libyan suspects. But soon they were disagreeing over how justice should be accomplished. Egos clashed. Some families wanted Libya bombed; others saw that as unrealistic.
Today, dozens of lawyers represent the families, and various suits against Pan Am have been settled out of court.
Despite some disagreements, the families lobbied Congress and held news conferences and rallies. They helped create a presidential commission on aviation safety, helped push through several air-safety acts and sanctions against Libya, and fought successfully to get the indictment of the Pan Am suspects unsealed. They also have counseled victims of other airline disasters.
Sometimes, when an airline pilot's voice crackles over the intercom, Kathy Daniels Tedeschi's fists clench and her nails dig into her palms.
Especially if the altitude of 31,000 feet is announced.
"I'm OK on the takeoff, and once I get past 31,000 feet, I'm really OK," said the mother of three as she sat in her living room recently in Belle Mead, N.J., near Princeton. "Some of the times I've fainted have been when the plane was coming down."
Four months after her husband, William Daniels, a chemist, died in the Pan Am bombing, Tedeschi visited Lockerbie. She went to Tundergarth Parish Church, across from the field where the nose cone had landed. Her husband's body was found near the church.
"It was the closest to the church of any of the bodies," Tedeschi said.
That day, one of the locals had shown her a still-ticking watch found in the mud near the church. She recognized the wristband. It belonged to her husband.
"I regarded it as a miracle," said Tedeschi, a soft-spoken woman with a Southern accent who is now remarried. "I felt closer to him. Because it had been on him. I felt like he was still a part of me."
For her and some other Pan Am relatives, the healing began right there, in Lockerbie. Dozens made pilgrimages and forged long-lasting friendships with locals and other U.S. victims' families.
"The compassion of those people in the middle of a disaster was overwhelming," Horgan said.
But sometimes, he says, they wish they had never met.
For much of the past decade, Tedeschi raised her three children -- ages 10, 7 and 2 when their father died -- on her own. The youngest, Melanie, is now 12. She can only see her father in relation to a terrorist bombing, but wants to know him.
"She has the least recollection of her father, but she has the most pictures of him out," said her mother.
"I still have a lot of hatred," Tedeschi added. "It would never bring Bill back, but the thought that people who are responsible for doing that are still alive and enjoying life, it kills me. The bomb completely turned our world upside down."
In September, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook announced what they described as a nonnegotiable proposal to try the two Libyan suspects in the Netherlands with Scottish judges.
In essence, they said, they were calling Gadhafi's bluff. In January, he had said he favored such a trial. As part of the plan, when the suspects were delivered, sanctions on Libya would be lifted.
On Wednesday, Libya's congress agreed to a trial in a neutral country for the two suspects, after more than three months of stalling and diplomatic wrangling, and even a visit by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
The reaction among Pan Am families has been skeptical. They have had their hopes raised before.
"We're cautiously optimistic that he'll turn them over," Horgan said. "I'll believe it when I see it."
State Department spokesman James Foley said last week that there was no deadline for transferring the suspects to the Netherlands -- but suggested that sanctions could be strengthened if it was not done soon.
"Time is rapidly running out, but we are still hoping to see a positive Libyan response," he said.
Some relatives have grown so angry and skeptical over the years that they believe any trial could lead to lenient sentences -- and is not the way to send a message to Libya.
"I've always said that only military action makes any sense," said Susan Cohen of Cape May Courthouse whose 20-year-old daughter Theodora was aboard Pan Am 103. "This is an act of war, and an act of war cannot be solved by a trial."
"It's a myth that tragedy makes you a better person," said her husband, Daniel. "It makes you a worse person. It makes you angry, bitter. That's not what you want to be. But that's what you become."
There was a time when Horgan wanted to see U.S. warplanes bomb Libya for what they had done to Michael Doyle. Now, his bitterness and anger have given way to pragmatism. He wants a trial, so evidence can come out, so the world will know, so the families can sit in the front row of the courtroom -- and look the defendants in the eye.
And if Gadhafi does not turn over the suspects by next month, Horgan wants to see an oil embargo.
"The American and British governments, I don't see how they can in good conscience allow this to go past the 10th year," he said.
At the cemetery in Cherry Hill, Stan Maslowski talked about the ballet slipper carved on his daughter's headstone.
Diane was a successful bond trader who once studied ballet at the Village School of Dance in Collingswood. After the crash, the property store in Lockerbie sent the Maslowskis her gold bracelet and necklace, her Skidmore College ring, and one pink ballet slipper.
Her parents keep the slipper with their family photos and wedding dresses, tucked in a cedar chest.
"What a waste of good lives," Maslowski said, gazing at the headstone. "They had their whole lives ahead of them. All the dreams. All the aspirations."