Published: Thursday, January 5, 1989
Section: FRONT
Page: 1A
LOCKERBIE, Scotland -- The cold rain fell like tears and soaked the bouquets of white and yellow flowers outside the village church. Words written to the memory of the victims of Pan Am Flight 103 ran in rivulets.
One card: "Karen, we love you and miss you."
Another: "To Our Beloved Thomas. You are always in our hearts. Hurry home. Love, Mom and Dad."
The townspeople of Lockerbie were joined by friends of the dead and leaders of the nation Wednesday to mourn the Dec. 21 bombing that killed 259 people aboard Flight 103 and 11 on the ground.
During a remembrance service broadcast nationwide, the Rt. Rev. James Whyte, moderator of the Church of Scotland, told more than 2,000 mourners, including Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Pan Am Chairman Thomas Plaskett, that the bombing was
"an act of human wickedness . . . cold and calculated evil." Yet he said it should not be avenged, for "there is nothing that way but bitterness and the destruction of our own humanity."
"We may be tempted, indeed urged by some, to flex our muscles in response, to show that we are men," Whyte said. "To show that we are what? To show that we are prepeared to let more young and more innocent die? To let more rescue workers labor in more wreckage to find the grisly proof, not of our virility, but of our inhumanity."
As Whyte spoke, investigators only briefly interrupted their painstaking search of windswept nearby hillsides for bodies and clues, resuming their work when the 40-minute service ended. They do not know who planted the bomb or how.
Pieces of wreckage, scattered as the jumbo jet tumbled in pieces from six miles in the air, have been found as far as 50 miles away. The search area has grown to 150 square miles.
Search teams have found 242 bodies. So far, 149 have been identified and released to relatives, including 23 on Wednesday.
"We're still searching," said police Superintendent Angus Kennedy. When asked when the search will end, he said, "It's difficult to answer, given the terrain we're working with. There may come a time when there are simply no more bodies to be found, but we are not at that point yet."
Ninety-three bodies lie in a temporary morgue at the town hall.
Each time pathologists match teeth and fingerprints and
put a name to a body, the name is written in large green letters on
white poster board in the police auditorium. Number 81 is Joanne Flannigan,
10, of Sherwood Crescent, Lockerbie. She will be buried this morning. Number
111 is John Binning Cummock, 38, of Coral Gables.
Eight Lockerbie residents are still listed as "missing," although there is no hope that they are alive. Police believe they were burned on Sherwood Crescent, where some of the jet's huge fuel tanks crashed and exploded, destroying two homes and gutting many others.
The explosion left a crater 20 feet deep and 150 feet long. On Wednesday, two weeks after the crash, members of the Royal Air Force were still digging through the muddy red clay and sifting shards of metal blasted deep into the bank. The gash reeked of airplane fuel.
"They're down on their hands and knees going through every piece of dirt," policeman Michael Dean said. "It's another search day for us. The helicopters are working the hills."
Dean said workers have located 80 percent to 90 percent of the plane. An estimated 20 percent to 30 percent of the parts have been taken to labs for examination by investigators who want to know more about the bomb. It was believed to have been made of Semtex, a powerful plastic explosive loaded into the plane's cargo in Frankfurt or London.
Residents say Lockerbie is recovering from the shock of the fiery night of Dec. 21. Christmas came and went without anyone having much of a stomach for celebration.
Stores and pubs closed for the memorial service Wednesday. Shops, banks and restaurants in the town of 3,500 bear jars for relief money. More than $1.1 million has been collected throughout the country.
As the press and dignitaries joined the townspeople for the Christian memorial service at Dryfesdale Parish Church, some saw the prayers as the beginning of the end of grief.
"Devastating is the only word for it. I think people needed something, something where they can go to church and start again," said Irene Bryden. Only a few houses separated her elderly aunt from the fireball, "so it's a bit of a thanksgiving as well as a memorial," Bryden said.
The Rev. Patrick Keegens, a Catholic priest, offered a prayer thanking God "for the gift of life which our dead brothers and sisters shared with us, and for the love, joy and happiness which they gave those closest to them. . . . We thank you for the fond memories which can never die but which will always be treasured to grow stronger in our hearts."
U.S. envoy Charles Price read a passage from St. John. The rector of Lockerbie Academy read from St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians. The mourners sang the 23rd Psalm and Lord of All Hopefulness, Lord of All Joy.
The service was attended by more than 100 Pan Am employees from around the world, including Miami. More than 200 relatives of Flight 103's passengers were there.
One red-eyed Pan Am flight attendant said she felt a need to see where her friends died.
"We're based in London, we knew the whole lot," she said, wrapping her arm around a friend. She said she can't seem to make sense of the crash. Her thoughts are "all jumbled, all mixed up. I don't know what to think."