A Joyless Christmas Season For Survivors in Lockerbie

In the dank air of a dull gray Scottish morning, the people of Lockerbie filed in and out of Christmas services yesterday with the grim mien of mourners. On the most joyful holiday of the Christian year, the townspeople were in no mood to count their blessings.

As they left the downtown churches, many stared blankly ahead. Others wept and clutched handkerchiefs or each other for support. For many of those who had lost friends or witnessed the devastation Wednesday night when a Pan AM Boeing 747 fell in pieces onto Lockerbie, Christmas was an unwelcome intrusion on grief.

"It's a terrible day," said Stanley Kennan, a supervisor at a local food factory as he sat in a pub, nursing a whiskey. A close friend of his, Tom Flannigan, along with Flannigan's wife and daughter, apparently died when the rear section of Pan Am Flight 103 fell on their house at 16 Sherwood Crescent.

A total of 11 residents of that street are missing and presumed dead. "People are still in shock. I don't think it has hit everybody fully yet," Kennan said.

Some churches have already held memorial services for the passengers and other victims of Flight 103. Yesterday, clergymen told packed crowds in the Presbyterian and Roman Catholic churches in town that it is difficult to draw any meaning from the disaster.

"This is a very strange and a very sad Christmas, one which none of us in Lockerbie will ever forget," the Rev. James Annand said in his sermon to an audience of 200 at the Drysedale Parish Church. "The sheer magnitude has so shocked us, so numbed our minds, that we are only now beginning to comprehend what's happening in our community."

At the Holy Trinity Catholic Church - whose pastor, the Rev. Patrick Keegans, barely escaped injury in his house on Sherwood Crescent - Bishop Maurice Taylor of Galloway preached to an audience that included several American relatives of some of those who died on Flight 103.

"Father, if you are the God of love, why did this thing happen?" Taylor asked. "How do we make sense of this seemingly senseless jigsaw?" Longtime residents say that many people have turned inward in confusion. "We sort of live close to the ground, as we say," said Annabella Kirkpatrick, who has lived in Lockerbie since 1939. "We usually all say good morning to each other on the street. But now, we don't speak to each other. We feel terrible about what has happened."

Lockerbie has received expressions of sympathy from around the world. Telegrams from Pope John Paul II, President Ronald Reagan and the Prince and Princess of Wales are pasted to shop windows.

In an unprecedented action, Queen Elizabeth II re-recorded her annual Christmas TV message to include her condolences to the people of Lockerbie.
Bouquets and flowers continue to arrive at the town hall, which has been turned into a temporary morgue.

"Auntie Dora and Uncle Maurice, you'll always be in our thoughts," said the card attached to a bouquet sent in the memory of a Sherwood Crescent couple who died when their house was obliterated by the debris.

Kennan said it will take time for him to get over the disaster. On that night, he had been forced to leave his home because of fears the jet debris had ruptured gas lines. He spent the rest of that night drowning his sorrow.

He paused and looked around the pub, which was filled with younger men. All they talked about was the crash. "I can assure you," Kennan said before walking off to have his Christmas dinner, "Lockerbie will never be the same."