Syracuse, NY -- In the years after the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing that took the life of her husband, Kathy Daniels Tedeschi found family in places she never imagined.
She remarried, gained two stepchildren, and befriended seven other widows from the tragedy. She became close friends with residents of Lockerbie, Scotland, who showed her where her husband and others fell to the ground. She helps organize the annual memorial ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery at the Pan Am Flight 103 Memorial. Three years ago, her stepson, Chris Tedeschi, even married the daughter of another Pan Am Flight 103 widow.
This week, 25 years after the terrorist bombing, Tedeschi, her daughter, Melanie, and a lot of her adopted "family" from around the world will gather at Syracuse University to commemorate the 270 lives lost in that Dec. 21, 1988 air disaster over Scotland. SU lost 35 students in the bombing. Among the murdered passengers were Paula Alderman Bouckley and her husband, Glenn, of the town of Clay; two students from SUNY Oswego; and a Colgate University student. People from 21 nations died in the crash.
"The groups that gather at these ceremonies are like family," said Tedeschi, from Columbia, S.C. "It's been a very powerful, moving thing for me to hear what the scholars say about each of the students. Even though I did not know them (the students) when they were alive, I know them now."
Tedeschi had no association with SU before the bombing and for years afterwards. She was aware of SU's annual memorial service for its 35 students, aware that SU had created a yearly scholarship for two Lockerbie Academy students to attend the university, aware that SU funded 35 Remembrance Scholars each year from its own senior class. Each Remembrance Scholar is tasked with commemorating a SU Pan Am 103 victim during the year they hold the scholarship. Together the scholars plan the events of Remembrance Week.
Tedeschi came to her first Remembrance ceremony 10 years ago, when SU extended an invitation to the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 Inc. to hold its annual meeting at Syracuse. The university provides the group free meeting space in Bird Library.
"For the longest time, I didn't go," Tedeschi said. "I figured it was for the parents of SU students."
SU has played a significant role building the Pan Am Flight 103 family. In 1990 it established the SU Pan Am Flight 103 archives at Bird Library, which has become a repository for all things related to the bombing and to the victims' families. It began as an archive for the student victims and their families and over time grew to include all the flight's victims.
"It was the logical place for us to expand and make a place where all 270 families can donate material and know their loved ones will be remembered forever," said Edward Galvin, SU's director of archive and records management.
Last month, Galvin and Cara Howe, assistant archivist for the Pan Am Flight 103 archives, traveled to Lockerbie for their first time to record oral histories from residents, police and other first responders who witnessed or worked at the disaster site.
The video interviews help fill a gap in SU's historical record about the disaster and help provide a deeper understanding about the disaster's scope.
"It was the largest air disaster terrorist attack in UK history and still is," said Howe.
When the plane fell on Lockerbie, the local police agency, from the Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary, was the smallest police force in the United Kingdom. Some 1,000 soldiers and police came to Lockerbie from all over the UK, searching across a debris field of 840 square miles, communicating with few radios and land line telephones.
One Scottish police officer videotaped, Tom Gordon, who retired this summer, had stayed on the case for 25 years, Howe said.
Only one person has been convicted in the bombing, former Libyan agent Abdel Baset al-Megrahi. He was granted a "compassionate release" from a Scottish prison in August 2009 after doctors said he had advanced prostate cancer and only three months to live. He died May 20, 2012, two years and 9 months after his release. The U.S. and Scottish criminal investigations into the bombing remain open.
The histories Galvin and Howe gathered help close a loop between family members of victims and their Lockerbie "family."
One written account came from Lockerbie resident June Wilson, who owned a farm where many bodies fell that dark December night.
"Words are difficult to find to describe the horror we found there," Wilson wrote. "The first thing that struck us was silence. Our lights picked out three bodies, which we examined. Two were dead. The third, a stewardess, was moving, though with no discernible pulse. Kate ran to the cottage and brought blankets to cover her."
In April 1989, four months after the crash, Kathy Daniels traveled to Lockerbie with her three young children, then ages 2, 7 and 10. June Wilson stayed with the children as they fed her lambs, while Jimmy Wilson, her husband, showed Kathy Daniels where they had found the body of Bill Daniels, her husband.
Jimmy Wilson showed Kathy a watch he had found the day before her visit. It looked to her like Bill Daniels' watch. And the Daniels' son, Brice, then seven, could prove that it was. Brice had with him a piece of the leather watchband his father had cut off and given him, which matched the band on the found watch. Brice now maintains the website for the Victims of Pam Am Flight 103 Inc.
Kathy Daniels Tedeschi has returned to Lockerbie seven times, always visiting the Wilsons and other friends she's made there.
"I've been through so much with them, so many tears, so much laughter," she said.
This week, as SU commemorates the 25th anniversary, Tedeschi will again share tears, laughter and memories with part of her unexpected family, in Syracuse.
Contact Dave Tobin at 470-3277, dtobin@syracuse.com or via Twitter: @dttobin
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