“We think about New York City and 9-11, and how that city has such a mythology and a history that is known by the world, so it could take that tragedy and move forward,” explained Melissa Chessher co-author of Looking for Lockerbie (Worldwide Orange Publications, Syracuse; 244 pages; $85/hardcover). “I think for a really small place like Lockerbie it’s hard to be known for anything else. For people to appreciate and understand how much more this place is, than just where Pan Am 103 went down, is the most important objective of this book, and I hope it does that well.”
Chessher worked with her S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications colleague Lawrence Mason Jr. to recruit Syracuse University students over several years to visit Scotland, report on Lockerbie, and ultimately contribute articles and photographs to the book. “This book is so hard to describe,” said Mason, for 27 years a professor of Visual and Interactive Communication at Newhouse. “It was bound to be emotional right from the start because of my involvement with eight of the Pan Am victims. What surprised me was that when I took students there who had no connection to the disaster it was almost equally emotional for them. I didn’t expect that, but they felt the importance and the power and the significance of the event.”
Christina’s world: Lawrence Mason Jr. photographed Syracuse University student Christina Kelly meditating on the spot where the nose cone of Pan Am Flight 103 crashed to the ground at Tundergarth Mains near Lockerbie.
Lawrence Mason Jr. (MICHAEL DAVIS PHOTO)
The two will be returning to Lockerbie during SU’s spring break, March 6 to 15, in part to participate in a series of book signings. For those of you too young to remember, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded as it was flying over Lockerbie on Dec. 21, 1988, killing 270 people on board and on the ground. Among the passengers were 35 SU students returning home at the end of the semester.
Looking for Lockerbie represents a culmination of photographs and articles collected since Mason first traveled to Scotland in 1996. He had thought about visiting in 1991, when he taught a semester in London. “I really wanted to go then, though I didn’t know why,” he said. “My wife asked why I wanted to go but because I couldn’t really articulate it she said, ‘Let’s leave those people alone. Maybe we shouldn’t add to their troubles.’
“But by 1996, my next teaching assignment in London, I had a better sense of the need for closure for me,” he added. So with 15 photojournalism students in tow, Mason took a weekend field trip to Lockerbie. “We took the sunshine tour, which is really dark humor, because it was a tour of the Pan Am disaster sites. I came back to Syracuse thinking I had seen Lockerbie. I thought I’d never go to Lockerbie again until I realized I hadn’t seen the whole thing. I had just seen the disaster sites.”
Mason got his wake-up call when Alison Younger, a Lockerbie Scholar studying at SU, wrote an essay that he read at the dedication of his photography exhibit that commemorated the 10th anniversary of the disaster. “She wrote about a Lockerbie that I didn’t see when I was there,” he noted. “It was like a kick in the head. I had missed it all and I knew I had to go back.”
In 1999, Mason returned with photography students, and all of them stayed in Lockerbie residents’ homes. “We all got a different view of Lockerbie based on who we stayed with,” he said, “and that was the beginning of this being more than a journey of self-discovery; it was bigger than that. I thought about a book then but I knew we didn’t have anything approximating what we needed.”
Mason bounced the book idea off several friends, including Bob Gilka, former director of photography at National Geographic. “He said to me, ‘I think you’re the only people in the world who should tell this story.’ When Bob said that, I thought, all right then, we might be talking about a book here. I thought it would be much smaller, but in the intervening years I went back with many students and compiled 40,000 photos, which, in a town of 4,000 people, that’s quite a lot of coverage.”
Mason and Chessher met in 2000 to discuss options, including applying for a grant from SU to finance further visits to Scotland. Chessher, who chairs the magazine department at SU, lived in Lockerbie from December 2001 to May 2002; it’s one of her four visits. “I was only there a few months,” she said. “It’s a small town with a rural history and it’s very easy to feel like an outsider and quickly realize that you would have to be there many generations to be a part of the community. Still, I instantly felt connected to and protective of the place and the people. It started to annoy me that there was always a camera crew across from Tundergarth {where the jet’s nose cone fell}.”
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Chessher both wrote essays for the book and edited pieces written by students and by Mason. “I’m eternally grateful to Larry Mason because he’s the one with the emotional authority,” she noted. “He knew students who were on the plane and he was at the school when it was mourning and wrestling with this awful tragedy. I always felt like a tagalong.”
Then it came time to shop for a publisher. “We realized that we couldn’t describe this book as being like anything else,” he explained. “It couldn’t count as a travel book and it’s not about a disaster; it’s about a community. Neither one of us could think of any book that was remotely similar to this. How do you approach a publisher with a book that they can’t wrap their minds around?”
Ultimately, the two decided to self-publish the book, and use the resources of SU Press for distribution. “We would have had to turn over our manuscript to SU Press a year in advance of publication, and we just didn’t have that amount of time,” Mason noted. “We wanted this to be on the market by the 20th anniversary of the disaster.” They also wanted the victims’ families to be the first to see the book, when they met in Syracuse during Remembrance Week, Oct. 19-26, 2008. All of the money made from the book’s sales will fund Lockerbie Scholars.
The two also see the book as a way to thank Lockerbie, which also saw people die in the disaster, for opening up its homes and its hearts to a smattering of SU students and professors. “I think it’s important to Larry and me that we have an official recognition of more than a decade of generosity,” Chessher said. “When I was there, people would always say, ‘Whatever you need.’ And they would ask when the book is coming out. We owe it to their generosity and good-naturedness to say that we appreciate all that they did to help us.”
—Molly English-Bowers
