Remembrance Wall stands as perpetual reminder

Evan Wichman applied to be a Remembrance Scholar because he wanted to become more connected to the Syracuse University campus.

“It’s a really exciting thing to be associated with,” Wichman said. “There’s a lot of honor and pride.”

Wichman is representing Miriam Wolfe, one of the 35 SU students who died Dec. 21, 1988 when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded in the sky over Lockerbie, Scotland, due to a terrorist bomb. Each year SU chooses 35 seniors to represent the victims. Each November, the scholars host a week of events to educate the campus about the attack.

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The week culminates in a rose-laying ceremony at the Wall of Remembrance in front of the Hall of Languages. Each student says a few words about the victim the scholar represents, and then lays a rose in that person’s honor. The names of the students who died on the Pan Am flight are inscribed on the wall, which was dedicated in April 1990.

“They considered a lot of different locations but the Hall of Languages is of course the main image of SU, it is the first building on SU’s campus,” said Mary O’Brien, SU archivist.

Jessica Smith, a senior television, radio and film and information management and technology major, is also a Remembrance Scholar. She chose to represent Thomas Britton Schultz because she said as she began to research him, it became apparent that they would have been friends.

It is important to keep remembering the students more than 20 years later because the destruction of Pan Am 103 is an integral part of SU’s history, Smith said.

“Just being a part of this history that Syracuse University has and being able to keep a memory alive, that’s so important,” Smith said. “I found this opportunity to be a great honor and I couldn’t be any happier to be a 2011-2012 Remembrance Scholar.”

Kathleen Ronayne is a 2011-2012 Remembrance Scholar, honoring Richard Paul Monetti.