From NIGHTLINE 21/12/1997
The Keepers part 2
Lockerbie, Scotland: Keepers of Memory
and Love
Dec. 19, 1997
TED KOPPEL
Nine years ago, Lockerbie, Scotland, became one of the
most famous datelines in the world. It became quite
literally the name of a disaster. As some of you may have
heard last night, Pan Am and the US State Department
did not cover themselves with glory. At a time when
compassion and sensitivity were called for, there wasn’t
much. But the people of Lockerbie reacted with a
breathtaking sense of humanity.
When the remains of the victims were driven through the
streets, townspeople lined up to pay a silent and dignified
tribute. When US authorities said that the belongings of
the victims could not be returned to their families because
of the possibility of contamination, the women of
Lockerbie washed and ironed every single piece of
clothing that could be recovered. And as the first family
members of the dead made the pilgrimage to see where
their loved ones had died, the men and women of
Lockerbie showed themselves to be in the very best
sense their brothers’ keepers.
(VO) There are more sheep than people in Lockerbie. A
quiet Scottish market town with nearly 4,000 residents.
On the darkest night of the year, December 21st, 1988, at
7, a terrorist bomb blew apart Pan Am Flight 103 in the
skies over Lockerbie, killing a total of 270 people. Nine
years later, a stained glass window with 21 flags
representing the nations of those who perished on board
Pan Am 103 sends light streaming into the town hall,
which was once a mortuary.
ALEX MACKELROY The tragedy of Lockerbie
exposed that evil did not triumph.
TED KOPPEL (VO) Close friends call Alex Mackelroy
the fixer, a local official who worked quietly and
steadfastly behind the scenes for years to help ease the
suffering of victims’ families.
ALEX MACKELROY You could take the memory and
show that their death will not have been in vain. Their
spirit is protected in the fields and within the community of
Lockerbie and they will always be remembered. They will
not just be part of folklore. They’re in our hearts and will
always be in our hearts. While each family may have lost
one or two or sometimes more, the people of Lockerbie
and those who were involved in the recovery, either short
or long—term, lost 270. And we carry the burden of
protecting their spirit and their memory.
TED KOPPEL (VO) Some carry another burden,
witnessing the savage horror that could never be shown
on television. Bill Parr (ph) is a local chemist with years of
experience in search and rescue work. He worked as a
volunteer virtually around the clock for days with his dogs
Shepp (ph) and Donna. The first night, they found 20
bodies.
BILL PARR I’ll never forget faces. There were some
that were obviously asleep, unconscious at the time of
the impact and others that were conscious. There were
looks of horror. Some were very peaceful but I can still
picture faces where there’s a look of disbelief.
TED KOPPEL (VO) His feelings stayed buried until
Shepp died.
BILL PARR The day we lost Shepp, the whole impact
of a very hectic nine months hit me. But within a couple of
hours of having buried him, I just had to ship myself away.
Well, I was on my own anyway. I just shipped myself
away and cried for hours. It’s, I didn’t know you could feel
that way about an animal. But he was a friend, not just an
animal. I think it was grief and maybe a lot of the pent up
feelings that other people had let go after the crash and I’d
held on to them. I was supposedly, you laugh at it now,
but I was supposedly the leader up to 40 dog handlers. A
lot of them would come to me and shed their feelings. I
found somebody I could talk to from the Samaritans and
that helped a lot.
TED KOPPEL (VO) Nine years later, Bill Parr does
not feel that what he did in Lockerbie was particularly
remarkable.
BILL PARR You know, I’ve never really thought well I
was my brother’s keeper. My carer, maybe not keeper. I
think the folk in Lockerbie quite naturally said it is
unremarkable. We just did what we wanted to do, what
we felt it was necessary to do. We tried to treat other
people how we would like to be treated.
TED KOPPEL (VO) Hugh and Margaret Connell’s
sheep farm is nearly eight miles from Lockerbie. It is
there that the body that fell farthest from the disaster
landed.
HUGH CONNELL It seemed unbelievable that up
here amongst all the quietness and beauty of this area
that we would be amongst so much horror. The first item
we come across was the mail bags and various bags of
mail beside the road and then as soon as we started
walking into the field there was pieces of wreckage from
the interior of the plane. Seats were all around and well, I
think half the luggage from the first front of the plane
landed right across here and up onto the hill. Then we
knew as soon as we started finding so many pieces of
luggage and seats it was just a matter of time before we
come on a body. When we found him, he looked so
young, we thought of him as a boy, really. Maybe he
looked in his 20s. We never, it never entered into our
head then that he was in his 40s. He was so fresh and
clean.
MARGARET CONNELL He looked so young, his hair
was so dark, he was so slim and we thought goodness, a
young man and we immediately thought of parents
somewhere, maybe even a young wife. And it was quite a
few months later before we really found out his name and
for a long time we just called him our boy.
HUGH CONNELL Right away we seemed to love for
him. He was a fellow human being and, you know, for
some reason he belonged to us. We had connected with
him. We had no idea who he was but yet we loved him
because he was there and it was right from the start we
felt a wonder what his name is, where he comes from.
And we felt we would like to tell him, you know, that he’s
here somewhere nice. He didn’t land in the midst of the
wreckage or a burned up but he was lying, just lying there
as if he had landed, been given to us. And we just
seemed to have that love for him as soon as he arrived,
as it were. (Commercial Break)
TED KOPPEL (VO) Frank Chula’s body was found on
Hugh and Margaret Connell’s sheep farm 20 minutes
after Pan Am 103 exploded over Lockerbie. He looked so
young, the Connells called him our boy. But, in fact, he
was 45, an executive with the Chase Bank in London, the
father of three, happily married to his high school
sweetheart and headed home to New Jersey for
Christmas. His daughter, Laurie Chula, was 19 and
remembers getting a call.
LAURIE CHULA I’m not sure of the time. I think it was
about three o’clock. I was due home at three thirty. My
mother called me at work and my boss came over to me
panic stricken saying your mother’s on the phone.
Something’s wrong. I didn’t think much of it. I knew my
father was coming home. I just thought she was
overreacting to something. And I picked up the phone and
she said to me, she said there was a crash and I think it
might have been your father’s plane. So I just within, I
worked about five minutes away, but it must have been
30 seconds that I was in the door. And my mother was on
the floor and I just, I honestly thought she was just
overreacting. There was probably something that was
going on.
TED KOPPEL (VO) Nevertheless, Laurie called her
youngest sister Michelle at her high school.
MICHELLE CHULA I walked into the office and it was
my sister and she said that there was a crash and we
think it was dad’s plane and you need to come home. And
it’s so funny cause it’s so vivid to me remembering that
walk from that phone to the room that I was in. And I
knew, I don’t know how I knew this, but I knew that my life
would never be the same.
LAURIE CHULA We assumed my father was on the
plane. My mother had his flight information, but I know for
me there was a huge sense of disbelief. I mean there
was, we had hundreds of people within hours in this
house just walking in and out and hearing something and
somehow relating to that this could be going on for us and
I don’t know how, but there were hundreds of people and
every time the door opened I’d just wait for my father to
walk in. I just, I figured that’s what would happen.
MICHELLE CHULA I pictured that night my father
walking in with his, he always did the carry on, you know,
never checked any bags, wanted to be in and out really
quickly. And I just imagined him walking in being like what
is going on? Who are all these people, you know?
LAURIE CHULA Yeah.
MICHELLE CHULA You know, imagining he got on an
early flight or he missed the plane or he was still in
London. And when my brother came home it became
very real because we were all in the house and we got a
phone call I believe around 3 am from ...
LAURIE CHULA Heathrow Airport ...
MICHELLE CHULA Was it? Or Pan Am, I guess
Heathrow.
LAURIE CHULA Yeah, Heathrow Airport.
MICHELLE CHULA Saying he had checked in and he
was on the flight. And I remember that night very vividly
because we all slept in the same room.
LAURIE CHULA We really, we clung to each other in
a huge way and we, we were still in shock but we said to
each other, we said, you know, this can tear us apart or
this can bring us closer together. And we made a
decision, we almost made a pact right there that this was
going to bring us closer together because the alternative
just was not appealing at all to us. You know, we were
losing something huge but there was a lot we still had and
I think immediately we recognized that. Whether we knew
that’s what my father would have wanted or for whatever
reason, we just, we recognized that immediately.
MICHELLE CHULA You know, we had presents
wrapped under the Christmas tree for my father. My
mother had signed every card “from mom and dad” and it
was a very, very difficult day. And I remember just being
so angry at all the other families that could go home and
could pretend that this was just a story that happened in
town. But this was happening to us.
LAURIE CHULA I remember I returned, I felt the need
to take care of things. I remember answering the phone. I
remember sending pictures of my father to Scotland and
medical records. I just, I needed to take charge somehow
and my way was trying to deal with those details. I didn’t
want my mother to have to do it and I wanted to do
something. And I also took on the task of returning my
father’s Christmas gifts. And I walked into that mall and I
wanted to, I wanted someone to ask me why.
MICHELLE CHULA The only visuals that we had
were television and newspaper and despite everyone’s
desire for us not to watch I did. I was curious. I mean it
was as if nothing could hurt me more so I just wanted to
know. There’s a strange curiosity that takes hold. And up
till my first trip to Lockerbie all I had in my mind were the
flames and were the cockpit picture that is everywhere.
And that’s all I knew and that’s all I had visually. And I think
for myself, I tried really hard not to think about what
happened to my father.
LAURIE CHULA I couldn’t imagine from those
pictures on TV that there was much that we were going to
get back, you know, physically. But I was consumed. I
mean those were the nightmares. What happened? How
did he get from here to there and did he feel it and did he
know it? You know, where did he land? What did he look
like? I wanted those details big time.
MICHELLE CHULA For us, for many years Lockerbie
was a place of disaster, it was a place of tragedy and a
place that we didn’t want to go to and that the only reason
we didn’t want to go there was because it was frightening.
We were afraid of what we were going to find and, you
know, the answers that we were going to get. And so I
think for many years it wasn’t even an option to go.
(Commercial Break)
TED KOPPEL (VO) It took the Chula family nearly
four years to find the courage to go to Lockerbie. Cows
turned the final miles into a comic crawl. It was not until
the week before the family left for Scotland that they
learned where Frank Chula’s body had fallen—far outside
of Lockerbie on Minsca Farm. The day before this home
video was made, more news. The Scottish couple
wanted to meet them.
MICHELLE CHULA The hour or two that I met them
was one of the most powerful moments of my life
because Margaret came out of the house and she looked
at me and she said that I looked exactly like my father.
And I’ve never, I will never forget that moment because it
just answered so many questions. I remember taking a
picture of my father out and asking Margaret is this the
person that you found? Is this what he looked like? And
when she told me that it was, it was one of the most
amazing moments of my life because he looked like him.
Minsca Farm is one of the most beautiful places I have
ever seen in my entire life and it seemed somewhat
appropriate that my father died there and it seemed
somewhat, you know, just perfect that he died looking at
the most beautiful land I’ve ever seen. And it took so
much of the tragedy away for us. It took so much of the
pain and the questions and the wondering what really
happened that night.
MARGARET CONNELL It just seemed unbelievable
that at last these, this family was at our home, you know,
and that now we could put a name to unknown faces and
people that we had wanted to know about and yes, it did
us all good.
MICHELLE CHULA It was amazing to, I know me,
and I’m sure my mother and my brother that she walked
very confidently and knew exactly where it was. And that
just meant so much to me that they had saved that for us.
And now there’s a beautiful, beautiful tree growing there
and we’ve been back a couple of times since then and
when stepping there and seeing where my father, you
know, went out of this world was a very powerful
experience for his daughter. I think, you know, to know
that I know exactly where it was and it was so beautiful
and it was so beautiful to share it with Margaret, who had
been there that night.
LAURIE CHULA He’s in a cemetery near us. I don’t go
there. He’s not there. When I go to this spot, I just feel my
father. It’s a huge connection. It’s the only place where I
feel that connection that when I actually went and we
were all together, I felt like it was the first time the five of
us were together since he had died. It just feels right. And
meeting these people and seeing this place, it just, it
feels, it’s a home of sorts and it’s sort of hard to explain,
but it’s such a powerful connection and a powerful feeling.
HUGH CONNELL It seems strange that we could
have so much love for someone that we never knew. It
may seem strange that we shed so many tears for
someone that we never met in life. And we were so glad
when they come to visit us, when the family, Marylou and
Frank and Michelle come, it just seemed to complete the
story. We never, the story would never be complete until
we met them.
MICHELLE CHULA I always believed before this
happened that I knew what unconditional love was. I don’t
think I really knew until I met Margaret and Hugh because
they didn’t know my father and they loved him and I felt
that right away and to know that it could have been very
horrible for us, we could not have had these answers and
we could not have met these people and to meet them
and to know, as Hugh had said, he loved my father, he
was a stranger but he loved him, it just gave me so much
faith about humankind, especially because of the way that
the crash happened. You know, it was a terrorist act and
to go from that anger and to lose all faith in what this
world is all about, and it was a regaining of that faith to
meet these people who took my father in. And would, I
really believe that they would have taken him in their
house and let him sleep inside if they could have. And to
know that, it’s just, that is what unconditional love is and
that just brought so much faith back into my life and so
much hope about the world for me into my life again.
TED KOPPEL (VO) New life and friendships have
emerged from the ashes and ruins of Pan Am 103. On
December 21st, 1988, the world witnessed the ferocious
power of hatred. But in the years that followed, few
noticed the ferocious determination in the tiny town of
Lockerbie to ensure that that hatred will never prevail.
ALEX MACKELROY Lockerbie as a community itself
did not allow evil to triumph. They looked after their
brothers and sisters. They were the keepers of their
brothers and sisters. They continue to keep for their
brothers and sisters, to keep their memory and keep their
dignity and to protect their spirit.
TED KOPPEL And I’ll be back with a closing thought
in a moment. (Commercial Break)
TED KOPPEL The people of Lockerbie have
reaffirmed the great lesson that we should do unto others
as we would have them do unto us, which is exactly what
they did. They treated the dead with dignity and respect
and they asked themselves what they could do to
alleviate the suffering of the families. There is, it turns out,
no greater gift than a personal act of kindness and even a
seemingly small act can fill a very great need. So, with
their washing and ironing and planting of trees, with their
many kindnesses to strangers, the people of Lockerbie
have, for a number of years now, taken a dreadful act that
destroyed one holiday season for so many, and restored
it to what it should be, for which we all owe them a debt of
thanks. That’s our report for tonight. I’m Ted Koppel in
Washington. For all of us here at ABC News, good night.
To see the transcript of THE KEEPERS part one press here !
This news was taken from NIGHTLINE, Americas most popular investigative tv-program from ABC NEWS...
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