Vanessa St. Oegger-Menn, ’14: Curating an Exhibit Marking the 30th Anniversary of the Pan Am Tragedy

Vanessa St.Oegger-Menn G’14 has curated an exhibit reflecting on the Pan Am 103 tragedy over Lockerbie, Scotland that killed 270 people, including 35 Syracuse University students.

Vanessa St.Oegger-Menn G’14 Curating an Exhibit Marking the 30th Anniversary of the Pan Am 103 Tragedy

BY: J.D. ROSS A nexhibit currently featured at theSpecial Collections Research Centerin Syracuse University’s Bird Library honors and remembers the victims of the bombing of Pan Am Airways flight 103 that occurred over Lockerbie, Scotland 30 years ago.

On December 21, 1988 the New York City-bound aircraft exploded over the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, the result of a terrorist attack. The disaster claimed the lives of all 259 passengers on board and 11 Lockerbie residents on the ground. Among the aircraft victims were 35 Syracuse University students, returning home after spending their fall semester at Syracuse’s London and Florence programs.

Since the day of the attack, Syracuse University has been dedicated to preserving and honoring the memory of all who lost their lives that day.

Through archival materials donated by families of victims, friends, advocates, and affected communities, the exhibit, We Remember Them: The Legacy of Pan Am Flight 103, is intended to document not only the terrorist act itself, but the lives of those lost and the ways in which they are remembered. The exhibit, which opened in September 2018, was curated by Pan Am 103 Archivist and Assistant University Archivist Vanessa St.Oegger-Menn G’14, a graduate of the Library and Information Science program at the iSchool.

St.Oegger-Menn has served as the Pan Am 103 Archivist for four years. In addition to her archival responsibilities, she is also one of the advisors for the Remembrance Scholars and the Lockerbie Scholars. Remembrance Scholars are 35 senior students studying at Syracuse, and Lockerbie Scholars are

two students from Lockerbie, Scotland who study at Syracuse for one year. St.Oegger-Menn helps to shepherd the Remembrance Scholars through planning Remembrance Week, which occurs each fall at Syracuse.

As she began her work curating the exhibit, St.Oegger-Menn realized that it should have a broad reach. “I wanted to have all of their faces somewhere – as many of the victims as we had photographs for,” she said. “It’s important to personalize this event, to show the victims.”

“There are so many layers to this tragedy, and so much that happened,” St.Oegger-Menn explained. “I don’t feel that you can focus on one thing without it being at the expense of other things, so I wanted to cover as much of it as possible. That’s where the idea came of doing something to remember them as a group.”

Along the sixth floor hallway of Bird Library, a long display case stretches between two classrooms. Inside of the case, carefully arranged, were small, square photographs, one for nearly each of the 270 victims.

“I wanted this to go beyond Syracuse University,” St.Oegger-Menn said. “Our collecting scope when we first started in 1990 was isolated to just Syracuse and the students who lost their lives. But in 2006 it became clear that we had developed strong relationships with non-Syracuse families, so we opened our collection scope to everyone. I feel like it’s important to recognize all of them.”

St.Oegger-Menn grew up on the West Coast, and was just a child when the tragedy occurred. It wasn’t until her graduate studies at the iSchool that she began to learn of the history of Pan Am 103.

“As I was learning the history and getting to know the archives, I found that my job was incredibly personal,” St.Oegger-Menn reflected. “Getting to know the family members and the victims, reading the journals the students kept while studying abroad, I felt a real responsibility in learning and telling their stories, and in making sure that the University doesn’t forget.”

“Many times when collections are donated to an archives it is because someone has passed away, and that process can be a very emotional one,” she continued. “Many archives are, in a sense, grief-based archives, but something like Pan Am 103 is much more so. I form much stronger connections with the donors and the families than some other archivists do.”

St.Oegger-Menn credits current University Archivist Meg Mason, and former University Archivist Edward Galvin as mentors, both in how she approaches the exhibit curation, and in how she learned to interact with Pan Am 103 families and collection donors. Materials on view in the exhibit that St.Oegger-Menn has curated include:

n photographs and original documents from the joint US/UK investigative team and the criminal case of two Libyan nationals at Kamp van Zeist, Netherlands; victims’ personal items returned from the crash site;

n legislation, correspondence, newsletters, memorabilia, and photographs depicting the role of the victims’ families and allies in working towards justice and improved aviation security;

n clippings, publications, and other materials portraying the experiences and responses of both the Lockerbie, Scotland and Syracuse University communities;

n a visual recreation of the memorial book On Eagles’ Wings, consisting of photographs of the 270 victims alongside their name, birth date, seat number, and home country.

For St.Oegger-Menn, there are a couple of items displayed that stand out in her mind: One from the public library in Lockerbie, and the other an item that belonged to one of the passengers on Pan Am 103.

“The library had published a newsletter in 1989, shortly after the event,” she explained. “It was a very matter-offact publication about life in the town at the time, and how they were dealing with the aftermath of the tragedy, offering information and resources. I found that amazing. And we also have a travel alarm clock from one of the passengers. To me, that alarm clock takes on a much different meaning when you realize where it came from.”

STEVE SARTORI

iSchool senior Hairol Ma speaks at the annual Rose-Laying Ceremony in November, honoring the victims of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Hairol is one of 35 Remembrance Scholars, each scholar recognizing one of the 35 Syracuse University students who lost their lives in the tragedy.

Alumni Connecting With

LIS alumni gather for an evening reception at Dinosaur BBQ in Rochester during the New York Library Association conference in November.

Alumnae returned to campus in October to take part as mentors and guest speakers at our annual It Girls Overnight Retreat.

Barbara Settel visits with Neil Winston ’14 and Andy Ades ’16 while on a trip to Boston. Neil works for Cognizant Technology Solutions in incident and vendor management, and Andy is a digital product manager for Dunkin’ Brands.

2018

Alumni Award Winners — 2018 C ongratulations to these alumni, honored at our 2018 Alumni Awards & Recognition Ceremony at Orange Central in October. From left: Emily Drabinski G’03, Dev Sundarasekhar G’10, Eliza McLeod G’94, Shay Colson G’10, and Cameron Dixon G’13.

J.D. ROSS

On a trip to Philadelphia we caught up with Kara and Subhash Verghese G’01, Shruti Amla G’18, and Gupta G’16 (above) and Elliot Cole G’80 (left).

Learn more about our 2018 winners, and nominate a classmate for our 2019 awards here: ischool.syr.edu/ alumniawards. Nomination deadline is July 1, 2019.