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FULFILLED: Rachel Lange finds deeper meaning to Remembrance Week a decade after visiting memorial

Rachel Lange has grown used to moving on.

Relocating five times between seventh and 12th grade made her familiar with being the new kid: the awkward first days of school, finding her way into social circles and leaving soon after.

Living in a military family, her ten homes before college acted as pit stops. Life moved quickly during Lange’s upbringing. She needed to keep up.

Frequent trips to Syracuse University and the Remembrance Wall were a constant. The first time she visited at 13, her family went to a basketball game. They walked around campus and visited the Carrier Dome, the Hall of Languages and a small memorial right in front of it.

Her mother, Ethel Lange, Class of 1989, stopped in her tracks.

“Now this you need to look at,” Ethel remembered telling her daughter.

Despite a childhood scattered across the globe, every few years Lange found herself at the Remembrance Wall, a semi-circle with 35 names etched into the concrete. Her mother, Ethel, recognizes some of the names — Tim Cardwell in particular. He was Ethel’s friend from ROTC, who died on Pan Am Flight 103.

“If you like it, do it, because if you don’t you’ll regret it.”

– Ethel Lange told Rachel when they moved

On Dec. 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was passing over Lockerbie, Scotland, when a bomb in the cargo hold exploded. The crash killed 259 passengers and 11 people on the ground. Of the victims, 35 were enrolled in SU’s study abroad program.

Lange said her mother hadn’t talked about Cardwell or the flight often before she became a Remembrance Scholar — just a few times, some when their family stood at the wall.

That day, Ethel told her daughter about Cardwell. How she found out about the crash while in the middle of a knee surgery. How she frantically wondered who was on that flight.

Lange, the daughter of a military officer and a military nurse, was familiar with these moments of grief.

Several of her father’s colleagues died in battle. The Lange family kept a phone in their home that fielded calls from Afghanistan, calls that were “never a good thing,” Ethel said. Lange knew how to be respectful in solemn times and when to stay silent if needed. Her first visit to the Remembrance Wall was no different.

“It was definitely a sad thing,” Lange said, who now represents John Patrick “J.P.” Flynn as a Remembrance Scholar. “But I don’t think I was able to comprehend it.”

Struggling to find the right word, Lange hesitates to say that Pan Am Flight 103 is more “personal” now, nearly a decade later. It feels different when she walks to the wall as a Remembrance Scholar, she said. It feels more real.

“It’s not just 270,” Lange said, now a senior biochemistry major. “It’s more than that.”

“(It’s) John Patrick Flynn. Julianne Kelly. Alexander Lowenstein. Tim Cardwell.”

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Lange spent hours in the SU archives researching who several of the victims were. Corey Henry | Photo Editor

***

Nearly everywhere she’s gone, Lange has created a bucket list.

Winter became her favorite season in Germany because the first snow seemed to fall on her birthday. She started to love the outdoors in Georgia, where her dad was stationed as an Army Ranger and took the family camping. Lange learned how to paddleboard in Virginia, where she escaped to the beach when she had trouble fitting in at school.

“If you like it, do it, because if you don’t you’ll regret it,” her mother told her, so Lange started making bucket lists whenever she moved.

Three years into her time at SU, Lange had checked nearly everything off of her Syracuse list. She found her passion for research, working 40 hours per week at SUNY-ESF and leading an independent research project on tick-borne illnesses. She joined the professional chemistry fraternity, in which she claims to have the most littles.

She takes monthly road trips, often by herself: to the Adirondacks, Ithaca gorges and the Saratoga Race Track. Places where she can be alone with a clear mind, and she doesn’t have to think about anything.

She’s the type who could fit in at SUNY-ESF just as well as SU, said Brian Leydet, who she conducted research for over the summer. The type, her friend Danielle Schaf said, to complete her goal of getting on the campus Snapchat story by bringing her organic chemistry homework to an SU basketball game.

“I’ve definitely figured out what I want to do with my life,” Lange said. “And I figured out what’s important to me.”

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Lange’s the type of person who could fit in at SUNY-ESF just as well as SU, said Brian Leydet, who she conducted research for over the summer.. Corey Henry | Photo Editor

But Lange knew she wanted to be a Remembrance Scholar since she arrived at SU. As junior year approached, Lange had a decision to make: graduate after three years, or apply for the program.

She decided to stay, but was skeptical about her chances of being accepted. Lange threw up after her interview for the program and called her mom crying.

“I’m sorry,” Lange told her mother, even though she was the one who wanted it so much.

Lange felt the pressure more. She spent hours in the archives researching several victims to learn who they were — what they liked to do in their spare time, who their families were. Small things.

She first sifted through the archives in 2018. Schaf, who was then a Remembrance Scholar, told her about Alexia Tsairis, who she represented.

Tsairis could show emotion through her photography. She “gave a voice to the voiceless” this way, Schaf said. She had read about her struggles in high school, something Schaf could relate to. They both played volleyball. Schaf felt like she knew her.

“I miss her,” Schaf told Lange.

The comment stuck with Lange. She remembers it to this day.

***

In a night when they had so much else to do, Lange and Mary Kate Washburn, another Remembrance Scholar, sat in Washburn’s Comstock Avenue home, flipped on the TV and sat there for an hour.

They watched the first part of “My Brother’s Bomber,” a film about Pan Am Flight 103 and the terrorists behind it. Filmmaker Ken Dornstein searches for the terrorists involved. Dornstein’s brother died on the flight.

Lange and Washburn questioned what they would have done if had it been them: How would it feel, Lange thought, if that was her? What if she had fallen six miles from the plane? How did it feel for the people on the ground who searched for survivors and only found bodies?

Lange felt like she knew Flynn by now. He was a student at Colgate University, so there are only traces of who he was in SU’s archives. He was athletic, played three sports in high school and earned 10 varsity letters. So did Lange.

johnpatrickflynn

He tried to make the best out of losses, something Lange learned with two parents in the military. A quote from his personal journal stuck with her:

“Losses are a part of life. It’s what you do with these losses that counts. One should not get caught up in one’s little defeats.”

Lange imagines that she would be friends with J.P. He would be someone she could get coffee with, and he would lift other people up.

“Just a super positive, outgoing, versatile person,” she described him as.

Before she graduates, there are still things Lange wants to do: she wants Flynn to have his own poster at Colgate and make his life more visible.

That night in Washburn’s house, the two wanted to put themselves in someone else’s shoes. The film ended, and they looked at each other from across the couch. For a moment, they didn’t know what to say.

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