Meanwhile, Judy O’Rourke, then an assistant in SU’s undergraduate studies department, was calling the U.S. Department of State for more information. She said the now-defunct Pan American World Airways “handled the situation very poorly” by not communicating with SU officials and that the New York state Department of State wasn’t helpful, either.
“I would call the state department and get put on hold,” O’Rourke said. “I’d get hung up on. For hours. You’d call, get hung up on. Call, put on hold for 20 minutes. People truly didn’t know what to do.”
SU’s lawyers did. By 3:30 p.m., they called Eggers and told him not to make any public statements until more details were clear. Within the hour, news reports on the radio and television showed a plane down in Lockerbie, Scotland, O’Rourke said.
Cavanagh remembered calling Syracuse’s Division of International Programs Abroad. They, too, heard reports about a crash in Scotland.
Parents of SU students began calling Cavanagh’s office, wanting to know if their children were on the plane, after seeing the reports. Dozens of families called. Cavanagh instructed his colleagues to repeat the same answers.
They told parents and over: “We don’t know. I’m sorry. We don’t have the names. As soon as we find anything we feel is credible, we’ll let you know.”
Cavanagh doesn’t recall eating that night. There was no time, and the situation ruined his appetite anyway.
Eggers told Cavanagh to go to Syracuse Hancock International Airport. A connecting flight from New York to Syracuse was supposed to land, and Eggers thought it might be carrying people that didn’t yet know about the crash.
Cavanagh walked out of Tolley Hall into the dark. He hopped into his Toyota and drove north up Interstate 81 to the airport. On the way, he thought to himself: How would he explain what happened? How does he approach people who could be in shock?
When Cavanagh walked into the airport at about 6:30 p.m., people were arriving from New York — people who were supposed to be on Pan Am Flight 103 who had instead taken an earlier flight. Some friends and families of victims arrived in Syracuse unaware of the tragedy, Cavanagh said.
“Back then, there were no push notifications or cell phones,” he said. “Not everybody got the message right away. They were destroyed, crying when they found out.”
He stayed at the airport comforting travelers for about 90 minutes, he said, then drove back to campus because a colleague had phoned him. Syracuse officials wanted to start calling families based on a list of SU students they believed to be on the plane.
“Talk about wetting your pants,” Cavanagh said. “How do you initiate a call to someone’s parents saying their child is no longer here?”
When he got back to his office, Cavanagh’s first call went to a family in Chicago. As it turns out, that student was alive – his mother picked up the phone, and when Cavanagh said he was calling about her son, she said he was in the other room.
After that, Cavanagh made the first of about 10 calls to the families of students who had died in the bombing. The one he remembers most went to Dorothy Coker, mother of twins Jason and Eric Coker. Both had died.
“I’m calling about your children,” Cavanagh began. Within a minute, he said she was consoling him. Another parent had already told her that her children were killed, Cavanagh said. Dialing numbers inflicted a slow burn toll on Cavanagh, but Coker’s compassion resonated most.
“The event was just sinking into my damn bones,” he said. “And God, that was too much.”
Cavanagh lay in bed next to his wife that night and tried to rest, but he was forced to stay awake and live with his thoughts. After a while, he got up and walked around. Several times, he said he returned to bed and tried to sleep. He couldn’t.
Finally the clock hit 5 a.m. He always went to the local gym by 6 a.m. anyway, so he got there an hour early.
Cavanagh recently said his life, let alone those of the victims’ families, will never be the same. He said repeatedly he’s had this feeling in the years since: it’s a kind of community spirit that the tragedy’s aftermath has provided the families as well as the members of the Syracuse and Lockerbie communities, and it’s also a feeling of gloominess — but not a loss of hope.
Cavanagh visited the new exhibit on Bird Library’s sixth floor, titled, “We Remember Them: The Legacy of Pan Am Flight 103.” The exhibit offers displays of artifacts related to the tragedy and depicts how the Syracuse and Lockerbie communities have since moved on.
He walked out of the elevator to the sixth floor, reading an overview of the tragedy and the exhibit. Then he walked to the left and scanned a wall honoring all 270 victims. He perused the victims’ names and their pictures, and he went silent.
Cavanagh made his way to the other end of the exhibit and looked through one glass display after the other. Every few minutes, he recounted where he was at the time, and what he was thinking at that very moment.
