The first in a three-part series on the Pan Am settlement

As he read the letter, Tom Dater’s delivery was strong and forthright, his voice unwavering.

‘My name is Bill Giebler Sr. My son, William Giebler Jr., known to all as ‘JR,’ was on Pan Am 103 that tragic day, Dec. 21, 1988. I’m writing this in honor of him and his upcoming birthday. JR would be 44 years old on this July 8, 2003. He was always the light of my life, and now he is the light within my soul.’

So far, it was going well. The traditional moment of remembrance that opens each meeting of the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 seemed a matter of course. Cursory even for this meeting of about 40 victims’ family members Sept. 20 – eight days after the United Nations officially lifted sanctions against Libya, whose agents sent the plane flaming from the sky into the small town of Lockerbie, Scotland, marring the hopes and dreams of thousands. Libya admitted responsibility for the bombing and agreed to compensate families up to $10 million each.

Dater marched through the next few paragraphs with ease, as Giebler described the devastating loss of his wife Denise in 1991 and the numbness he felt in the face of his tragic double-loss. He wrote how a love for his children and family sustained him – how, through their own love, the memory of JR lives. It all sounded routine, like a Lifetime movie or soap opera script: sincere, emotional, but all too common.

Routines have a way of breaking down. Memories have a way of creeping back in. They crouch on the periphery, masked and waiting, it seems, until the worst moment to strike. For Dater, a retired journalist whose daughter Gretchen was killed on the flight, they ambushed him from all sides as he tried to sustain his Walter Cronkite delivery through the letter’s last paragraph. The day after the bombing, he tried to write his daughter’s obituary for the Ramsey, N.J., newspaper he edited, but could not find the strength – only pain.

‘Now, he is with us,’ Dater read. Tears began to well. ‘Watching over us with his mother.’ A pause, a futile attempt to regain composure. ‘The lights who guide us to brotherhood.’ The floodgates of memory burst open. His voice cracked. ‘We love you and celebrate …. you every moment of our life. Love … love always.’ War broke out inside his head. It had no escape but through his eyes and faint sobs.

Dater couldn’t finish the letter, couldn’t say the last words – Bill Giebler’s name. He couldn’t say them because he felt the same way as Giebler, as did most family members in that conference room at the Newark Airport Marriott, who wiped away tears and comforted each other through the reading. The name Dater’s conscience wouldn’t let him read could be any one of the thousands affected by the bombing, which killed 270 people and damaged countless spirits.

Now, almost 15 years later, the assaults of memory on 270 groups of families, friends, co-workers and acquaintances have not relented. Neither has the resolve of the victims’ families, who constantly find new ways to preserve their memories, regardless of the pain they evoke.

‘I always feel like I’m doing something for Gretchen,’ said Joan Dater, Tom’s wife and Gretchen’s mother. ‘Making the world better because of her death.’ Gretchen Dater was a 20-year-old junior at the Maryland Institute of Arts studying in London through Syracuse University’s Division of International Programs Abroad. Dater, along with 34 other students returning home from SU’s center in London for the holidays, died in the crash.

Try as they have to keep the memory of their daughter alive, Joan and Tom Dater are tired. They are tired of traveling to Syracuse, Washington, D.C., and New York City for anniversaries, meetings with politicians and the U.N. They are tired of the evasive tactics of the Libyan government. In short, they are tired of fighting for some approximation of justice, and their generation can no longer struggle alone.

Fortunately for the Daters, a string of ‘youngsters’ – 30-somethings who were teenagers at the time of the bombing – have stepped up with a strong resolve to honor the lives of their older siblings, uncles, aunts or even parents.

Family ties

Before Saturday’s meeting begins, a tassel-haired boy runs circles around the conference room, poking around, asking 3-year-old questions. Ricky Weipz, son of current VPAF-103 President Kara Monetti-Weipz, is named after her brother Richard, an SU student killed on the flight. Monetti-Weipz herself attended SU and was a member of the Pi Beta Phi sorority, which lost three sisters in the 1988 tragedy.

Later, outside the conference room in the opulent hotel corridor, Kara’s husband Joseph Weipz sits with his son Ricky, watching ‘The Lion King’ on a small TV propped on a chair. Across the hall, family members are having a semi-covert conference call with a committee of lawyers handling the Libya settlement. As the amplified voices of lawyers boom through the conference room door and into the hall, Ricky bounces up and down on his father’s lap, screaming out favorite lines and bits of songs from his favorite Disney movie. Joined at times by Colin, the 9-year-old son of Glen Johnson III (another second-generation family member in the Pan Am 103 legacy), Ricky gets up for a jaunt down the hall, then comes zooming back after Colin and plops back into his father’s lap.

Just as Simba launches into ‘I Just Can’t Wait to Be King,’ Bob Monetti, Ricky’s grandfather and former president of VPAF-103, comes out of the room, shaking his head.

‘I don’t care what those assholes have to say,’ Monetti said of the lawyer committee, half-jokingly. He grabbed some takeout from the hotel restaurant and joined his grandson and son-in-law for a little relief. A few scenes later, he got up and headed back into the room. His only explanation: ‘I have to be in there.’

The healing process is an emotional seesaw for many families involved, like the Monettis, but one thing that sustains them is the new generation of soldiers in their never-ending battle for justice. ‘It’s nice to see that generation taking over because a lot of our people, particularly those who have been super-active, are tired – physically tired, mentally tired,’ said Tom Dater. ‘It’s a long, hard struggle.’

Richard Monetti’s legacy lives on not only through his parents, but through his sister, his nephew and scores of people he knew and those he did not.

‘This has been half of my life,’ Monetti-Weipz said. ‘I was 15 when my brother was killed.’

She first assumed control of the organization in June at the age of 30. Now, she has taken a lead role in the organization’s interests, which include the passage of new laws to address terrorism through compensation and airport security.

‘With open arms’

Glen Johnson III has had a rough time of it from the start. He lost his sister Beth-Ann in 1988. His marriage ended in a divorce six years ago. But now, after years of attending meetings with his father, VPAF-103 board president Glen Johnson Jr., he is stepping up his role in the group’s fight.

Johnson’s son Colin doesn’t know what happened to his Aunt Beth, Johnson said. He knows she got hurt, that she’s no longer around, but nothing beyond that. Glen compares his involvement in Colin’s private school and Cub Scout pack with the treatment he receives from older members of the Pan Am organization. He recently got custody of his son from his ex-wife, and has been welcomed ‘with open arms’ by organizations that need volunteers.

‘That’s the same way I feel now with the victims of Pan Am 103,’ Johnson said in a speech at the meeting. ‘Thank you for making me feel welcome, and that is one of the reasons I continue to look forward to doing work for the organization.’

Johnson’s work includes pushing legislation that would provide $150,000 retroactively to families who have lost someone due to terrorism since 1983 to cover the costs of getting the body home and funeral arrangements.

Just as Ricky Weipz and Colin Johnson focused intently on Simba’s next move, Glen Johnson III and Kara Monetti-Weipz are focused, together, on the next step of the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103. Two hundred seventy different families, drawn closer by tragedy, are still trying to serve the memories of their loved ones and ensure that those memories never die.

Joan Dater maintains hope for the cause, though she doubts how much longer she can fight for it. Of course, she said, the memory of her daughter is the most important thing in her life – she may not be done fighting yet.

The struggle for justice and to make the world better remains important, she said, ‘so that Gretchen did not die in vain.’

Published on September 24, 2003 at 12:00 pm