On the 21st December 1988, a bomb exploded on a plane 31,000 feet in the air, 259 people were killed on board with sections of the aircraft landing in the town of Lockerbie in Scotland.
Several houses were destroyed and one family lost four members.
30 years later, the Church of Scotland is marking the anniversary of this event which changed the town by doing a silent 'walk of peace' and a special remembrance service at Tundergarth Parish Church.
Geoff Brown, a Church of Scotland reader and the Moderator of the Presbytery of Annandale and Eskdale - just a few miles away from Lockerbie - told Premier he was meant to be in Lockerbie that night, until he got a phone call from a friend to rearrange the time:
"I was actually here at home in Moffat, which is about 14 miles away.
"We had intended to go visit friends that evening in Lockerbie because I previously lived in... the Lockerbie community and we were taking parcels down to them but we were supposed to actually be there during the time when the air disaster took place but they had phoned to change the time so we were at home at the time...but you could hear the noise and the sky lit up."
Geoff described the following week in the area: "It was a very difficult time, very sad, the whole community had that feeling of loss and grief and wondering what you could do to support the people of Lockerbie."
When asked how the town had been affected by the event since then, he said: "Well, in the last 30 years there has been several commemorations of the event and that, each year, opens the scars and the wounds for the people.
"The people of Lockerbie are a very resilient group of people and they're very welcoming and loving to folk that come into the community and have been very supportive."
Since the disaster, a strong link has been made between Syracuse, a city in New York state, and the town of Lockerbie as thirty-five students from Syracuse University died on the flight.
"There's now a scholarship link between Lockerbie Academy and Syracuse, so there have been bonds between communities and people during the period.
This time the community wanted it to be low-key. There was a survey done in the community and more than 80 per cent wanted it to be very low-key and very local because it does bring everything back to them and there are people in the community who can remember very vividly what happened".
"It's a very close community and there are people in that community that have been...very much had their lives very much changed forever and others that still bear the scars.
"For a year, I was the interim minister there and it was not unusual when you went to visit people that [the bombing] would come back into conversation."
This year, the Church of Scotland is holding three wreath-laying services at places where part of the plane came down and impacted the ground. There will also be a main service at Drysdale cemetery by the memorial wall which Geoff Brown will be involved with.
Listen to the full interview here:
Libyan man Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi was the only person to be convicted of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103.
He was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment but was released from a Scottish prison in 2009 on compassionate grounds.
Megrahi died at his home in Tripoli in 2012 aged 60.
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