A crescendo of sound, a flash of light, and a vast cloud of flame precipitated the most horrific night of George White’s life. A lifelong resident of Lockerbie, George had served as a paramedic on the village’s ambulance squad for the past 28 years, yet the night’s chaos would push the veteran to the edge of his limits.
Like many residents, George was stunned by the sight of an enormous mushroom cloud rising from the edge of the village—he briefly surmised that there had been an accident at a nearby nuclear power plant. A gaping, flaming crater in Sherwood Crescent revealed the catastrophe’s true nature. George helped some of the neighborhood’s stunned residents through the smoke before heading back to the station for emergency supplies.
It was at the ambulance station that George White had his first encounter with a victim of Pan Am Flight 103. A young woman lay near the garage door. George checked the woman for signs of life; finding none, he gently covered her body with a tarpaulin and returned to the search for survivors.
Several severely burned townspeople were pulled from the wreckage and treated. Tragically, none of those aboard the 747 would survive the night. George and his colleagues would spend the night marking victims’ locations. The experience would lead him to retire in 1991, several years early.
In the interim, George planted a pink rose where he found the young woman’s body near the station, an act of kindness that would have repercussions decades later.
Suzanne Miazga, a 22 year old graduate student at Syracuse University, was assigned seat 23A near the plane’s nose on the left side. The bomb that shattered the airframe was merely several rows behind her. Many of the passengers in her section of Pan Am 103 would land on Tundergarth Hill near the cockpit. Those in the rows behind fell with the wing to Sherwood Crescent or with the remainder of the fuselage in Rosebank. Somehow, Suzanne came to rest alone, feet away from George White’s ambulance station.
Suzanne’s favorite flower was the pink rose, a coincidence not revealed until after George White planted the rose tree where he found Suzanne on December 21, 1988.
George penned a letter to Anna Marie Miazga, Suzanne’s mother, shortly after learning the identity of the woman he found near the station. Shortly afterward, Anna Marie made the first of many visits to Lockerbie in 1990. George and his wife, Elma, would often meet Anna Marie at the airport and convey her about the area.
Sadly, in 2002, Elma White lost her battle with cancer.
Several years later, George visited Anna Marie in the United States, and a friendship born of an unthinkable tragedy and a remarkable coincidence developed into something more. George would spend the remaining decade of his life with Anna Marie Miazga in Marcy, New York.
He passed away on May 18, at the age of 83.
Though I never introduced myself to George or Anna Marie, I will always recall their deep love for each other, which I had a chance to witness first hand when I saw them together during the 25th anniversary of Pan Am 103 in Syracuse in 2013, and again during Remembrance Week last year.
The following images show George White in formal regalia at those events.
Sources
McDonald, Sally. “Lockerbie 25 Years On: Love Blossomed from the Ashes.” – Scotland / News & Views / The Sunday Post. N.p., 15 Dec. 2013. Web. 08 June 2015.
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