[Today is the official publication date of Jill Haldane's book An’ then the world came tae oor doorstep: Lockerbie Lives and Stories. What follows is taken from the Dumfries & Galloway Standard.]
When Pan Am Flight 103 fell from the sky and devastated the small community of Lockerbie, Jill Haldane had just returned home from university to spend Christmas with her family.
After the disaster nearly 20 years ago, Jill went back to university, shut all the memories away and got on with her young adult life.
She says it is only recently that she has thought deeply about what happened that night, and the result is a book of the life histories of 11 residents of Lockerbie, pivoting their disaster experiences. (...)
Jill says the fact she was there when the plane hit the town affected her enough later in life to think about doing a project about it, and to find out how other people had coped with what happened. (...)
The idea for the book came to Jill when she exhibited a display of historical and contemporary photographs in the town where she now lives in New Zealand.
She says there was an outpouring of stories from townspeople about their memories and remembrances of times passed, initiated by the photographs.
“I took the concept of sharing stories and experiences in a narrative sense and came back to Lockerbie in March this year,” said Jill.
“I used the disaster of 1988 as a reference point for the collection and collation of life histories of 10 residents and ex-residents, including my own experience, thoughts and feelings.
“The people I interviewed also talk about aspects of their life that may have been affected by the disaster, such as their faith, fate, stress, and their attitude to flying and terrorism.
“By collating the narratives of Lockerbie folk, generations will be able to share the authenticity and the resonance of our stories first-hand.” (...)
Her book is an oral history project, where the sound files from the interviews she did will be archived in a repository in Scotland, for research perpetuity, and is available now.
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