Remembering Pan Am Flight 103: Mary Kay Stratis

Video Transcript

It’s just so sad—so sad—that people’s minds still turn to hurting others and the aspect of terrorism. And in raising my young children, you know, trying to answer their questions of the how and why of all of this, is a different level of understanding. So I used to tell them that, you know, everybody has intelligence, and they have free will as to how they use their intelligence, and some people use it in a bad way and some use it in a good way. And, of course, I was trying to lead them towards using theirs in a good way, but mindful that some people don’t do that. And it’s sad that it’s ongoing, that here we are 30 years hence and we still have acts of terrorism for different reasons, perhaps. It’s so sad to me that people find this is the recourse to use. I don’t know what the answer is to fix it.

I’ve tried over these 30 years not to let that govern my life. It’s out there. I’m not going to forget it. I want to pay attention to it, but I need to pull myself into living life day by day. And as my children grew through high school and college, just being there for them, and let the legalese part of it into the hands of people who best can handle that. It’s not my job. And that’s how I lift it from my shoulders and my children’s shoulders, and we can move through day by day.