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efore she’d even interviewed to be a Remembrance Scholar, Kelly Sheptock went through the Syracuse University archives to learn all she could about the victims of Pan Am Flight 103.

She decided then that if she were chosen to represent one of the 35 SU students killed in the December 1988 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, it would be Steve Berrell.

“The second I read about how he carried himself and how he had extremely high expectations for himself, I just felt like this could be someone sitting next to me in class who I would immediately connect with,” said Sheptock, a senior public relations major. “And that’s how I knew that this was something that would be very near and dear to my heart.”

Like Sheptock, most other Remembrance Scholars go to the University Archives in E.S. Bird Library first to read about the 35 students lost and decide which of the late students they’d like to represent during Remembrance Week. When doing their research, many scholars make a connection to a student, whether it be based on a common interest, hometown or major.

But for some Remembrance Scholars, representing one of the 35 can be easier said than done because some of the students lost in Pan Am Flight 103 do not have collections in their name in the archives. A collection is made in a student’s name when that student’s loved ones donate personal effects to the archives, whether it be photographs, poems or sweaters.

Some students do not have collections perhaps because their families are not in a place emotionally where they feel ready to donate, said Vanessa St. Oegger-Menn, Pan Am Flight 103 archivist and one of the Remembrance Scholar advisers.

“Some of them you hear back from and they send you things, or they say, ‘I know that you’re there and someday we may be ready to do this.’ Some of them you never hear from and that’s perfectly fine,” St. Oegger-Menn said. “… Donor relations is difficult. But I think the special nature of this archive makes it particularly sensitive, obviously, and so I’m never going to push.”

Students who do not have collections in their name still have information in their archives, including a brief biography of the student, a photograph and various clippings from other Pan Am Flight 103 collections that are relevant to the student, such as obituaries and essays from loved ones.

Remembrance Scholars representing students without collections may take alternative routes to get to know their student, including researching outside of the archives and reaching out to the student’s loved ones, which is a suggestion the advisers make to all the scholars.

“We encourage them to contact those families, so that’s obviously a way — a very personal way — to learn about who those students were,” St. Oegger-Menn said. “And sometimes stories that didn’t make it into an archive because they’re not written down anywhere. Just nice memories of who that person was.”

Miracle Rogers developed a strong connection to the mother of the student she is representing, Kesha Weedon. Although Weedon does not have a collection in her name, her mother, Barbara Matthews, is actively involved in Remembrance Week.

The lack of a collection for Weedon pushed Rogers further to connect with her family and learn more about her, said Rogers, a senior health exercise science major on a pre-medical track.

“When you talk to someone’s mom you learn things about them that … some things are not on paper, like what was her personality like?” Rogers said. “There are some things that you just can’t explain on paper.”

Through their conversations, Rogers learned that she was very similar to Matthews’ daughter. Both girls loved God, music and serving children in their communities. And they both shared deep bonds with their mothers.

“She would ask me about myself and she was like, ‘Yeah, Kesha did that too!’ or ‘Yeah, Kesha liked that too!’” Rogers said. “And I’m just like, so overwhelmed with emotion and everything.”

Other scholars did not hear back from the families of the students they’re representing. Though the students may not receive responses, their outreach is still appreciated, said Kelly Rodoski, one of the advisers for Remembrance Scholars. Rodoski added that it’s a life lesson for the scholars to learn, “that people handle things in different ways.”

Several scholars said the lack of a collection in their student’s name and not being able to contact the student’s family was difficult at first, but left more room for them to develop the connection with the student themselves.

“It’s not disheartening, I think that it creates a lot of opportunities for imagination — not to say that I’m making up anything about Pamela,” said Farrell Brenner, who is representing Pamela Herbert, a Bowdoin College student who was studying abroad through SU.

“I think it also opens the door for me to accept my limitations in this process, as an aspiring historian, as a Remembrance Scholar, accepting the very human limitations of not knowing and that I can’t know,” she added.

Brenner, a senior women’s and gender studies and citizenship and civic engagement double major, said she entered the process of being a Remembrance Scholar with the perspective that even the scholars representing students with collections could “never truly know them” because they’d never meet them.

Clayton Baker, a senior international relations and information management and technology double major, said “it would have been easier” if there was more information about his student, Cynthia Smith, but he said he almost enjoys the mystery of not knowing everything about her.

Charlotte Balogh initially was disappointed that there hadn’t been more in the archives of Amy Shapiro, but after talking with her mother, Balogh realized that Shapiro’s family perhaps didn’t donate a collection to the archives because they didn’t want to let a piece of her go.

Since then, the lack of information about Shapiro in the archives hasn’t been the difficult part of representing Shapiro, Balogh said. Rather, what’s difficult is juggling the feeling of “what right do I have” to represent her, she said.

“Even though we go through interviews and we’re chosen, things like that, this family lost a child, and you know it was important for them, and I’m some random person,” said Balogh, a senior television, radio and film major.

“… So for me it’s been a process of being mindful of that space because even though I think I can represent her here on campus, I’m not her and I can’t be everything she could’ve been because no one knows what that is,” she added.

Balogh said she is similar to Shapiro because they were both students in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, because they both were said to have warm personalities and because Shapiro’s life motto — “Limits only exist in one’s mind” — resonated strongly with Balogh.

Despite these initial connections, Balogh said Shapiro became real to her when she was walking in Bird Library and saw Shapiro’s photograph on display. It was the first time Balogh had seen the photo, which shows a happy-looking Shapiro wearing a fedora, “in a context of happiness, not so much in a context of like, ‘remember this person,’” she said.

The normalcy of the photo is what made it real to her, Balogh said. And while she has a lot of surface-level connections with Shapiro, like participating in a lot of clubs while they were in high school, Balogh said she doesn’t think that’s an accurate representation of who Shapiro was.

“But then that can never be captured in a box,” she said.