Lockerbie 25 years on: Love blossomed from the ashes

‘We knew we were meant to be together’ says victim’s mother

George White is hanging his Christmas decorations, laughing and joking with the woman he adores, his best friend, Anna Marie Miazga.

Their remarkable love for each other, and for life, would be touching in any couple. But George and Anna Marie are 81 and 75 respectively, and their profound devotion is borne out of one of the world’s worst terrorist atrocities.

On December 21, 1988, George, from Lockerbie, was a leading ambulanceman on duty when a bomb exploded on board Pan Am flight 103.

Among the victims was US citizen Suzanne Miazga, Anna Marie’s beautiful 22-year-old daughter. The graduate student of Syracuse University was returning home after studying in London.

Suzanne’s body fell to earth outside George’s ambulance depot. It was he who went to her aid and, when all hope was gone, gently cared for her lifeless body.

Never could he have known that his actions then, in the darkest hour imaginable, would send ripples across the Atlantic which would bring a joy none could have believed possible.

Now, speaking from the cheerful home they share in leafy upstate New York, George and Anna Marie pay poignant tribute to Suzanne, the 269 other victims of the tragedy, and to the invincible nature of love.

“They should never have died,” they say, “But they will be forever loved and never forgotten.”

Despite her loss, Anna Marie manages a smile as she recalls the months after the tragedy when George, who she didn’t then know, planted a rose bush in memory of her cherished child.

He then penned a letter to her, accompanied by a photograph of the bush and a bloom.

“Would you like me to read it?” says Anna Marie, and she steadily recites its emotive contents.

She dwells on one particular section.

It reads: “I would like to think that in some small way this letter may help to ease the pain by showing that Suzanne has not been forgotten, even by someone who never met her. Although we are many miles apart my heart goes out to you.”

Anna Marie, who has two other daughters and is now a grandmother and great-grandma, breaks into a broad smile.

“It was beautiful,” she says. “When I received it I felt wonderful. It really touched my heart.”

She travelled to Lockerbie for the first time in 1990 and visited George and his wife Elma whom he tragically lost to cancer in 2002 and since then has been to the town 19 times.

She says: “George and Elma would always pick me up from the airport and take me anywhere I needed to go. They were such good friends. George mourned Elma terribly. He visited her grave every day which made me think so much more of him as a husband.”

Three years after his own devastating loss, George visited Anna Marie at her US home, and from their unique friendship, love blossomed.

Anna Marie adds: “We knew almost immediately we were meant to be together.”

The Lockerbie atrocity is still too great an ordeal for George to speak about. It haunts him and, two years after the bombing, he retired on doctor’s advice.

George, who has two daughters in Scotland, a son in the US, and four grandchildren, says: “I had been at road crashes and sudden deaths, but these injuries . . . it was too much.”

He’d gone to the ambulance station for equipment and blankets when he found Suzanne’s body.

“It was a wet night, I covered her up . . .” his voice trails off. “Some time later I planted the rose bush.”

George, who carries a photograph of Suzanne in his wallet, glances at Anna Marie and adds: “It was the start of a beautiful friendship which blossomed into so much more.”

Anna Marie talks warmly of the masters student who wanted to be a social worker: “Suzanne was a very caring and funny person, always joking around.

“She would have loved George. My husband had left me after 30 years of marriage and before she went to London she cried with me and said she worried about my future. ”

To this day her mother finds tributes left at Suzanne’s grave from those she has helped. “Even in death it seems she is still there for others,” says Anna Marie.

She and George will be surrounded by family and friends at Christmas.

“We have a great life,” they say in unison. They attend a seniors’ club, enjoy trips away and wonderful times with those they love.

And do they have any plans to marry? They give each other a knowing look and laugh.

And joker George chuckles: “We’re happy living in sin.”