Remembering Sarah Philipps (1968 - 1988)

The death of Muammar al-Gaddafi in Libya this week prompted NNHS Historian Josh Seeherman to write a somber note remembering Sarah Philipps, one of the victims of the 1988 bombing that killed 259 people on Pan Am Flight 103 and 11 more people on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland.

A 1986 graduate of Newton North H.S. and a Track and Field athlete there, Sarah Philipps attended the University of Colorado and participated in Syracuse University's London Studies program in the fall of 1988. She was 20 years old when she boarded Flight 103 at Heathrow Airport on Dec. 21st, 1988, to return home for the Christmas holidays. She died when the plane exploded in mid-air over Lockerbie, killing all aboard.

The Philipps family established a scholarship in Sarah's name at Colorado that continues to this day, and has enabled over twenty CU undergraduates to study abroad over the past two decades. In addition, Syracuse University created 35 Remembrance Scholarships to honor the 35 victims from the Syracuse program who were on the flight. In 2009 one of those scholars, Kate Callahan, who had been inspired by Sarah's love of athletics, organized a 3.5-mile Remembrance run for the 35 students.

Josh went on to write of his connection to Sarah. She had been a camp counselor at the Meadowbrook Day Camp in Weston, which he attended, and had also been one of the last groups of students to attend the old Claflin Elementary School, a quarter of a mile up Lowell Avenue from the site of the old Newton North building. NNHS runners pass the old school almost every day as they head out for their runs on Comm Ave.