Remembrance Week 2014 Part 4 of 4

As she places the last piece of tape on the black-paper silhouette and sticks it to the wall, Sara Mileski takes a step back in the lounge in Marion Hall and lets out a sigh of relief.

“I love it so much,” Sara says, as she uses her gray Syracuse sweatshirt to wipe the tears and sniffles.

This black silhouette is more than a 6-foot piece of thin paper—it carries a certain type of weight to Sara. This black silhouette represents the main character of stories told by her mother, Jennifer Mileski, and her college friends. This black silhouette represents someone’s brother, son and friend.

The black silhouette represents Jason Coker: one of the 35 Syracuse University students who lost their lives on Dec. 21, 1988 in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

Twenty-six years ago, Coker was a Marion 3 floormate and good friend to Jennifer Mileski. Now, after all of these years, Jason is still a part of Jennifer’s life, as her daughter Sara represents him as a Remembrance Scholar.

Every year, 35 seniors are chosen to represent the students who were killed. The scholars are also responsible for planning Remembrance Week — which takes place this week — to honor the victims of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing.

This year, Sara and fellow Remembrance Scholars created silhouettes of the 35 students and placed them throughout campus in locations where the victims would have most likely hung out. The goal, she said, is for the silhouettes to serve as physical reminders of the victims.

“They walked the same sidewalks I walked,” Sara said. “They went to the same places I go to. They’re from places my friends are from. I share so much with them because I’m ‘Cuse. Because I’m Orange. And they were. It’s hard to put into words. It’s really indescribable. We are living what they lived.”

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Jason’s black silhouette in Marion casually leans on his twin brother Eric’s black silhouette. The silhouettes are close, with Jason’s left arm leaning on Eric’s right shoulder.

The silhouettes are capturing a moment, Sara said, influenced from the stories she’s heard about the Coker brothers. Eric is visiting from the University of Rochester and Jason is showing him off to everyone on Marion 3. Jason has just finished telling a joke to his Marion 3 floormates and, as per usual, laughter fills the floor.

Both Cokers died in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. They were originally from Mendham, New Jersey and were travelling home from studying abroad in London. Jason was a junior in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and hoped to work in either television or at a newspaper.

Sara’s mother, Jennifer, lived on Marion 3 during her freshman and sophomore year. She lived in the same room, and met Jason during her sophomore year. He was a freshman at the time.

The floor had incredible chemistry, Jennifer said. Everyone got along, and to this day, many of the floormates are still close. There aren’t one or two memories that stick out of her days on Marion 3. Instead, she remembers the simpler things like hanging out in each other’s rooms where they just relaxed and laughed throughout the night.

“It made my experience at Syracuse. I didn’t get involved in other stuff because I had such good friends,” Jennifer said.

Doors were always open on the floor and people were always having fun, said Jeanne Lehane, a Marion 3 floormate of Jason’s and a 1989 alumna. A majority of the floormates still stay in touch, she added. Many of whom ended up married or life-long friends.

Like Jennifer, Jeanne said she doesn’t have one specific memory of Jason — but instead remembers his “jokester personality.”

“He was smart. His jokes were always so smart,” Jeanne said. “He was also very aware, very aware of things going on in the world.”

Among the fogginess of the day that is Dec. 21, 1988, Jennifer remembers exactly where she was when she found out about Jason. It was later in the night and Jennifer and her roommates, who all previously lived on Marion 3 as well, sat together in the living room in their off-campus apartment and watched the news. The list of the 270 names scrolled down the screen. Jennifer’s friends knew up to six names on the list.

She recognized two — Jason and Eric.

“It was awful,” Jennifer said. “When you think about it, it was just a bunch (of) 20-, 21-year-olds dealing with this. It was surreal.”

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After taking a step back from the wall, Sara adjusts Jason’s silhouette. She smoothes it out, straightens up and adds a couple of pieces of tape — just for precautionary measures.

“All right Jason, let’s make sure this is perfect,” she says. Sara’s found that she’s been talking to him a lot leading up to Remembrance Week.

She can’t pinpoint an age when she first learned about Jason and the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing — both have always been a part of her life from a very early age. But she first learned about Remembrance Scholars when she saw portraits of the victims in the Schine Student Center around this time during her freshman year.

From that moment, becoming a scholar and representing Jason was always her goal.

“I wanted to represent him because I had people who loved him right behind me,” she said. “I’m not the only one representing him. It’s my mom. It’s her friends.”

With Sara applying for the scholarship — and now representing Jason — Jennifer said all of the raw emotions from her senior year are coming back to the surface.

“That’s why it’s been really heart-wrenching. I can’t even describe it,” Jennifer said, struggling to find words. “This reconnection has been made to the incident.”

Jennifer and a close college friend visited Sara during Homecoming Weekend. Jennifer and her friend visited the Pan Am Flight 103 archives at Bird Library and looked through photos of Jason. They told Sara even more stories of their time living in Marion 3. And even though the stories are more than 26 years old, tears filled all of their eyes.

“Her perspective is changing as a parent, but also because he didn’t get to do what she did. My mom has followed her passion, she’s an amazing teacher. She loves what she does. She created a home, she has daughters. He didn’t get to do that. He didn’t get to live up to his potential,” Sara said.

On Friday, Jennifer will come back to campus to see the Rose Laying Ceremony for the first time. During the ceremony, each scholar places a rose on the Wall of Remembrance and says a few words about the student they represent.

Jennifer plans on stopping by Marion this weekend. She’ll walk through the third floor, but isn’t sure if she’ll peek into her old room. She said she doesn’t want to be an “intruder” to the students living there now.

But she will visit the first floor lounge to reunite with an old friend.

Published on October 23, 2014 at 1:10 am

Contact Meredith: mhnewman@syr.edu | @MerNewman93