TRENTON, N.J. — On the first anniversary of the release of the Pan Am bomber, Sonia Stratis and Chris Tedeschi weren’t focused on the man who took so much from their families, but on the love they found.
The couple met at a memorial for the victims and say they instantly fell in love. They planned to spend Friday night with family, friends and nearly two dozen victims’ relatives at a rehearsal dinner for their wedding today in Montvale, N.J.
Stratis, 28, and Tedeschi, 33, both grew up in New Jersey but didn’t meet until December 2008 at a memorial dinner to remember the 20th anniversary of the 1988 bombing that killed all 259 people aboard Flight 103 — mostly Americans — and 11 on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland.
Stratis lost her father, Elia, in the bombing. Tedeschi’s father married a Lockerbie widow, Kathy Daniels, and he grew up with her three children.
The couple were holding their rehearsal dinner Friday — one year to the day that Abdel Baset Al-Megrahi, the only person jailed for the 1988 bombing, was freed from a Scottish prison on humanitarian grounds.
“Yes, it is the anniversary, but we can’t let it stop our lives,” Stratis told The Daily Mail in London. “He (Al-Megrahi) took my father from me, but I’m not going let him stop the fruitfulness of my life.”
