TUPELO - Twenty years ago today, terrorists destroyed Pam Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
All 259 people on board were killed, as were 11 on the ground. The victims included Tupelo native Joe Nathan Woods, 28, as well as his wife, Dedera, and their two children, Joe N. Woods Jr., 2, and Chelsea M. Woods, 10 months.
Wesley Wells, a family friend, learned about the accident from a co-worker who asked if he'd heard about Woods.
"I said, Yeah. Yeah. Did he come by here?'" Wells said. "I went to the family's home. Everybody was over there. It was tough."
Woods had been stationed in Germany, where he was a sergeant in the Air Force. The family was on its way to Tupelo to celebrate Christmas.
"I had been knowing him all my life," said AndrŽ "Hammerhead" Thomas, 48, of Tupelo. "We grew up playing together and got together pretty much all of my life."
He said Woods was a talented football player at Tupelo High School in the 1970s, and he had a tight circle of friends.
"We were just devastated when we heard about it," Thomas said. "Our group, our crew that ran together, we were flabbergasted."
Libya in recent years has accepted responsibility for the bombing and earlier this year paid the last installment of a $2.6 billion in reparations to family members of the crash victims.
A spokeswoman said Woods' family members declined to comment.
Thomas said Woods is gone, but he's not forgotten. Thomas keeps a picture of his old friend on the wall of his Tupelo restaurant, Hammer's Buffalo Wings.
"I tell the young guys about him," Thomas said. "We still think about Joe."
