Sarah S. B. Philipps dedicated bench - Newton Centre, Massachusetts - Dedicated Benches on Waymarking.com

A park bench on the Newton Center Playground city park property is dedicated to Sarah Susannah Buchanan Philipps who was a victim in the Pan Am Flight 103 terrorist bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. The seat is near the center of the park in a shady spot beneath a grove of mature trees south and east of the playground.

The sturdy bench is made from heavy-duty, gray-colored composite beams about 3 inches square and 8 feet long; three each for the seat and backrest. A trio of metal legs support the bench components. A cast bronze plaque about ten inches square is mounted to a small boulder just southeast of the bench. It reads:

SARAH S.B. PHILIPPS
8-15-68 ____ 12-21-88

Sarah was flying home from a semester of study
in London when a bomb destroyed the plane,
killing all 259 passengers and crew members, and
11 people in their homes in Lockerbie, Scotland.
This bench was placed and dedicated on her
21st birthday by her friends in the NNHS Class of
1986. We remember her bright presence and love
of life. We miss her smile and laughter. Her love
shines in our hearts and warms us still.

In an extensive 2009 interview with her mother, Elizabeth Philipps, among the myriad subjects covered relating to experiences after the disaster, Mrs. Philipps talked about the origins of the memorial bench:

Philipps
...But of course I think my daughter was unforgettable. Of course everybody remembers her. And people do. They email me from time to time. "Oh, we were talking at the high school reunion and we dedicated this to Sarah." Was it ’89 or ’90? Her high school classmates decided they wanted to put up a little memorial to her in the park, in Newton Center Park. I said, "Why did you choose Newton Center?" And one of the girls said, "Oh, Mrs. Philipps, that’s where we used to go to meet the boys."

Heininger
Oh.

Philipps
"OK, fine. Then why a bench?" They said, "Well, we were thinking first of a bar stool." Of course, she never had a legal drink in her life. They said, "But that wouldn’t have been like Sarah. We wanted a place where more than one person could sit together." So they got some money together and put a bench down there.

I wanted to put some notice on a rock near the bench so that people would know what the bench is about. I’ve seen benches dedicated where they’re actually incised into the bench, or there’s a plaque on them, but I wanted a little bit of a story. So the mother of Sarah’s senior prom date and I — He was very active in this, he got the bench put in — went around looking for a rock. We went to mortuary places and nobody had a nice enough rock. I was driving down Commonwealth Avenue one day and saw, in the very back end of the Newton Cemetery, a pile of rocks. I called her up and I said, "Let’s go look at these rocks. They’re in the cemetery. They must be dragged out — Whenever somebody can’t get enough space for a grave, they have to pull this rock out. I’m sure we can find something there."

So we went together there and we’re climbing all over this pile of rocks and a man drives up very fast in a truck and he comes out of the truck and he says, "I don’t know what you women think you’re doing there but you must get off that rock pile immediately." We did of course but in the end, when we got down off the rock pile, we had chosen a rock. And that cemetery took charge of moving it to the park.

Heininger
Really?

Philipps

And helped the kids get the plaque made and adhered to the rock. So people in Newton were very sweet about it. They wanted to do things for Sarah. I thought that was nice. But I loved that: "I don’t know what you women think you’re doing..."

Sources:
Sarah Susannah Buchanan Philipps Family Collection - An inventory of the collection at the Pan Am Flight 103/Lockerbie Air Disaster Archives at Syracuse University
Elizabeth Philipps Oral History, Mother of Pan-Am Flight 103 Victim, Sarah Phillips; Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate; July 7, 2009