I remember coming home to find my mother sobbing in the living room. I hadn't heard... our school didn't show the video live like many schools did. Channel 5 was showing the explosion footage over and over again, as shocked and disbelieving as most of the country. They were trying to gather what information they could to explain this horrible tragedy. I remember running to my room and praying to God. I prayed that they would be in heaven, that He would love them and be with them, and that it would be ok. I was so heartbroken...it was my first flashbulb memory.
Shortly after the Challenger Disaster, NASA eliminated the Teacher in Space project. In the 1990s, the Teacher in Space project was replaced by the Educator Astronaut Project. Instead of training teachers for five months to be a spaceflight participant who would return to the classroom, the Educator Astronaut program required selectees to give up their teaching careers, move to Houston, and become full-time NASA employees.
Years later, I realized the next generation wouldn't remember this day, and I started to understand the meaning of time. Today, Youtube lets us relive these events...but it can't rebuild the atmosphere of a nation. 25 years ago a beloved teacher "touched the face of God". 25 years ago an exciting mission failed, and was deemed too painful to risk hurting the nation again. 25 years ago the world came together in mourning.
So it's personally important to me to remember this day, like so many others who were there. You are not forgotten, Challenger crew. You are remembered. You are loved. You are missed.
Where were you on this day? Post your memories below.
I answered my phone, in my Acton kitchen, and could not understand the call, because of the sobbing. It was my friend Norma Wu, who had caught the news either on TV or radio... we wept together for a while, then I went to turn on the TV... and wept again, and again. My generation has three instances of "where were you?"... When the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan (I was with my Youth Fellowship Group, in Linda Curry's living room!); When John F. Kennedy was shot (I was in Mr. Provins' English class, 4th floor, Washington High School) - and finally, the Challenger explosion.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the greatest tragedy of all is that we've had so many of these enormous national traumas- Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Harvey Milk, Oklahoma City, Columbine, Ft. Hood, VA Tech, Tucson - that we are desensitized, we no longer remember.
We've recently heard political speeches which seem to prove that knowledge of history is no longer important to many. They will simply make up their own as they go along. Those who do not know and understand will be doomed to repeat our history. It is not something we wish to endure again.
NPR played audio of interviews with Christa McAuliffe yesterday, and I almost had to pull the car over because I was crying so hard. It was a reminder that in the years of shuttle flights leading up to that 25th launch, everything had gone so well. In a sense, that made the whole thing more heartbreaking: that one flight in twenty-five should end such a remarkable program. NASA did right in suspending flights until the problem was discovered, but I wonder at the wisdom of doing away entirely with a program that made exploration somehow more human.
ReplyDeleteAll that said, I was in third grade. We didn't watch it either, but some of the older grades found out, and I heard them saying stuff in the hallways. I thought they were teasing, trying to scare us younger kids, and complained to Mom about it when I got home. Poor Mom had to break the news to me. That (and Sept. 11, when I was in NYC) had to be two of her worst-ever motherhood moments.
Yeah, they were, for sure. Please, don't try to top them??? Please, please, please???
ReplyDeleteInteresting. By the time the Challenger hit I was desensitized to calamity I guess. My worse moment was when they shot and killed President Kennedy just months after we buried my father, then came Robert, Dr. Martin Luther King, Reagan,other events in the space program,
ReplyDelete911 and now Tucson. Jim and I shopped in that Safeway and parked in the parking lot in Tucson when we stayed for a month in the Tucson area in 2007 and 2008. We are a nation of pioneers and I don't think that spirit will easily be snuffed out do you?