I walked out of my PR class...

[debgeisler]

...and a student stopped me. "Deb? The Shuttle just blew up on take-off." It was 25 years ago today.

Like everyone else, I ran down 7 floors to the cafeteria, where televisions had been set up.

Like everyone else, I watched the replay as the STS-51-L Challenger ended her countdown, rose majestically, and disintegrated into a fiery ball 73 seconds after lift-off.

Like everyone else, tears were rolling down my face. My students and colleagues stood around with me, watching in horrified disbelief as pieces of Challenger rained down on the ocean.

I had been 10 years old when Apollo 1 burned on the ground, killing Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. But this...this was the first time we had ever lost a crew in the air, in space.

My roommate and I went home, our classes done for the day. My boyfriend at the time (now my husband of 19 years) came over. We stared at the television, listened to the news, watched the fireball grow time after time. Finally, one of us said "enough." It hurt every time we watched it.

President Ronald Reagan announced that the State of the Union speech, scheduled for that night, would be postponed. Instead, he spoke to the nation about the Challenger from the Oval Office. That speech ended with words written by Peggy Noonan.

We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of Earth' to 'touch the face of God.'

We cried again, watching the speech through watery eyes.

So, today we remember

Dick Scobee, mission commander

Michael Smith, pilot

Judith Resnick, mission specialist

Ronald McNair, mission specialist

Ellison Onizuka, mission specialist

Gregory Jarvis, payload specialist

Christa McAuliffe, teacher in space

You do know that I'm crying now, right?



Requiescat in pace.

Comments

[madfilkentist]

I was at Digital Equipment Corporation in Hudson, NH, in the cafeteria. Someone said over the partition that the shuttle had blown up.

I don't remember anything else about the day except numbly hearing more details on the news.

At Boskone I organized a 10th anniversary Challenger memorial concert. It's hard to believe it's been 15 years since then. Musical Chairs did a song, "Dedication," which Linda assured me wasn't about the Challenger, yet it fits so perfectly. "We'll control the lightning once again."

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

I remember hearing that song...and talking with you about it, at the time.

[madfilkentist]

Another thing I remember now is several dozen people gathering in Compuserve chat to commiserate. It was my first experience of that kind.

[laurahcory1.livejournal.com]

I was a senior in high school, in French class.

Several of us advanced students has pulled our desks into a hallway to work on a special project. One of the history teachers walked past our group; we said hello to her. She ignored us and kept walking, then turned around, came back, and told us that the shuttle had exploded. We got up and walked around until we found an empty classroom with a TV.

[drammar.livejournal.com]

I was in our print shop, just having an ordinary day -- and my sister came down the hall shaking like a leaf, and pale as a white sheet. She had just heard the news on the radio.

We closed the doors, and all 17 of us huddled around the little B&W TV that we kept for long nights and cried and mourned together for a couple of minutes. And then my sister and I called our cousin Neil (yes, that Neil) in Oklahoma (he hadn't heard yet) and we all cried together.

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

And then my sister and I called our cousin Neil (yes, that Neil) in Oklahoma (he hadn't heard yet) and we all cried together.

Suckiest phone call you probably had to make in 1986. You have my great sympathy.

[drammar.livejournal.com]

Suckiest phone call you probably had to make in 1986.

No question, but harder for him to hear. We're far cousins, but it really brought home to us all the fragility of life.

[(Anonymous)]

Noonan, being a fine speechwriter, is obviously one well read person. The quotes that she used are from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gillespie_Magee,_Jr.#The_poem .

-- Michael Walsh