"There's a teacher just like me on that Space Shuttle!"
We sat in awe on the floor of our 1st grade classroom watching the space shuttle launch. I tried to wrap my little 6 year old brain around the fact that a teacher just like ours was heading towards the stars.
Our teacher assured us this was a privilege. She had managed to obtain one of the few school televisions to be rolled into our classroom for the viewing.
Christa McAuliffe, a high school social studies teacher from New Hampshire, had won the "First Teacher in Space" competition. She was to be the first of several every day American citizens NASA would strategically take into space.
Nothing would prepare us for what we were about to see. 73 seconds into flight, the shuttle exploded before our eyes. The 7 crew members of STS-51-L would never be seen again.
Our teacher couldn't answer the questions we asked of her...
"What happened?"
"Is she okay?"
We didn't know how to translate tears and silence.
President Reagan appeared on National Television later that day to speak to me,
"And I want to say something to the school children of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's take-off. I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance at expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the faint-hearted, it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future and we'll continue to follow."
-Ronald Reagan
The entirety of his speech can be viewed below:
Today marks the 25th anniversary of the Challenger disaster. Oddly enough, I now live in the same town I did 25 years ago & I keep having flash backs to that January school day. I'm still processing what happened. My heart goes out to all of the family and friends of the crew.
