Forty years ago today came the end of the childhood of my generation.
The space shuttle Challenger was blown to bits shortly after liftoff, taking with it the lives of seven of the best crew members that NASA has ever filled a mission with.
A few months earlier, I had read something fascinating: that those people who were old enough could remember where exactly they were when they heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor, and then when they heard about John F. Kennedy being assassinated. And I wondered if there would ever be an event like that in my own life.
Challenger was such an event. The first of too many.
Yes, I indeed remember that day forty years ago as clearly as if it were transpiring today. I was eleven years old, going on twelve, in sixth grade at Community Baptist School in Reidsville, North Carolina. I had just sat down at the table with my lunch when two classmates told me that the space shuttle had blown up. I didn't believe them. It was a cruel joke, I thought. But they insisted that it happened. And then I looked around at the other tables and overheard a lot of the other students saying "exploded" and "shuttle".
I looked down the length of our table, at our teacher. I mouthed to her "Is it true?" She quietly replied yes.
Every school then, it seemed, had its resident science geek. At Community Baptist, that was me. Everyone knew that I was a nut for science. That I had a great interest in this space shuttle mission. STS-51-L was the flight that was carrying Christa McAuliffe, the New Hampshire school teacher, into space. There had been a lot of interested across the country and around the world in this mission. January of 1986 was peak time for those of us with an astronomy/space exploration bent. There was Halley's Comnet come around on its every-76-years visit to the inner solar system. And a few days before the launch of Challenger there was the Voyager 2 flyby of the planet Uranus. Many students and teachers had been asking me what I thought about all of these events taking place. The Challenger mission was going to be the finest of all.
When we got back to class after lunch, Miss Martin confirmed with us what most had already heard. Our school had no television sets in the classrooms so I could only imagine what it looked like. A few hours later Mom picked my sister and I up from school. She had one stop to make before we got home and I was eager to see for myself. When we did get back, the very first thing I saw on the television, turned to the CBS affiliate in Greensboro, was an image of McAuliffe. That was followed by pictures of the other crew members.
And then Dan Rather played the footage. And I finally got to see the fiery fate of Challenger with my own eyes.
A short while later, President Ronald Reagan delivered a speech live from the Oval Office. His remarks to the people of America, and especially the school children, is easily the greatest address by a president that I have ever heard...
I watched the speech. Dad asked if I'd like to help bring some firewood down into the basement. I told him yes, I would like to do that. Anything to get my mind off of the real world.
Tuesday, January 28th, 1986. The day that the youth of Generation X came to an end in the skies over the Atlantic off the coast of Florida.
And that is my account of the day.
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