Where were you when....

Having grown up in central Florida in the early 1980's, as the space program was really (literally) taking off, I have vivid memories of watching many many space shuttle launches from the schoolyard of Dr. Phillips Elementary School. I even remember while in first grade the songwriting contest our school participated in, to commemorate the launch of the first Columbia space shuttle. Being only an hour from Cape Canaveral (at the time known as Cape Kennedy, though Canaveral crept back into regular use by the late 80's), we could see the bright burning arc in the sky as the shuttle roared through the atmosphere, dropped its fuel tank and boosters after liftoff, and finally made its way out of sight and into orbit. As small children this was a thrill, and our teachers took us outside to watch every launch.

So it was on January 28, 1985, when I was nine years old and in the fifth grade. Fifth grade was a strikingly memorable and somewhat difficult year for me, because my teacher Mr. LaFountaine enjoyed singing the Starship song "Sara" whenever I raised my hand in class. (This occurred less and less often in direct proportion to how often he sang the song, which to this day I still detest with the white hot passion of a thousand suns.) It was the year I was robbed of the 5th grade spelling bee championship because the teacher who read the words pronounced diagnosis as diagnose, and when I correctly spelled diagnose and then pointed out her error and argued I should not be eliminated, she was embarrassed but refused to undo her mistake. Later that year, my entire class would learn the Super Bowl Shuffle and practice it during recess. Fifth grade was a memorable year in so many ways. But, out of all the memories I have of that year, the one that stands out most vividly is January 28, 1985.

Having watched a couple dozen launches of space shuttles by the time I was 10, I and most of my classmates knew what to expect. This launch was a little different, because for the first time a teacher would be on board. We had learned much about the research Christa McAuliffe would be participating in, as part of a national educational program centered around this mission. We had teachers who had applied to be the ones to go up in the shuttle, and one who had been interviewed and made it somewhat far in the process. It was something we and our teachers had been looking forward to.

So, on that very cold January day (it was unseasonably cold for Florida, and perfectly clear) we all bundled up and trudged outside expecting a routine launch. We stood, our little heads craned back watching the sky, waiting for the precise moment when that arc would lift off. And we saw it, but it was different. There was a puff, and then two small streams of white in either direction. We did not see the booster trails that normally fell off as the shuttle rose higher and higher. We only saw the puff, and the split. And even at 10 years old, we knew something was wrong.

We walked back inside, and I distinctly remember students asking why it was different this time. Our teacher tried to tell us that the two trails had been the boosters breaking off as normally would occur. We didn't believe him, and it was obvious fairly quickly that he wasn't really sure himself. Within ten minutes, word came to the teachers that something terrible had, in fact, happened. A TV was rolled into our area on one of those tall carts, and turned on. For some reason, I only have two images in my head of the TV coverage that day--Tom Brokaw's face, and the final moment of video footage that zoomed in closer on the shuttle, and was a bit grainier, just before it exploded. We watched that clip of the explosion so many times that day, over and over again that I could paint it from memory right now if I had to. The concept of 24 hour news coverage of a major event was a relatively recent development at that time, and the Challenger explosion must have been one of the first incidents that was truly covered round the clock by the network television stations. They had so little information to go on, all they could do was play that clip over and over and over.



"Obviously a major malfunction." Those chilling words after a lengthy silence, as everyone figured out that the worst had happened. We knew it right away, as children often do when we have no need for being cautious and careful before sounding the alarm. We didn't really understand yet that everyone on board was dead, that it was a tragic disaster that would set the space program back years as they investigated the cause of the accident and worked to prevent future occurrences. We just knew it hadn't looked like all the other ones, and that something bad had happened. Then we watched that clip over and over as the anchors struggled to figure out what it all meant.

People always talk about the seminal moments in our lives when everyone remembers where they were. 9/11 is the obvious choice in my lifetime and in the lifetime of most of the people I know. The assassination of President Kennedy was the seminal moment of my parents' generation. But before 9/11 happened, the one moment I remembered clear as a bell was the day the Challenger blew up.

Earlier today, people on Twitter started talking about where they were 23 years ago today. Some things just can't be described in 140 characters, so here is my story.