25 years ago

Arlington National Cemetery

25 years ago, while taking a 7th grade spelling test in a very tiny room (yes, we called it spelling instead of vocabulary back then), an 8th grader named Ira popped his head in the door and said "The space shuttle just blew up." Our teacher quickly finished the test, then we joined the rest of the 7th-12th graders in watching the news broadcast and its replays of the exploding Challenger. A teacher from Birmingham, Alabama had been one of the finalists in the selection process to send the first teacher into space, so our Alabama news media was naturally making a big deal about that as well. After a week of all the shock and the constant replays and talk of O-rings and such, many students began to grumble a little that no one knew the names of the other astronauts who died, but every knew about "school teacher Christa McAuliffe".  There was some truth to that.

And the other thing I remember about that day and the weeks that followed?  The middle school jokes. The boys asked "How do we know the astronauts had dandruff?" and all the girls belligerently told them how sick and disrespectful they were and to shut up. To this day I wonder what the answer was.

And this obviously made a big enough impression on me that for one my assignments at Wake Tech, it was my subject matter. Not the best drawing in the world, but everyone from my generation certainly understood the emotions behind it. I guess this was my first national disaster. Sadly it hasn't been the last.