Remembering the Challenger Disaster

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Today is one of those rare days in history when old people tend to remember exactly where they were and what they were doing on that exact date many years before.  Other than the anniversaries of specific family and personal events, there are three days that I remember clearly due to a major event that occurred on each of those days.  

The first was, of course, the day President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas - November 22, 1963.  I was a sophomore at the small Noel School in Noel, Missouri, on that day sitting in a "study hall" when I heard the tragic news from an older student who had walked home for lunch and heard it on television while he was eating.

The second big event (and the one I will expand on here today) was the tragic explosion of the Challenger space shuttle and the deaths of all aboard) nearly twenty-three years later on January 28, 1986.  I was again at the Noel School, by that time working as the building principal.

And the third major event that made an indelible imprint on my mind was the terrorists crashing US passenger planes on 9/11 - September 11, 2001.  I was a graduate student at the University of Missouri in Columbia and had just gotten off of the elevator on the 7th floor of the tallest building on campus when a classmate approached and gave me that horrific news - as it was still unfolding.

The Challenger explosion, which occurred forty years ago today - on a Tuesday, a school day - had a significant impact on American education because that was the flight that President Reagan had chosen to place a special emphasis on teaching and to try and stir an interest among Amerian Students in science and technology.  The government had conducted a national competition to select a regular school teacher for a ride into space.  During that flight as the spacecraft orbited the earth, the teacher was to present a couple of classroom lessons, and then upon the flight's return from space, go out into American schools and communities to promote the space program.

Christa McAuliffe, a 37-year-old high school social studies teacher with two small children who taught in her hometown of Concord, New Hampshire, won the competition.  (At the time of the explosion I was a former high school social studies teacher, age 37, and also working at the school in my hometown.  I was the father of three children, and the two youngest were the ages of McAuliffe's children - so I identified strongly with her.)

The Noel School at the time of the Challenger disaster was a K-8 facility, with the principal as the head of building.  A friend in the community called me with the news, and I went door to door within the school telling each teacher (privately, out in the hall) what had occurred.  Most shared the news with their students, particularly the older students, and some classrooms followed the news on radios or with one of the school's very few television sets.  It was a sad event and a sad day, especially with regard to the fact that McAuliffe was a teacher with a direct connection to American schools, but several of the teachers (especially those with junior high classes) were able to tie into that day's events and use them in their teaching.

The Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart just 73 seconds into its flight, approximately 46,000 feet or 8.7 miles above the Atlantic Ocean.  All seven members of the space crew were killed.  In addition to Christa McAuliffe, the crew included Commander Francis R. Scobee, Pilot Michael J. Smith, Mission Specialists Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, and Judith Resnik, and Payload Specialist Gregory Jarvis.  (Christa McAuliffe was also classified as a Payload Specialist.)

The tragic loss of the Challenger was ultimately a factor in the US government's pivot toward opening the space program to private companies, which had been a goal of the Reagan administration.

The last radio transmission from the spacecraft before it exploded was from Pilot Smith who said simply, "Uh, oh."