I have always been a space buff. One of my earliest memories of TV beyond Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood were of launches of the Apollo missions. My mother tells me that when Neil Armstrong was stepping out onto the moon on July 20, 1969 I was learning how to clap, probably not at what was going on that night but because I was just so darned cute.
Hey, I was a baby, what do you want?
Anyway, for a good portion of my childhood there were no manned space flights. This country had shot a good wad of money going to the moon, and with that in mind they threw things into low gear and stayed grounded while they developed the Shuttle program, a reusable vehicle that would launch like a rocket and land like a plane. A good portion of the vehicle...the huge cargo bay doors...were built right here in Tulsa, as a matter of fact. It took several years, until 1981 in fact, for us to go back to space aboard the Columbia with John Young and Robert Crippen flying the beast.
I, being a spry 12 year old, took it all in with wonder. Soon, the novelty of the space program and the near routine nature of flying into space became a bit dull, (discovering everything else about being a teenager...girls... helped that out too), and I gradually los interest. Then came a morning in January 1986 that changed everything.
Every generation has defining moments. Moments in time that define history and captivate a nation. So far, in my life there have been three. 9/11, the Oklahoma City Bombing, and the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger. It was one of those moments that I will tell my kid about years ago when he asks me about it just like I asked my parents about John Kennedy's assasination in 1963. Like them, I remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard what had happened.
I was in the gymnasium at Union High School and I was refereeing a volleyball game. I was sitting out not because I was slacking off but due to nearly breaking my nose and suffering a mild concussion in an accident while playing flag football a few days before in the very same gym class.
The class was full of a bunch of 16-17-18-year-olds and were were very competitive. I'm talking cutthroat. For the record, the play was a kickoff after we scored a touchdown in flag football. I got the flag of the kid who was returning the ball after the kick turned and WHAM! the lights went out and when I woke up, Coach Johnson was holding an ice pack to my nose.
So there I was doing my thing and Coach came to me and told me to go to the library and see if the rumor that the Shuttle had exploded was true. It was being pushed on us a little bit because for the first time a civilian astronaut was going to be flying in that mission and that civilian was a teacher, Christa McCauliffe. I got to the library and saw that the rumor was true and they played it over and over again.
It occurs to me now that while things got excessive then with the constant repetitive showings of the vehicle disintegrating, it doesn't come close to the amount of times that we saw the Twin Towers collapse on 9/11. I remember standing there, somewhat spellbound. Three hours later I got home with my best friend Jared to find my mother sitting on the sofa and watching a movie on HBO. She hadn't heard what had happened.
So here we are, 25 years later and it is a sad moment in history. It is shocking to know that much time has gone by. It's part of history I won't forget.
Front row (L-R): Mike Smith, Dick Scobee, Ron McNair. Back row (L-R): Ellison Onizuka, Christa McCauliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Reznik.
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