- I was between classes at Transy, heading through the back lobby of the girls' dorm to check my mailbox, and
noticed a crowd watching a shuttle launch on the big screen TV. I heard "Go for throttle up," as I turned
to look, just in time to see the fireball. I'd never seen that many college kids get that quiet that
quickly. We just stood there staring, waiting for the smoke to clear, and the first noise was the NASA
announcer to the effect of "T +74 seconds, we've lost contact with Challenger..."
- -- Tracy Hite
- I got out of bed from my weird problem that caused me to flunk out of Transy
(symptoms similar to a 24-48 stomach flu running about at the time, but
symptoms would go away around 11 AM, and return at dawn the next day - for
over 2 months, until I managed to get the school to send me to the clinic to
get medicine), and I heard something vague about the shuttle on the radio,
but had no idea what was being said. So, I trotted over to the cafeteria to
refill my digestive tract, and when I walked into the back lobby of the
girl's dorm, I found the entire room crowded with people staring in shock at
the TV. I pretty much forgot about lunch on hearing what happened.
- -- Stan Bundy
- I saw it as it happened.
I was working for the Government Access Channel in Lexington ... And I was broadcasting the replay of the previous day's city
council meeting. Had put the tape in and was watching the meeting on monitor 2.
Had monitor 1 on the news and they were showing the lift off. And it blew up right in front of my eyes.
I just sort of sat there in a state of disbelief for a little while. I know that at some point I had to have sent up the logo
page as tape one was ending and turned on machine 2 to show the second part of the meeting ... Put the third tape in
machine 1 to have it ready ... But it was all kind of a strange blur at that time.
- -- Duryea Edwards
- I was in high school, and the principal came on the P.A. He announced
what happened and called for a moment of silence out of respect for the
fallen astronauts. It was very silent.
- -- Scott Lammers
- Not till after it was well over. I was mid-class when it happened and
didn't even hear about it till my next class...professor had a TV in the
classroom. By the first anniversary my BBS had code in to remind people
of the anniversary.
- -- Rickey Hite
- I was also at Transy. I'd been in class during the launch, and was headed
out of Brown Science Centre when I ran into Dr. Miller. (Who, btw, worked
at one time for NASA.) I asked him whether the shuttle had gotten off on
time, thinking I might have time to make it back and watch if it had been
delayed for some reason, and hs said, in an understandably disturbed voice,
"Um, uh, I think it blew up." I laughed and said, "That's in very poor
taste," and he replied, "Um, no, really. I think it blew up. They're not
sure." And then I went over to Forrer Hall to watch the news coverage.
- -- R'ykandar Korra'ti
- I think we watched all the shuttle launches in school at that time,
since they were new and wonderful. I was in 5th grade at Stonewall
Elementary. I remember all the boys drawing the snail-headed trail
of smoke for weeks afterwards and thinking what insensitive idiots
they were.
- -- Janis Neville
- I had turned on the TV waiting for my soap opera to come on. When Martin got
up, I told him "We lost the shuttle." He said "Oh well," turned around and
went back to bed. How cold can you get!
- -- Nancy Hartshorn
- I was working in the Franklin County Public Schools at the time. I
was at Collins Lane Elementary that day, and couldn't work with a kid
because all of the classes were watching Christa McAuliffe take off. So I
went into a classroom to watch the launch. The only launch I watched with 25
elementary school students and it ended in a fireball.
- -- Cathy Fiorello
- With a teacher onboard, a lot of schools were watching it live.
I don't want to remember it.
I still remember some of the jokes I heard the next day. I think they're a way of
coping, really, a way of getting some distance and pretending it's not important.
- -- Maria Bellamy
- I was teaching a computer class at Fugazzi College in Lexington. The class
in the next room had been watching the launch, and the instructor came over
to our room to tell us about it when it happened. I took the whole class
over to the next room, where we saw it being shown over and over again.
One of the more poignant Challenger memories I've heard of from others, was
Murray Porath's. The day it happened was his younger son's birthday. He
wrote a song, of course.
There were so many filkers who had been so deeply moved by the tragedy that
an entire tape was produced of nothing but Challenger songs. Many
tear-jerkers of course, some angry. But one of the Challenger songs that
tears at my heart the worst, is the one on the LA Filkharmonics' tape, "In
Space No One Can Hear You Sing". It's a bright, cheery, inspirational
tune, and the tape was put out before the tragedy. A few lyrics, from my
memory: "Rise up, Challenger, carryin' humainity's dreams."
- -- Cync Brantley
- I had come through the (partly self-inflicted) disaster of student teaching
not long before, and I still had a dream that as soon as I got the farms in
decent shape, I was going to co back and finish my certification (yeah
right). Both my aunt & my cousin were teachers (my aunt had died in '82 of
cancer) and my Mom had been a substitute. I was hauling cattle to the
stockyards and so missed the seeing the disaster as it happened. When I did
find out, it was like someone sucker-punched me... twice. I felt that
something extremely valuable had been stolen from me both as a potential
teacher, and as a fervent supporter of humanity's reach for the stars. I
was one of those zealots that believe that the earth is a womb, and not only
do we have to leave the womb in order to reach our full potential, if we
stay here long enough, we'll burn too many of the resources necessary to get
out. Then we die. The whole world got a lot greyer that year...
- -- Archie Harper
- I was in the 4th grade and all of my class was sitting in the gym watching
the shuttle lunch with the rest of the school. Our teacher tried to cover
up what had happened, but we could all see the thing had exploded, and
since we had been studying what was supposed to happen, we knew that wasn't
it. It was pretty shocking.
- -- Terri Barger
