Where Were You?

It was 1986, and I was sixteen and a half years old and was between second and third periods, enjoying our morning break called  "brunch" at the high school high school.  I was sitting in Mrs. Goodrich's classroom poised to watch the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger.  On board were six crew members and a teacher--the first non-astronaut to get to go to space.  Christa McAuliffe had fired up a lot of excitement for science teachers and students.  We'd get to follow her outer space experiments and learn from her lessons from space.

But almost as soon as they launched, something went obviously, horribly wrong.  Silence rang out in the classroom, and across our campus, and the world.

All seven aboard lost their lives, twenty five years ago today.  Even thinking about it now, my heart sinks  little and I get a little frog in my throat.  They died doing something they were excited about doing, something they loved.  And the whole world watched, and cried together.

Nothing worth having or knowing comes easy.  Yet, how often do we take the knowledge we are given--at someone else's expense--for granted?  NASA didn't just loose six astronauts and a vounteer teacher-in-space that day.  Seven families lost their loves ones.  Our nation lost seven explorers, discoverers, challengers.  Brave men and women who believed what they were doing would help the world.

And for a while, they were exactly right.  The world stopped and cried, and held on to one another while we all wondered what had happened.  Like President Reagan said in tribute after the disaster, "We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God'."