January 28, 1986 Remembered; 30 Years Since Challenger Disaster

I was twelve and I remember hearing the news of this tragedy from another 7th grader in the cafeteria and I was sure he had to have been lying. 30 years have gone by and I still feel the sting of that terrible day.

For the first 6 years of my grade school education, I was a pupil at Gonic School where we watched every NASA mission, both the launches and re-entries. This new school had a different way of learning about the space program, they ignored it almost entirely.

It was only after the explosion that the large cathode ray TV was hauled into our social studies classroom and the three subsets of 7th Grade students crammed in together and watched the horror, over and over again. Weak efforts at grief counseling were attempted by the teachers which only made me more angry.

Only in recent years, I've come to grips with the backwards way that the Challenger tragedy was handled by a teacher's staff that was probably younger than I am now. If this had happened a year prior, I'd have watched the entire thing unfold on live TV and the shock may have been even more intense. There just isn't a 'good way' to deal with such news.

There is however a lot of good that came from this horrible event as the legacy of Concord, NH teacher Christa McAuliffe will live forever alongside the other crew members of The Challenger through Challenger Centers that are highlighted in the WMUR piece atop this post.

Both NH news stations will feature tribute pieces this evening as WBIN will have stories on the anniversary starting tonight at 5pm. WMUR will have a special New Hampshire Chronicle entitled 'Touching The Future' tonight at 7pm.