I was under a year old, and my mom was feeding me in the kitchen. She talks to me about what happened around this time of year most years.
She had the kitchen TV on in order to watch the launch. My mom turned toward me after the first few seconds, away from the TV. She said that I was watching and said, “nooo,” when it blew up, because there was something wrong. That’s when she realized something was very wrong.
I was in my first year of college, getting ready to go to class when it happened. I lived near Orlando, and like many others there, shuttle liftoffs just weren’t that big a deal any more. I had seen quite a few over the trees in my backyard, and had gone to the cape to see a couple close-up. I remember seeing it on tv as I was grabbing my books for class when everything changed. I forgot about college and ran outside to see it firsthand. I remember thinking how I wish I could turn time around for a minute, and everything would be all right again. “But they were just alive and everything was fine a minute ago… they were alive and everything was all right, and then all of a sudden everything changed… and there’s no way to turn things around and go back to the way it was a minute ago”. That’s what I was thinking as I looked at the two trails of smoke drifting slowly… and that smoke stayed there a hell of a long time.
I was in college, listening to my little Walkman-style radio (KRQR San Francisco, a top 40 rock ‘n’ roll station), crossing Durant Street in Berkeley. As I stepped off the curb, I heard the DJ break in, sounding unaccustomedly serious, and my mind instantly flashed “Bad news – not the shuttle, please!” It was, and by the time I reached the other side of the street (in a daze, and barely looking where I was going), I knew it. Passing the coffee shop (Uncommon Grounds, I think it was called), I thought about stopping in and announcing the news to the people inside, but I didn’t.
Columbia didn’t have the same effect on me – the difference between one’s twenties and one’s late thirties, I expect. September 11 had a greater effect, and continues to pall my wedding anniversary to this day (yes, 9/11/99).
Sorry to get into this so late. I haven’t read MPSIMS in a few days.
And I’ve posted this before, but here goes.
I was almost 16, in grade 10. I was also living in a suburb of Chicago, and some of you may remember that that was also the year that the Bears went all the way. Throughout January and December, our community just had football fever. Our school even had a pep rally for the team. I did think it was a bit odd to do that for a pro team, who wouldn’t know about it, but I wasn’t any less of a fan than my classmates.
I’d heard plenty about the first teacher in space, but I hadn’t known that the launch was going to be that day. Around lunchtime, the principal made an announcement over the PA (I don’t remember if that was the first time I was told about the disaster) and called for a moment of silence.
My last class of the day was English. And our teacher spent the first ten minutes doing nothing but rant. First he expressed outrage over the fact that just a week earlier, we’d been cheering and clapping for “a football team?!” and now this happened. Then he abruptly switched gears and started denigrating the first-teacher-in-space angle, claiming that it was “just something to appeal to all the local yokels”.
??? I didn’t even quite know what he was getting at. First it was like, we were wrong to pay so much attention to football, and apparently, if we’d watched the shuttle launch instead, and all clapped our hands like in Peter Pan, it wouldn’t have exploded. Then he’s dismissing the mission as a publicity stunt. Well, which is it, man?
I guess it just hit him particularly hard because of the “teacher” aspect. The same way cops react when another cop gets killed, or the way the firefighters at the local station, when I went there to vote on 9/11, seemed ready to fly to Afghanistan that night and bring back the head of bin Laden.
But because I totally idolized this teacher, and because I was well on the way to being “alternative” anyway, what I took away from this was that it really was unproductive to care about things like pro sports, and top-40 music, and clothes from the Limited.
Okay, maybe the last two. But…that was also the year that the Mets took the World Series! My mom and I were transplanted Mets fans (North Jersey before Chicago), and I half-heartedly watched the first few games of the NL playoffs, then drifted away. And that turned out to be a great series, and I missed it! Thanks for poisoning my mind, Mr. T!
Anyway. I did get back into sports, when I moved to Pittsburgh. And I don’t believe that the world suffered any more than it otherwise would have just because I was cheering for the Pirates and Penguins. It was also in Pittsburgh that I met Mr. Rilch, who explained to me about the O-rings.
But I think that that scene in 103 was one of the first glimpses of our current culture of victimhood. It’s always gotta be someone’s fault. My fault, your fault, his fault, their fault, god’s fault…I was heartened, after the Columbia tragedy, to see that the reaction wasn’t just “God hates us”, as it had been after Challenger, but rather, “We’re gonna do this again, so let’s find out what went wrong.”
They didn’t announce it on the school intercom, I don’t know why. I remember coming home for lunch that day, and watching the replays on the television. I sat there dumbfounded, and wept. My brother watched it live in science class. It’s still fresh, the horror over such a tragedy, and then the sadness in finding out it was preventable. 
I saw the director for the first time today since you posted this, and, of course I asked. Without a pause or a blink, he said yes, let out a big belly laugh, and then said not to quote him. 
Also, I need to correct my earlier statement. The director was the pilot of the mission before Wubbo’s, not on Wubbo’s mission. I was under the impression that June 1985 was the flight prior to the accident, and Wubbo flew in November.
I was 26 and working for SONY at their America headquarters. Unlike most companies, there were a lot of TV sets in the building. When we heard the news, all the executives with TV’s turned them on and cranked up the volume. There was a company store on the first floor that had a lot of tvs, all of which were turned on. Everyone in the company started clustering around the tvs, in shock, watching the footage over and over. Work pretty much came to a grinding halt. The impact of the event was brought into the building loud and clear.
I was in 7th or 8th grade at the time and our school had a cable feed. We watched the whole thing happen right in class. We were supposed to be celebrating science and learning something, cheering on the teacher who went up with the crew. We were devastated, to say the least, when the thing blew up. After that the TVs went off and we spent the rest of the day just trying to deal with our emotions. God, that was a really hard day.
I was on my honeymoon on the Oregon Coast. We were staying at a little hotel and getting ready to leave. The owners of the hotel knocked on our door and asked us to turn on the T.V.
I will never forget the utter devastation and shock that coursed through me. I cried too. My husband was deeply saddened as well.
I will never forget that date.
I was a junior in high school, and in my chemistry class. Our teacher wheeled the TV cart in, which was very unusual, and we all watched in horror. That same teacher committed suicide later that year, and I’ve always connected the two events. He was one of my favorites.
This event is second only to 9-11 in my mind in the personal, horrible history remembering scale. I remember the newscast very clearly.
I was fairly close to Cape Canaveral. I was a junior in high school in Ft. Lauderdale. We had exams that day which was a half day at school. I watched some of the coverage during lunch and then when back to my room to study for the next day’s exam. It really didn’t have much of an effect on me that day. I know it sounds cold and heartless, but my mind was focused on mid term exams.
At least I am not as bad as TV in Ohio. They cut away from the Columbia coverage to show an Ohio State basketball game. NOTHING comes before Ohio State sports in Columbus.
I was in my senior year of high school and sitting in accounting class when an announcement came over the intercom that the shuttle had blown up. It really didn’t sink in - I was convinced that I’d heard that it had taken off, and wondered why they bothered to announce it.
Once it finally hit me, my first thought was my brother. He in junior high and was obsessed with all things NASA (still is), and it was just devastating for him.
I was 12 and in the 7th Grade in West Central Florida (where we can see smoke trails of launches). I was in Chorus class at the time, and our Chorus room had a HUGE picture window. As we were rehearsing for a competition, the teacher looked through the window and said “Look, the Challenger took off, let’s all say a prayer for their safe return” (he was an ordained minister, and yes it was a public school, but no one in my area really makes a fuss about the separation of church and state). I looked out the window and immediately got a bad feeling. I said to myself “It looks like something went horribly wrong. Please, God, let me be wrong.” We finished rehearsal, but I had a feeling of impending doom.
As I was on my way to my student assistant job in the Media Center, I saw my Mom (a parent volunteer) rolling a big TV to the Principal’s office. Someone told me at my locker about the explosion, but for some reason I didn’t believe them. The minute I walked in and saw every TV in the place tuned to the 3 major networks, I knew. I didn’t shelve any books, I just stared at the TV. The image of Peter Jennings using a pencil to point to the exact spot on a model of where it blew up is imprinted on my mind. I wanted to go home, but Mom wouldn’t let me; she did get permission for me to stay in the Media Center the rest of the day.
The next day in Chorus class the teacher said “I’m sure you know what happened yesterday, and I think instead of serving ourselves by rehearsing, it would be better to help each other by reflecting on the events. If you want to talk, I’ll be in my office.” We sat around and talked about it; we also filed all the music that needed to be filed. It was positively surreal in that classroom that day.
As a teacher, I know how hard dealing with tragedies in the classroom can be. I think my Chorus teacher did the best thing he could have. He took an absolute horrific time, and by just giving us time to heal, turned into a lesson about how much we need each other. I used the same tactic with my students on 9/11.
For Columbia, I was sitting in a Master’s class, and my Mom called my cell to let me know.
Maybe I should not be near a classroom during the next Shuttle launch?
I recognized the date from the subject line instantly.
Same here: 10th grade, social studies class (International Relations), AV cart brought in, etc.
Big exception, though: They didn’t tell us what we were about to look at.
When we arrived in class, the teacher wasn’t there. We were wondering if we could leave when he arrived with the TV. He rolled it up front, plugged it in, powered up, and pushed play. Not a word.
He might as well have come in and hit me in the skull with an aluminum bat.
And I cried for Columbia, too.
I recognized the date too. I was a freshman in college. On my way into German class, I noticed people gathered around a TV in the (poli sci) classroom next door. They must have been watching replays, but the accident had just happened. Everyone watched for a few minutes, but then German class began and that was that.
It affected me about as much as a plane crash does…not nothing, but not life-altering either. Columbia had the same (small) effect on me. I suppose I’m fortunate that no such event has hit close enough to home to alter my own life in a way I notice.
Tenth grade, home from school since it was midterm time and I didn’t have any exams that morning. I don’t know why I turned on the TV that morning, but I did anyway.
I had pretty much the same reaction that most of the spectators initially had… “Uh, that doesn’t look right.” Took a while to sink in.
Hah! That is too funny. 
Ockels is a smart guy, though (obviously). He hosted this science show on TV in Holland, when I was a kid. I was always mesmerised by him. I sat in front of the TV, thinking to myself, “that guy went in SPACE!”. As I grew older, I noticed how arrogant and stand-offish Ockels seemed. When I read your story about the a guy who might have flown with him, I jumped at the opportunity. It’s good to be right. 
I was 28 and worked nights. I watched it live.
I remember the commentator talking about Christa McAuliffe’s parents being in the stands watching the lift off. I saw the launch, and watched it blow up. I also saw the look on McAuliffe’s father’s face when he realized what happened. After it exploded the camera went into an isolation shot on his face. You heard Mission Control’s statement of there having been a catastrophic failure (no that isn’t the way he put it, but something similar— catastrophic something---- that I can’t remember right now).
I don’t think the network purposely went to get a reaction shot, they had been switching back and forth between the shuttle and one or the other of her parents thoughout the countdown and the launch. I doubt they even knew the extent of the tragedy.
Amazingly enough I remember this date, not forthe fact that the Challenegr went up,but because I spent the vast majority of that day sitting in offices. It was my due date, and suprise if I did not start the labor that would produce my daughter two days latter on that morning.
As for my memory of Challenger, I watched it on the TV, Cried and prayed.
You understand my mind was somewhere else at the time.
It is indeed one of those indelible moments.
I was in the fifth grade. I was in a small room off the library, in an interview with the school psychologist due to my poor grades. Throughout my school career I stubbornly, but quietly, neglected to do the majority of my homework. (Even as a kid I tended to have my own agenda.)
She left for a few minutes, and when she came back she said quietly, “The space shuttle exploded.”
I laughed and said, “Yeah, right.”
She just looked at me and didn’t really make any attempt to convince me. In retrospect, I think she must have been in some shock. The interview ended soon after that.
As I was walking back to my class I passed a classroom that was empty for recess. That class’s teacher was there, and was watching the TV. I stood in the doorway for a few moments and watched as I realized it was true.
I’ve always felt a little guilty about my callousness when the school psych told me even though I couldn’t have known. My world was full of people who were likely to pull my leg, so I was always skeptical of anything that sounded unlikely or hyperbolic.