Twenty-five years later, and I still remember clearly where I was when the news broke about the loss of Challenger.
Greenlawn, Long Island, post office, just a short walk from work. Lunch time. The radio was tuned to some news channel which was covering the launch. Everyone was half-listening. It was "just another launch" of this now-routine system, although there was a bit more than the usual level of excitement because this time there was an ordinary person - a teacher - aboard.
And then there was an uncomfortable silence when the news announcer realized that something had gone wrong. And an even more uncomfortable silence when everyone in the post office realized the same thing.
The rest of the afternoon was like a dark cloud. All the employees at the facility (which supported the aerospace industry) were distraught; many had worked on space programs, including Apollo and Shuttle. Helen, the lady I worked with at the time, said something like, "Well, that's the end of the Space Program!" We listened to the news on the radio, hoping to hear that a miracle had occurred, that the astronauts had somehow been found alive and rescued. But it was not to be.
And I put away the copy of the Space Shuttle Operator's Manual which my friend Helen had let me borrow, which I'd been reading religiously in anticipation of one day getting a job down at the Cape. It didn't seem like I'd be needing it any time soon.
2 comments:
I was student teaching. There was a tv in the teacher's lounge that was tuned to the launch. It played the explosion over and over.
I was at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. They played the tape over and over again on the tv in the enlisted lounge.
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