On this date... 25 years ago

I remember where I was at the moment that the space shuttle Challenger blew up.

I was in the student center on the Governor Dummer campus, drinking a cup of coffee and working my way through some homework. Someone called out, "The space shuttle blew up!" Another student looked at me and then he rushed over to the television. He turned up the volume, and the few of us sitting in the building watched the image of what happened a minute and thirteen seconds into the flight... over and over and over as only TV news knows how to do.

I was shaken. Aboard the Challenger shuttle was Christa McAuliffe. She had become a celebrity as the first teacher going into space, and as a social studies instructor at Concord High School in New Hampshire. The hours and hours of TV and radio specials had made her your next door neighbor and best friend. New Hampshire was buzzing that we had a national treasure in our midst... and she taught at the high school in our state capital!

The moment was exhilarating. An ordinary citizen, McAuliffe, was going into space and would be delivering messages back to earth so that all of us could go on this journey with her.

You heard on the video the guy at Mission Control: "Challenger. Go with throttle up." The response, "Roger. Go with throttle up." And then... boom! In an instant... McAuliffe and the other six crew members were gone. It was surreal. After awhile, I wandered toward the dining hall, still seeing the image over and over in my head. My math teacher saw me coming in and must have noticed that I wasn't quite right.

"Sue, what's the matter?"

"The space shuttle blew up."

No response from the teacher. I could have said, "Mashed potatoes" or "What's up, doc?" or any other phrase and possibly elicited a bigger reaction. She shrugged, and that was it. Not even a polite, "I'm sorry to hear that." At tables in the hall, students were cracking jokes about the tragedy. One person actually said of the explosion, "So what?"

So what?!?!

"Am I just that different from all of these people??" I wondered. "Does no one else care that seven people just blew up over Cape Canaveral?! That the coolest person to go into space was now particles vanishing into thin air??"

In my own mind, I saw this as another huge emotional punch in the gut to New Hampshirites. Two days earlier, our beloved professional football team had raised our hopes and dreams by going to the Super Bowl for the first time... only to have the Chicago Bears completely dominate them and clean their clocks. That stung. But the Challenger broke our hearts. That night, Governor John Sununu made a special televised address to the state. It was the only time Sununu spoke in a way that wasn't his normal arrogant, self-satisfied smugness. He was hurting just as much as we all were, and you could see it in his face.

I drew the image of the explosion in the margins of many notebooks the rest of that year. I remember finding the AP radio coverage of the event in the studio at KBIA when I was in college. I listened to the sounds of excited school children counting down to lift off. Because of Ms. McAuliffe, many schools had made this shuttle launch part of their school day. And then that mission control voice: "Challenger. Go with throttle up." The crowd cheered at first, thinking the burst of flames was all part of the show. Then you hear a child's voice in the crowd, "Where'd the shuttle go?"

To slip the surly bonds of earth and touch the face of God, as President Reagan said.

I'm sure we all have memories of where we were on that day and at that hour. So strange to think that 25 years later, the memories are still vivid. The responses, or lack thereof, around me so memorable. And I remember Christa McAuliffe.