I was in our corporate word processing center (before we all had PCs we had a central word processing center with ladies who would do your typing for you), picking up some documents, when I found out about the Challenger. The ladies there had a TV on.
I worked in Dallas at the time, at the UT Health Science Center back then. One of the labs across the hall belonged to an astronaut. He was scheduled to go up on the Challenger, but got yanked the week or two before when they put Christa McAuliffe on instead. We were all so mad that they pulled him, but watched the launch anyway. And then…we were all shaking in our boots when it exploded. He was supposed to be on that flight. Thank God he wasn’t!
He did eventually go up into space. I think ‘94 or ‘95.