I will always remember where I was when I heard about Challenger. I was a senior in high school, and we had midterms that week. On that particular day I didn't have any exams scheduled, so I had the day off. My mother and I made tentative plans to go shopping. It was a damp, overcast day, and we weren't sure if it would rain. I decided to turn on the radio and see if I could get a weather forecast. I turned on WINS, but all they were talking about was Challenger. At first I thought it was a normal news report about the shuttle launch, but when they kept talking about the shuttle for several minutes I began to feel a little nervous. I said to my mother, "Something has happened to the shuttle." We went into the living room and turned on the TV, and there was the footage of the explosion. The sight affected me deeply. I remember crying while writing about it in my diary, trying to make sense of the whole thing.
I was in 10th grade at a trade high school in Massachusetts. I thought it was a joke when Jimmy Stiener told me at lunch. Then I went to Machine Shop related class, there was a tv on, I didn't know it even worked. That's when I knew Jimmy wasn't joking. I was up in Concord this weekend and in an auditorium at the high school where Christa MacAliff taught. I didn't even want to look at her portrait on the wall. All these years later it's still very sad. My three year old is talking about being an astronaunt now and wants to go to the "space museum" planetarium in Concord named for MacAliff. I said ok but it's like going to a cemetary. I'll still encourage her to be an astronaut. Space exploration is the most important thing we can do as a species.