Posted on 01/27/2011 6:23:29 PM PST by Perdogg
On the morning the Challenger space shuttle made its final flight, Mark Letalien was sitting in his high school theatre surrounded by wildly cheering students as the spacecraft carrying their teacher, Christa McAuliffe, tore through the Florida sky.
But 73 seconds into the historic mission, the raucous celebration at Concord High School in Concord, New Hampshire, was shattered by a teacher's yell to be quiet.
(Excerpt) Read more at canada.com ...
ping
I still remember where I was and what I was doing that fateful day.
http://www.deltaweb.co.uk/spitfire/hiflight.htm
yep...a real JFK assassination deja-vu moment. I was at work and we flipped on the radio and listened to reports from helicopters offshore of pieces still splashing down. I went home that night and frickin’ cried like a baby when I saw the video the first time.
......so do I, I remember telling fellow workers what I had just witnessed and the shock that came across their faces...
They both asked simultaneously, What happen?...I said it blew up about a minute into the flight. One guy said “they had escape procedures right?” I told them that what I saw I didn’t think anyone could survive the explosion....or fall
Still get chills when I see that video.
I was at work in Palm Bay, FL. Heard the launch on the radio and walked out of the office bldg with a couple of co-workers and saw it explode. We were all stunned.
It wasn't until I walked to the college newspaper office and saw the editor-in-chief, the managing editor and the news editor huddled around some crappy old radio that had been in the office that it hit me. They looked up at me as I walked in and I looked at their faces and just muttered something like, "It's true?"
Then I grabbed the headphones draped around my neck, put them in place and switched on my Walkman. I don't know why I didn't already have it on.
Same here. I will never forget President Reagan’s speech following the disaster. I still get a bit misty thinking about it.
Its hard when you grew up in that (NASA) community of professionals who knew the risks, yet still strapped in and took the it...
I was already in the fleet in San Diego and was going through a fire-fighting class when someone came in and said the shuttle just blew up...
I called my Dad back in Houston, and he said it was good that I called at that time as they and his aircraft (KC-135 a.k.a. - “Vomit Comet”) were being tasked to carry as many NASA folks as possible to the Cape and were about to pull away and be wheels up in 10 minutes...They had to pull all the experiments and other gear off to maximize that effort...
I’d never heard him be so reserved in my life...He knew every member of that crew personally...
It was certainly a time in our lives that changed everything we knew, but kinda put it on the back burner...
I was in my 12th grade government class in Los Angeles, CA, getting ready for the 1st semester final the next day. Some of our students had gone to the library to study.
Ten minutes before the end of class, they came running into the room, saying that the Challenger had exploded. Most of us were thinking, yeah, right. They were like, “No, seriously...the space shuttle just exploded!” There was a tv in the library showing it, so they saw it when it happened. Not long afterward, they mentioned it on the classroom loudspeaker.
My first call was to my dad...who worked in Downey, CA...at Rockwell. Said you could have heard a pin drop.
25 years.
And I guaranTEE, the President at the time didn’t give a “shoutout” before addressing the nation so eloquently.
I’ll never forget it, that’s for sure. My mom had a dream of it before it happened, but she hadn’t been paying attention to the news and didn’t know what the dream meant. For some days or weeks she kept talking about these people, even some of their first names, and how they looked, and that they died. Then when Challenger was about to launch, the tv just happened to be on — usually wasn’t — and the news was saying their names and she jerked around and looked at it, and she said, “It’s them! It’s them!” over and over. I was a little kid. Very creeped out by it. Even for my omniscient mom, that was pretty amazing.
Couple of minutes later, we watched it blow up.
I was painting the starboard bridge wing on USS Bristol County down at the 32nd St. gator piers when someone came out and said the shuttle had exploded. I think the QD watches were the only ones on the ship not down in berthing watching the news.
I was in the dining hall in college when someone told me. We gathered around the 19” color TV in the rec room and watched Dan Rather show the footage over and over.
I turned 15 that day.
I was sitting in the cafeteria with some friends when my best friend Patrick came in and told us the shuttle had blown up. We told him that was a pretty sick thing to joke about.
About a week before the disaster we had an earthquake in Ohio. I felt it, but since Ohio doesn’t get earthquakes (8-) )when my coworker came in and told me about it I called him a liar.
Right after the disaster happened, he walked in again and told me about it. I called him a liar again.
I quit calling him a liar.
I remember where I was. I was a little kid playing in the snow, and when I went into the house, my mother was watching the TV with tears in her eyes. When I looked at the TV and saw what she was seeing, I was shocked. I’ll never forget Reagan’s speech shortly after that. I remember seeing it on that same TV.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.