Challenger Disaster
On the morning of January 28, 1986, the United States Space Shuttle Challenger was scheduled to launch from Kennedy Space Center in central Florida.
At 11:38 a.m. EST the ship lifted from its launchpad with seven American astronauts, and 73 seconds later, Challenger was no more.
Below are the memories of REDdimension Wiki Circle members relating where they were when the shuttle exploded in the sky over the Atlantic Ocean just off Florida's east coast and how the national tragedy impacted their lives.
Denise Duggan
I was attending the University of South Carolina at the time. We had a bus that shuttled students around campus. It was officially called the ShuttleCock (Gamecocks is the school mascot) but everyone just called it the shuttle. Someone told me that the shuttle blew up and I presumed they meant the ShuttleCock. Then they explained. I think that was also the first thing I remember being shown on tv again and again and again and again.
Kevin McNulty
Kevin was 22 and finishing his last semester at California State University, Fullerton. He was asleep at 8:38 a.m. Pacific Time since he didn't have a class on Tuesday until 10:00. Somewhere around 8:45, his mother rushed in to wake him.
"Kev, the space shuttle exploded..."
Trying to wrap his still-dawning consciousness around the thought, he stumbled into the living room to see the news replaying every camera angle they could, trying to determine what had happened. Though they weren't saying anything official, it was clear to Kevin that no one had survived.
On the way to school, Kevin stopped at a fabric store to buy a few inches of black ribbon to pin to his shirt. It was the one and only time he has ever personally sported a ribbon for a cause.
I was in shock for a couple of days. I didn't know any of the astronauts, but the space program had been a part of me as long as I could remember, and I felt like I lost someone close to me when I heard the news. It would be the same when I heard about Columbia years later.
Jon Reddick
Jon was sixteen years old and attending Haines City High School, just ninety miles from Kennedy Space Center. It wasn't uncommon to watch the conn trail of a morning or afternoon launch in the sky to the northeast during school hours.
By the time of the Challenger, I had watched so many shuttle launches they almost seemed commonplace, so that morning I was at school and on my lunch break, but forgot about the launch and was just killing time hanging out with my friends in the band hall.
Shortly before noon some other kids who had been out on the loading dock of the band hall waiting to watch Challenger go up came running in very agitated yelling, "Hey, the space shuttle just blew up!"
I was sure they were kidding, but after a minute or two was convinced enough to go outside and see for myself. What I saw was striking. For better or for worse, I can say that while I didn't see the actual explosion, I witnessed that now infamous forked smoke pattern in the sky to the east caused by the solid rocket boosters tearing the shuttle apart. Not on TV, not on the news, but in person and with my own eyes.
As chance would have it, one of my very best friends had stayed home sick that day, and had been recording the launch live on television. After school I went to his house and we watched and re-watched the VHS of the explosion as it had happened earlier in the morning.
Ro Reddick
I was living in Mobile, Alabama and working for the University of South Alabama Department of Neurosurgery as a medical transcriptionist. I heard about it at work, as all around the building everyone was buzzing. I didn't get to see the footage until I got home where I watched it again and again.
I couldn't believe how much it touched me. I followed the news for days afterwards just trying to understand how and why it happened. Why did it have to happen on this flight? Why with the first civilian? I guess I wasn't aware of how much hope that particular flight gave me -- gave everyone. It was one of those "a giant leap for mankind" kind of things, but the whole world watched that "leap" spiral from the sky that day.
Colin Toenjes
Colin was eleven years old and was attending Waterloo Junior High School.
I didn't know about it until the afternoon. I heard people talking about the Shuttle throughout the day but didn't find out the details of what happened until after school. My mother worked in the Junior High/High School Library at the time and when I went down to wait for her to finish work for the day, she told me all the details. I saw the explosion for the first time on the news that night.
I have watched a lot of the subsequent shuttle launches on television, and I still shudder and hold my breath when the flight controllers say "Shuttle go at throttle up."
George Sumpter
I was in middle school at Tallahassee Junior Academy. When I first heard the news I was in my mother's car on line at the Wendy's Drive-Thru on Thomasville Rd. My first reaction was "NO WAY!" My mom started to cry and I thought to myself that I would remember this event the same way my parents remembered when John F. Kennedy was shot.
Michael Creamer
Michael was twelve years old and attending Lecanto Middle School in Lecanto, Florida. Watching shuttle launches was a normal occurrence.
I remember our teachers telling us the week before about the launch, mainly because it was going to be the first time a non-astronaut was going up in the shuttle, a teacher no less. The day of the explosion, I had just finished lunch and went outside with some friends. A teacher pointed out the shuttle to us as it soared higher and higher in the sky. Suddenly it is erupted into a ball or flame and smoke.
This is a memory that has been etched in the mind of many, my grandfather saved the newspaper clipping and framed it. "
