I was in 7th grade physics class. We were watching it with our teacher… who was the first understudy for Christa Mcaullife (the schoolteacher who died in the tragedy). Needless to say, we were stunned and the entire school clustered around TVs for the rest of the day. I remember that as the first “news event” that had such a profound emotional impact on me. That ‘Y-shaped’ cloud still gives me chills.
This was in Huntsville, AL so lots of aerospace companies had offices there. I remember when the O-Ring story came out, the Morton-Thiokol building in town had to take it’s sign down.
I was home sick from school, sitting in my bean bag watching the launch. I just remember the confusion afterwards. It was unreal how slow the uncertainty unfolded.
My senior year of high school. I was home sick, although sick might have meant working on some paper about Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain that was due in short order.
I watched the launch on TV, and was as confused and stunned as anyone as the journos started to realize what happened.
It was my 2nd ‘Big TV news’ experience, the first being when Reagan was shot in '81.
To this day, I remember watching it unfold and just getting that sick feeling in my stomach that just got worse and worse. 9/11 was the same sort of thing, where it was just one thing getting worse after another after another (remember, originally it was a “small plane crashed into the tower”). Ugh.
I was at college, in the shower, and I heard my roommate yelling “Holy shit!” I watched the rest in a towel. Along with 9/11, it’s the most memorable and tragic news day of my life.
I remember seeing the explosion, the two streams of white smoke, and realizing there was no shuttle in the middle. I remember thinking specifically: Wait, that doesn’t look right. I remember hearing cameras clicking. I remember one of our beloved teachers standing up on the cafeteria table and shouting, “Everybody shut up. Shut the hell up. Something’s wrong.” We respected him so much that when he did that, we got really scared, because he was scared.
Bush: At age ninety-one, my memory is not what it used to be. I am beginning to think I have now forgotten more than I ever knew to begin with. But like all Americans who are of a certain age, I remember the day the Challenger blew up.
2nd grade classroom, watching it on TV. I don’t think any of us really understood what had happened, but I still recall the event. Our teacher got really broken up by it.
I also recall that she was pretty hot, in fairy princess way that appealed to the notion of beauty that a second grader would have. Like a realized version of princess peach.
And she, quite literally, then married a prince at the end of that year. I forget what country he was from.
I was 25, and working in Jamestown, ND. I went into the local McDonald’s, and they had a TV hanging from the ceiling, and every customer in the place was staring up at the screen. There were a lot of people in there, but all you could hear was the TV. I took my place in the back and watched along.
Working in a law office in Palm Beach county, watching thru the window live. You usually had a good view of the contrail and a bit of flame. The contrail went weird, someone said: “Something is wrong” and we turned on a radio…
Sophomore year of high school in Spanish class. Principal came on the intercom that was in each classroom and as he started speaking, I remember thinking, “That’s odd.” Then he told us. I spent the rest of the day on a couch in the teachers’ lounge (my dad taught English at the school) watching CNN.
My dad applied for the teacher slot on the shuttle. No idea how far in the selection process he got. Didn’t matter. Still hit home a little extra.
Sophomore year of high school, I was on my way to math class when a friend stopped me in the hall to tell me. I recall it was a big deal in particular in my school because one of my science teachers there, Mr. Albertini, had been a finalist. He had been in Florida to attend the launch, but after it had been delayed a number of times, he finally had to come home, and was watching it in the high school library when it happened. He was devastated…I think he had even met Crista McAuliffe during the process.
This is a link to an article from my hometown newspaper remembering the incident on the 25th anniversary, five years ago.
I was 19 and had just started my first radio job the week before. I had no idea anything had happened when I got to work that morning, and the station was getting hammered with phone calls, which was kind of weird, since everyone in our listening area had cable and CNN (there was only one over the air channel, and it was rinky dink as hell).
I was in meeting at Intel, with Compaq (based in Houston) engineers talking about issues involved in building the first 386-based computers. One of the guys dad worked at NASA and we all were space buffs. So we all were in shock. In retrospect, I’m amazed we were able to get through the meeting, and it was fairly productive.
I was in basic training at Ft. Knox and was only in about day 4 or 5, so I had no real contact with the outside world. At our end of day formation, I remember seeing all the drill sergeants huddled together which was unusual. Then we were called to attention and the senior drill told us what had happened. I remember thinking “what does this have to do with us?”, but we were totally isolated. The outside world was far removed from my thoughts, I was just trying to survive basic training one hour at a time. 15 minutes later it was forgotten as we went inside and started getting our gear and uniforms ready for the next day.
It wasn’t until I graduated basic a few months later that I found out the significance of the event. I got to go home for a month before shipping out for Germany (then West Germany) for 3 years. It was still in the news regularly and I remember thinking “why didn’t I hear about this?” Then I remembered I did, I was just caught up in becoming a soldier and was very sheltered from the civilian world. We weren’t allowed to have newspapers or watch tv, so how could it have impacted me? I was focused on not killing someone as I threw hand grenades or learning about the M60A3.
Amazing how this world-altering even is happening, but because of where I was, it had no impact on me at all. I do however remember being very sad when I read about the teacher getting to go into space and thinking what a thrill it was for her class only for it to be turned into the worst horror story.
I was also in 6th grade, but had the day off from school (snow day I think - we lived in NJ at the time, and the place went full-tilt insane with even a little snow and that year had over 40 inches cumulative). I was excited, because watching shuttle launches at school was a thing of the past - hadn’t done it since elementary school in Colorado. So got to see it live, and remember briefly thinking “strange, I don’t remember the side-rockets doing that” before realizing the announcers/commentators had gone silent.
I was coming off the flight line at NAS Oceana having just helped get a pair of my squadron’s Tomcats airborne. We were flying our asses off, getting ready for a deployment which ended up being only a few weeks away. Events in Europe (Libyan sponsored terrorist attack in Germany) caused us to leave for the Mediterranean early. Our flight line Chief told us as we walked back to the hangar - he had a radio had been given the news. We worked the rest of our shift, then went back to the little townhouse three of us were renting off base and spent the rest of the night watching CNN. Remember evey minute of that day, all these years later.
