On that January morning in 1986, we were invincible.
Although the Cold War wasn’t won yet, Russia was falling. New technology meant that we had to learn how to use computers; albeit they were big, clunky, expensive, slow computers, but they were everywhere on our college campus and in the offices where some of us were already working. Our music reflected the lust for life (and everything else) as well as the hopes we all had for a future so bright we needed the Ray-Bans made popular by everyone’s favorite television show. There were plenty of jobs, good jobs, in a growing economy.
On that snowy, icy morning in the old student union at UNC-Wilmington, the future was especially bright for the kids in the TV lounge. I didn’t even know them yet, but some of us became friends along the way. A tall, gangly fellow in Army BDUs was flashing a recruiting poster smile at everyone as his new fiance’ showed off her engagement ring to squealing friends. A beautiful, willowy redheaded girl was debating with a fellow political science major. A more thoughtful fellow was ostentatiously reading a big, important book, because that’s what English lit majors did. Another fellow, square and thick as only the son of a commercial fisherman can be, was contentedly napping. Beside him sat one of the most breathtaking women I have ever met; she also had a good sense of humor, and regularly called herself a dumber than average blonde. She was actually one of the smartest people in the room.
I sat on one of the windowsills, simply because I was still half-small town, half country, and it was my very first day at the university.
On the huge (to us) wide screen television the space shuttle was about to lift off. It was still cool, but by then many of us had grown used to such; after all, we were toddlers and babies when Apollo flew. We played Neil Armstrong in our backyards and at recess. Our GI Joes and Barbie dolls came with astronaut outfits and lunar modules, rovers and rockets. I was home sick the day the first shuttle was piggybacked on an airliner on live TV, and may have been down with a bug of some sort the day the first one launched into outer space. Twenty-four previous times we had seen the shuttle launch. It was still cool, but not as cool as it had been.
There was cheering when the shuttle went up, of course, then we heard the words that changed everything.
“Challenger, go to throttle up,” the calm voice at Mission control instructed.
“Roger, go at throttle up,” Commander Dick Scobee said.
On an atypically cold morning in faroff Florida, against a beautiful blue sky, part of our childhood exploded.
It wasn’t like an explosion in the movies, but rather anticlimactic, really. There were flames, then smoke, then smoking pieces falling from the sky. There was no dramatic music, but there never is in real life.
In our warm, boisterous little corner of the world, a world that we were all going to change, everything froze for a moment. First there was disbelief, then horror, then a mixture of tears and anger.
The boy who was napping jumped up, roaring “No!” at the top of his lungs. The redhead who later almost stole my heart just stared. The deep reader leaned forward, important book forgotten. Some of the girls screamed.
Two of the people in that room – Byrd, the tall soldier and husband-to-be, and Gino “the Bull” who was napping – wanted to be on the space shuttle.
The aptly-named Byrd wanted to fly the shuttle someday. The Bull wanted to be a soldier in space, ready to show the communists who killed his grandfather in Korea that America could even dominate outer space. He also loved Star Trek; his hero was Captain Kirk.
So much changed as we watched the debris float toward earth, then the cameras changed back to the newsroom of whatever channel the TV was on. We didn’t care. We weren’t watching anymore. We were talking, speculating, crying, cursing. The “dumber than average” blonde, her perfectly coiffed big hair bouncing, ran down the hall to the bank of payphones and called her mama.
In just a few seconds, we watched our world change.
Obviously, we had no way of knowing that more significant things would happen in our lives. We were all sheltered to some extent or another. The day was coming when we would be the ones providing the shelter, just as there would be various natural and personal storms, 9/11, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, jobs and careers and marriages and divorces and births and deaths, dramatic social and economic changes that forced our own plans to change just as dramatically, and yes, even another shuttle disaster – but that day, when many of us were in our first day of classes at a school bigger than our community colleges and high schools, we didn’t quite watch our dreams die, but they were certainly brought down to more realistic expectations.
In our minds, we were still the generation who would travel to space, maybe even colonize it; but now we weren’t so sure.
College came and went, and we all drifted in our particular directions; sometimes I halfheartedly try to find some of my fellow students. The few times I have, they have not been surprised at my career and life. In some of their cases, I admit I have been shocked at theirs. The blonde girl, by the way, is still heartbreaking, as are her daughters and granddaughters.
That trade I was trying to avoid, writing for newspapers, sent me to the town of Beaufort one day. It was the hometown of one of those killed on the Challenger. The local newspaper said that a memorial would be dedicated to the local astronaut. The monument was a simple, tasteful little granite obelisk, much like a tombstone and likely made by the local cemetery marker company.
A young couple on a walk down the waterfront happened on the monument while I was there. They had two children, one in a stroller and the other a little girl of the age to ask many, many questions.
I remember her Daddy explaining, patiently, that the man whose picture was on the marker was an astronaut, and he had been killed in an accident.
“I wanna be an asternaut,” the little girl said, “but I won’t get killed.” She stamped her foot, proud and defiant.
Once upon a time, we felt the same way.
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