Yep, I have memories. . .and sometimes I wish I didn't remember some things as clearly as I do. Take today's memory. Even though it happened 21 years ago, I still remember every detail, even the smells of bacon frying and coffee brewing, and the awful stunned silence as my friends and I sat and watched the umpteenth replay of the explosion as the Challenger space shuttle self-destructed.

I was 29 years old and well on my way to earning my Bachelor's Degree. Like most of my friends, I was excited that the newest mission the space shuttle was embarking on would carry a school teacher into space. You see, I was studying to be a teacher myself. (Little did I know then that teaching was NOT to be my living!) Even more exciting for us that this teacher was one of our own, an elementary school science teacher from a small town in New Hampshire. We had all followed the progress of Christa McAuliffe and her fellow astronauts as they prepared to embark on this historic flight. When the fateful day came, though, I kind of forgot about it as I fell into the Spring semester routine.

I rolled out of bed as usual, got dressed, shouldered my backpack, and walked off to the student center at UMF to begin my day. I was just coming down the stairs and debating whether to go to the snack bar first for coffee or to the game room first for a couple of rounds of pinball. Razell Sawyer saw me coming off the stairs and rushed up to me asking if I'd heard the news that the space shuttle had blown up. Given the gang of weirdoes I hung out with at the time, I thought she was telling me some sort of sick joke. Then I happened to look over Razell's shoulder and saw it. I think my eyes must have popped and my jaw fell to my chest as all the breath left my body. "Oh. . .my. . .god!" I don't remember walking into the snack bar, I don't remember paying for my coffee, I don't even remember sitting down at my customary table with my friends to watch the replays and commentaries in stunned silence. I don't even know how long I sat there before my girlfriend arrived and we both got up and went back to my apartment. Of course, the first thing we did when we got back was turn on the television.

The replays and commentaries went on all day, of course. By evening, we were burned out from all of it. We blew off all of our classes that day, as I'm sure most of our friends did. We spent the next several days and weeks endlessly discussing the event and wondering what could have happened and how something could have gone so horribly, horribly wrong.

By 1986, we had taken space travel for granted. We'd landed men on the moon, had launched missions throughout the solar system, all without losing a single astronaut in space. Later, we would be reminded of the Apollo 1 astronauts who had died in a flash fire on the launching pad 19 years earlier, on January 27th. Years later, we would be reminded of this horrible event once more as the Columbia burned to cinders on re-entry. Yet, because of Christa McAuliffe, this tragedy was so much more searing. We felt it like a physical blow, my friends and I, all of us walking through the next few days like zombies. She would have been the first civilian, the first non-professional astronaut, to go into space; and she was one of us. We all felt the loss, as if we had lost a sister, or at least a fellow educator.

We've come a long way since then, my friends of that era have dispersed and moved on with their lives, as have I. But, somehow, I can't get the image of the exploding space shuttle out of my head. I'm a bit saddened that there's been no mention of the event on the Sunday morning news. I suppose the political news of the current administration's approval rating, the impending race for the nomination for the next presidential race, etc. are more compelling. But, for me at least, the loss that day will mean much, much more. I'm sure there's a metaphor in there somewhere, in that searing, horrible image; but I can't seem to wrap my head around it. All I can see when I look at that photo, when the evening news replays the footage, are seven brave men & women losing their lives in an instant.

Good-bye, Christa. We hardly knew you, yet you and your fellow astronauts touched us all.