January’s Defining Moments

January is proving to be a historically significant month again this year! Last week we remembered the 30^th anniversary of Operation Desert Storm. This week, I want to take a moment and reflect on another important historical event from January, the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. 35 years ago, on the 28^th of January, Space Shuttle mission STS-51-L broke up a little over a minute after launch. Not only was this tragedy the worst United States space program disaster at the time, it also became one of the defining moments for the generation that witnessed it unfold in near real time.

I mentioned in my last blog Desert Storm helped restore pride in our military that perhaps was lost in the aftermath of Vietnam. During the 80s, our space program was viewed by most in the country as a source of great pride. America was winning the space race hands down and had been for the past two decades.

Less than a decade after the completion of the successful Apollo moon landings in 1972, the United States began the Space Shuttle program and captured the imagination of many of us Gen X kids in our formative years.   The shuttle’s design looked more like what we were conditioned through science fiction to believe a spaceship should look like. The reusable shuttle’s large payload and crew capacity was a stark departure from the tiny capsule spacecraft of the proceeding two decades. I believe we may have felt the shuttle was truly the beginning of real life science catching up with art.

The Challenger mission was the 25^th shuttle flight in less than five years and was extra special because it marked the first time a US school teacher was a member of the crew. Unfortunately, like many successful endeavors, I believe by 1986 we collectively had begun to take the achievements of the space program for granted. There was still some general excitement about the mission but most assumed January 28, 1986 would be another win for the United States.

I was going on 13 in January of 1986 and on Tuesday the 28th, we were out of school on a snow day. Always a welcome break for the Junior High Schooler! I can’t recall if my school had any plans to watch the launch, I don’t believe it did. Audio / visual connectivity to the classroom was a lot more challenging in 1986 than it is today. I do recall, like many other kids of the day with an interest in the space program, I was looking forward to watching the footage on the 6 o’clock news.

I was staying at my grandmother’s house that morning until my parents got off work. I don’t believe the launch was televised on all the local stations, but I remember clearly the exact moment of the disaster.   The station my grandmother was watching suddenly cut away to a live image of a crystal blue Florida sky with the unmistakable plume of the shuttle exhaust grotesquely disfigured. Even as a 7^th grader, I knew almost instantly what this meant, something was very wrong with Challenger. I had no idea the image would become an iconic part of American history.

Even my grandmother who was born in 1906 and probably wasn’t all that interested in space flight, understood the gravity of the moment. Like many Americans that day, we stayed glued to the TV watching the continuous coverage and hoping for a miracle.

Seven astronauts lost their lives that day. Their sacrifice had immediate and lasting impact on the US space program. An extensive investigation revealed some inadequate safety practices and it was nearly three years before the shuttle took flight again.  After returning to space, the Space Shuttle flew successfully for nearly 15 years and over 80 more missions before another tragedy occurred, which coincidentally, also launched in the month of January.

The Challenger disaster is often regarded as a defining moment for my generation and it is easy to understand why.  We were in our tween or teen years and Challenger was the first time many of us watched, live on TV, a disaster of this magnitude. Maybe some of us were sheltered from life’s stark realities up until this point.

Compounding the impact on our young minds comprehension of the loss was the fact, like most tragedies, this wasn’t supposed to happen. Our space program was a source of national pride, the United States put people on the moon and now we were sending a school teacher to space! But behind the scenes, the storied US Space Program had some problems.

As the years rolled by and as our world became dominated by nonstop media, we witnessed more and more tragic historical events as they unfolded. Perhaps Gen X was the first generation exposed to this new paradigm for living through history as it occurs.

Of course, younger generations have known nothing but this reality. They have grown up in a society observing just about every single major tragedy unfold in near real time. Natural or man-made disasters, wars and that beautiful morning in September when thousands of Americans went to work and never came home.

I fear we could become numb to important historical events since we are exposed to media near continuously. The stories of loss, sometimes on a grand scale, are more than just the breaking story of the moment, these events define us generationally. We should all take a moment to reflect on history that shaped us and understand its significance as well as help those growing up to process what they witness.

The 27^th of January is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Join me next week as I share an essay I wrote on the topic as part of a remembrance activity.

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