My first digital sculpture, made with 123D Sculpt on my iPad.

for Rachel

Request Anonymous

I was home sick from school that day. I’m not even sure I knew it was the day of the shuttle launch until I turned on the TV. Of course, it’s hard to resist watching when there are just a few minutes left until lift-off. And there was a teacher on board, so this was a big deal.

I was 14, and I think by then I was finally growing into the reality that I wouldn’t actually become an astronaut, but as a child I had so desperately wanted to go to outer space. My dad was a member of the Science Fiction Book Club and he would give me his books after he had read them. I grew up with Capt. James T. Kirk on TV and Luke Skywalker on the big screen, and I just loved the idea of space: the majesty, the adventure, the “going where no man has gone before.” I even got to go on a school field trip to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

It’s hard to explain a moment like that to someone who hasn’t experienced a moment like that. I wasn’t expecting a life changing event that day any more than I could have expected the Worst Tuesday Morning Ever some 15 years later. It shakes you to the core, like you’ve actually been dreaming your whole life and you’ve just been startled awake.  Life had a little less magic in it for me after that day, as I know it did for many others.

I’m sure this quote will be seen and heard a billion times over the next few days, but President Reagan’s closing statement that night is as unforgettable as the rest of that day, and there’s no better way I know to say it:

We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of Earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.

Related articles

• “Our Challenger Space Shuttle Memory” and related posts (learningismessy.com)
• Schoolchildren Watched to See Christa McAuliffe Become First Teacher in Space – ABC News (news.google.com)
• NASA at Half Mast: Remembering Fallen Astronauts (cbsnews.com)
• You: 25 Years Later: Remembering the Challenger Tragedy (blogs.smithsonianmag.com)