The Columbia:
I was barely five-and-a-half-years-old in January 1986. Sitting on the floor, inches away from the massive television screen in my grandparents’ new living room, digging through a mound of VHS tapes to find my favorite MacGyver, Airwolf, and A-Team episodes, all the while slowly smothering the carpet beneath in a generous layer of cookie crumbs, and washing the ones in my mouth down with a hefty glass of cold, flat Coke — an afternoon much like any other at my grandparents’ house.
Looking up, the images on the screen etched themselves onto my mind’s eye, forever indelible… the Challenger shuttle consumed in an expanding cloud of rocket propellant, NOT streaking across the sky, up, up, up, out of sight. Immediately, my five-and-a-half-year-old self perceived the loss… good people… gone! The sadness swept through me.
That same sense of profound loss struck me Saturday evening when I switched the TV on. My sympathies go out to the families, friends, and colleagues of: Commander Rick Husband, Pilot William McCool, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, and Col. Ilan Ramon.
