The BBC news site reminded me that Friday, the 28th of January 2011 was the 25th anniversary of the Challenger disaster. I could hardly believe, math to one side, that it had been 25 years.
The Challenger disaster was for me and many people I knew not only the national tragedy everyone felt that day, and long afterwards — it was certainly all of that — but it marked another moment. Our friend had been a huge fan of the space program, going down to the Cape to watch liftoffs, talking up the program, educating his students and teachers in the schools in NYC where he was a loved and respected elementary school princlpal.
A loved and respected principal? Isn’t that an oxymoron? But a high school friend of mine and I went to visit his school in Harlem at his invitation, and saw his Pied Piper-like way with the students and children. He took us around to classrooms in the school, not interrupting them, but having us look in through the glass, and letting us hear the sound of a good classroom: a kind of quiet murmur where students worked on projects, not unruly uproar and not stony silence. He was incredibly happy and proud that there was a teacher, Christa MacAuliffe, on the shuttle.
His witty comments about the life all around him were practically a running commentary that his friends looked forward to hearing; he exercised the same Pied Piper kind of friendly magnetism on us that he did on his school pupils. His words were never unkind, never at the expense of others.
That commentary stopped forever as he watched the Challenger liftoff turn into a disaster.
A close friend of mine, who also knew our friend and his family, said to me last night as I spoke to him of that double disaster, and taking nothing from the Challenger tragedy itself, now so long ago, ”Whenever I hear of the Challenger disaster I think of him as one of the team on that flight.”
Well put. And so now do I.
