Nancy Fulton Ingle
I will not be coming to the reunion and do not Zoom, but my life was too close to the source to ever forget the Challenger disaster.
I was teaching Spanish at Rockledge High School, Room 1, 3rd period on a briskly chilly day. Rockledge is about 20 miles southwest of the Cape Kennedy Space Center, known in those days as Cape Canaveral.
As was the custom in those days, we were told we could turn on the new classroom TVs to 
watch the countdown and lift-off. We then knew to step out of the classroom after 20 seconds so we could watch the white trails of the rockets as they cleared the horizon.
My students, old hands at watching the launches their parents
worked on, knew immediately that something was amiss as the exhaust wiggled around and seemed to be breaking apart instead of arcing into the skies above. Some started crying. Everyone gasped.
The TV news only seemed more confusing as more students worried the debris might fall onto the launch site and harm their loved ones. Some were terrified it would mean the end of the space program, and the workers would never find jobs in the skill fields that developed for the Space Race. We were stunned in our grief and remained fixed on the little dribbles of news as it came to us. One of the earliest releases reported that no one on the ground was injured.
The gruesome news continued for weeks as everyone with a boat was enlisted to go out into the Atlantic and try to recover debris and remains. The entire crew lost their lives. Months later there were investigations about the cause, and we all learned about “O Rings.”
Many of our schools have been named after the program: Christa McAuliffe, Endeavour, Apollo, McNair Enterprise, Gemini, Astronaut, Challenger, and Discovery.
Crew of The Challenger
Thanks for the photos, Marilyn.