Remembering the Challenger Explosion

Big Stupid Tommy talks about where he was when the Challenger exploded.

Bill McCabe has his story.

We all have our story. We all remember where we were on that awful day.

I was a freshman in college when the Challenger exploded. I lived in Merrow, the only all-girl’s dorm on campus. I was home, in between classes, when suddenly I heard someone down the hall start screaming. A terrible scream. Unlike anything you ever hear on a normal day , at least here in America.

A girl down the hall started screaming, tears in her voice, “OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD!” My roommate and I raced down the hall, along with most of the other girls who were around at that time.

We huddled in the dorm room, watching on a tiny little television, the disaster unfolding. Live. Those horrible long trails of smoke, splitting apart, diverging … in a way which we knew was just not supposed to happen. This was bad. This was worse than bad.

I was crying. Everybody was. We were glued to the television, holding onto each other, crying. Saying things like, “No … NO!” And the age-old cry, “Oh my God.” Which takes on a whole other meaning when said in a true moment of duress. God with a capital G.

It was beyond belief. The lead-up to the Challenger launch, with the Christa McAuliffe coverage, had been overwhelming. Everyone knew about Christa McAuliffe, everyone knew that the Challenger was going up … it was a big big deal. And to watch it explode, before our very eyes … we were almost baffled. Hurt by the callousness of the universe. How could this happen? How could this happen?

The shots of the family members who watched it all unfold from the bleechers below have stayed with me always. I remembered certain images exactly. McAuliffe’s parents clinging to one another, screaming up into the sky.

I do not understand “why” things like this happen. I do not understand why some people experience such tremendous loss, and why others seem to escape.

But I do not believe that God “lets” things like this happen. I do not. I cannot explain my theology, I cannot back up my beliefs with Bible verses … but I don’t believe that God is with some people and not with others. I believe He is there through all of it. With all of us.

God didn’t choose to bless the nine saved miners in Pennsylvania, and choose NOT to bless the thousands of innocent people who died on September 11. (That only comes to mind because I remember all of the miners’ wives saying, “God has blessed us, God has blessed us.” I totally can understand, on a human level, why they would say that, but having witnessed with my own eyes the horrors of September 11, it bothered me a bit. Where was God on September 11? Why didn’t he bless US? Why not us??)

These are not questions for me to answer.

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19 Responses to Remembering the Challenger Explosion

  1. Bill McCabe says:

    Great writing again, Sheila.

    I’ve long since stopped believing that God (if there is one) interferes in the affairs of men, and I have yet to read or see anything that makes me feel differently. Terrible things will happen, it’s just a part of our existance.

    I remember receiving an email after 9/11 saying that “God was holding the buildings up” long enough for most people to escape. My first thought was “Well, why couldn’t he have caused engine trouble while the planes were on the tarmac?”

  2. Challenger

    Tommy notes that it’s been 18 years since the first shuttle failure, and shares where he was then. I was in school and I heard during lunch from one of the lunch ladies, I don’t remember her name, but she…

  3. red says:

    Well, it’s just a matter of faith.

    Like I said – none of this is for me to answer. I don’t believe that God watches over some of us, and ignores others. Like – He decides: “Oh, I’m gonna cut the 9 trapped miners a break, and let them live … but that’s my quota for saving people this year … so it’s too bad about all those saps in Israel being killed by suicide bombers…Ah well … what can I do.” No. I mean, in the couple of times when I have almost died (car skidded on ice, or whatever) – I have had an overwhelming feeling afterwards of adrenaline and gratitude. God is there in those moments, for me. “Thank you God, thank you God…” is my prayer. But when I get out of that panic-mode and into a rational state, I can’t believe that God would be watching over my skidding on the ice and yet let children be molested by freaks, and let children die in Ethiopia.

    But it’s faith. What can I say. It’s not rational.

  4. Beth says:

    At the risk of sounding like a complete ass, I take comfort in the movie “Bruce Almighty”. Morgan Freeman as God tells Bruce (after he gives him all the powers of God)”You can mess around with anything- but you can not control free will”. I truly believe that is how God fits into all of this. He doesn’t control free will- just gives us all the tools, and shows us in many, many ways the “right” thing to do. But He can’t control free will. Thank God. Or Morgan Freeman. Or Bruce.

  5. red says:

    Or George Burns

  6. Bill McCabe says:

    No, it isn’t. I’ve had occassion to say a few “thank Gods” too. I feel thanks, but I can’t believe he slowed my car to save me while some North Korean languishes in a camp.

    Doesn’t make me any less thankful at that moment, though.

  7. Ken Hall says:

    We are finite minds and cannot see the plan, though I believe there is one.

  8. red says:

    Perhaps because we are PART of the plan.

    Anyone out there read The Goldbug Variations? Great novel about the race to figure out what was going on with DNA – mixed in with the metaphor of the Goldberg Variations, as played by Glenn Gould. It’s by Richard Powers.

    The book, over and over and over, describes these elite scientists in a lab – trying to crack the code of their own existence.

    Are our minds open enough to understand the building blocks of our own existence? Is it even possible?

    Great book.

  9. Laura says:

    Beth, I completely agree with the free will aspect. The hijackers on 9/11 had free will. Suicide bombers, have free will. I have a pretty strong faith, not as strong as it used to be, or as strong as maybe it should be, but I think God gave us free will, and what is done with it is solely up to the individual.
    I also believe that sometimes, not to sound cold, but shit happens. I was in a bad car accident several years ago, and having been able to walk out and have only a cut on my hand was amazing. At first I was doing my “Thank God”, but in reality, I think I was just damn lucky, that and having a seatbelt kept me from flying through the windshield. I’m very grateful for not having been killed, or more seriously injured, but I don’t see myself as being any more special than some kid abandoned by his parents, or a woman being persecuted in some third world nation.

  10. Easycure says:

    I think our minds are capable of that. There is still way more we DON’T know as compared to what we DO know. ANd we don’t use most of our brain yet as it is…..our brains are capable. The question is, do we have the will as a race (of humans) to face the truth?

  11. red says:

    Easycure –

    The book doesn’t come up with any answers – or easy answers. The book has a strong belief in the beauty of human ingenuity, the amazing things science can open up before our eyes. But sometimes – it’s just not “time” yet. The human race isn’t ready yet, or the environment (I’m talking psychic environment) isn’t primed yet. That’s what the book is about. Also – you learn SO MUCH about the process of breaking down DNA in those early days, as well as learning a ton about Bach. Powers intertwines those two huge themes like a double-helix.

  12. red says:

    Oh, and to your opinion that our minds are capable of understanding our own building blocks –

    I agree with you. But I also believe that this will manifest itself in a way completely unforeseen right now. Right now, we struggle to understand it with our minds, with our intellects.

    And in the future, with future breakthroughs, I believe that any understanding we get will be on a deeper level. A psychic level.

    Sorry not more articulate.

    This is where science and theology mesh.

  13. Emily says:

    My parents’ neighbor at their place in Colorado is the widow of Greg Jarvis. Today is always an especially hard day on her.

  14. MikeR says:

    I believe that faith and religion can be very positive forces in people’s lives, if they are directed inward. When those energies are directed outward, in various attempts to force the rest of the world to adhere to one’s beliefs, you end up with stuff like the Crusades and suicide bombers and all the other horrors in which our species has engaged in the name of religion over the centuries.

    When faith is directed inward, it can provide a sense of peace and resoluteness that can be of great value in navigating the troubled waters of this planet.

  15. red says:

    MikeR –

    Well, we can’t be too black and white there, though. After all, religion in an outward directed way has done a lot of good as well. I would not paint it all with that brush of the Crusades, etc. Monks kept education and language alive through the dark ages. Health clinics set up in third world countries – schools – homeless shelters, soup kitchens, food drives, book drives, literacy programs, etc. You can look at that with a cynical “oh, they just want to bring more people into the fold” – and maybe there are some that are like that – but I know too many people of faith, too many “religious” people who feel that they MUST get involved with things like that, because it is a calling for them.

    These activities not all religiously driven – but most religious organizations spearhead stuff like that, stuff to give back to the community.

    Additionally – and this is just me – I think faith and religion are … well, not completely separate … but I would say that I have faith, I would never say I am “religious”.

    I feel closer to God when I am standing on the beach or looking up at the stars than I do in a church. But that’s just me.

  16. jr says:

    a film, with Victor Mature as a slave/gladiator, who called upon G-d to save his wife(?) from being raped by the other gladiators.
    as she struggled mightily aginst them, Mature pleaded with G-d to save her and in an instant she died. all who held her were shocked. Matures character didn’t realise at the time and neither did i, death means nothing to G-d, our physical world means nothing, other than to bring us, perhaps, a little closer to understanding.

  17. MikeR says:

    I probably didn’t express myself very well, red.

    I actually agree with everything you’re saying here, except I would substitute “whatever benevolent spirit(s) that may exist in the universe” for God in your last sentence.

    I didn’t mean to imply that all external efforts are bad, only that people should concentrate on making their own behavior righteous, not on forcibly controlling the behavior and beliefs of others.

  18. red says:

    MikeR –

    Okay. I get what you’re saying. Faith directed outward that doesn’t have the inward aspect to it is obnoxious, proud, and evangelical.

    My family refers to people like that as “front-pew Catholics”. It is a matter of pride to them to sit up in the front pew, to show how dedicated they are.

    I seem to recall Jesus talking about how the best way to pray is by yourself, in privacy – that making a display of your holiness is the antithesis of what he was all about.

  19. CW says:

    When the Challenger exploded I was a senior in college, at home for lunch. I had an apartment with a very good view – towards Cape Canaveral (this was in Florida). I saw the Challenger launch and watched it explode live. I stood there watching the big fireball and the pieces falling toward the earth, and thought “that’s funny, it doesn’t normally look like that”. It took me a minute to realize something wasn’t right. I went back inside and turned on the TV to hear it had exploded.

    I think religion is more about people than about god. It reflects how people feel, their good side and their bad side, more than it reflects God. That doesn’t mean it’s always a bad thing, although it is not all that much MY thing. Nature – the heavens, the earth, the oceans, the animals, great cataclysmic natural events, the shape of the universe, the mysteries of the human mind, life, death – reflects God. God doesn’t need us to worship him. WE need us to worship him. It is more fullfilling to me to try to understand God by observing His works than to go to church and talk about how great I think he is – although I don’t mind going to church to be with other, good, and caring, people.

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