{"id":378,"date":"2004-01-28T14:00:45","date_gmt":"2004-01-28T19:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=378"},"modified":"2010-07-10T23:59:50","modified_gmt":"2010-07-11T03:59:50","slug":"i-am-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=378","title":{"rendered":"Remembering the Challenger Explosion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Big Stupid Tommy<\/a> talks about where he was when the Challenger exploded.<\/p>\n

Bill McCabe<\/a> has his story.<\/p>\n

We all have our story. We all remember where we were on that awful day.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 <\/i>was just not supposed to happen. This was bad. This was worse than bad.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 <\/i>people and not with others. I believe He is there through all of it. With all of us.<\/p>\n

God didn’t choose to bless the nine saved miners in Pennsylvania, and choose NOT <\/b>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??)<\/p>\n

These are not questions for me to answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16441,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions\/16441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}