And this doesn't have anything to do with Sgt. Pepper.
I was sitting in my fourth period social studies class on that Tuesday morning, when the principal came over the intercom and told the entire school that there had been a problem during the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger. After lunch, I had a study hall. I signed out and went to the library, and watched Tom Brokaw show the footage over and over again of the Challenger, 73 seconds into its flight, disappear in a ball of smoke and flames.
I knew as soon as I saw it that those astronauts weren't coming home. Despite what everyone on the news was saying, that they didn't know if there were any survivors, that they didn't know what exactly had happened, I knew. This was going to be one of those days that changed the course of history.
It was a very sad day for me, personally. I was your typical geeky 8th grader. OK, more than your typical geek. I knew just about everything an 8th grader could know about the space program. I wanted to go to Space Camp, and I wanted to be an astronaut, so the Challenger disaster was a great personal loss for me.
It was my Kennedy assassination, it was a day that changed not only my life, but the life of so many peole in America. It's just a shame that NASA didn't change.
On a Saturday morning in February, just 3 years ago, Monica and I got off a plane in Orlando, Florida. I was no longer that geeky 8th grader, but a Technology Director of a school district working on a Master's Degree. When we entered the concourse from the jetway, I started looking around for the baggage claim signs. I saw some people gathered around a TV near the gate and saw what appeared to be falling stars streaking across the screen.
I was immediately taken back to that junior high library, and that feeling of loss. I turned to Monica, trying to hide the emotion in my voice, and said, "They lost another shuttle."
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