The CBS reporter covering a story on the 20 year anniversary of the Challenger explosion referred to this event as “the day NASA lost its innonence.”
Someone once described moments like this as ‘flash memories.’ A moment in time where you remember exactly what you were doing. In my own walk, I remember JFK’s death, the Challenger explosion and who will ever forget 9/11?
Earlier today, I ran across a blog that stirred my memory and even more important was the place this person recalled from their memory about Challenger. They ask the question…’Where were you when Challenger exploded?”
What’s funny is the fact I was in the mall too. I remember wearing a suit and in between sales calls working as a print ad rep for the Kingsport Times-News. It was a frantic day and I was traveling ninety miles per hour until a crossed through the Sears department store at Fort Henry Mall and noticed a mob of people standing around the televisions in the entertainment department (remember when Sears did that too?).
It was amusing for me to see someone in Bristol who was in Sears at The Bristol Mall – some thirty miles away. That memory is still a vivid one for me, but somber in the sense that these astronauts recognized the risk and considered what they were doing as more important in the greater scheme of life and our efforts to explore the universe.