CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Dozens of educators who competed alongside Christa McAuliffe to become the first teacher in space gathered Thursday to remember the seven astronauts who perished aboard Challenger 30 years ago.
McAuliffe’s son, Scott, now 39, also took part in the emotionally charged ceremony, held on a bleak, drizzly morning just six miles from where his mother’s space shuttle blasted off for the final time on Jan. 28, 1986.
Many of the teacher-in-space semifinalists are retired now. They have gray hair. A few limp. But they still believe strongly in what McAuliffe hoped to accomplish aboard Challenger before disaster struck during liftoff.
“It’s really hard” to be back, said William Dillon, 77, a retired teacher who represented California in the competition back in the mid-1980s. He was at Kennedy Space Center for Challenger’s launch and had gotten to know not only McAuliffe, but a few of the other astronauts on the doomed flight.
Linda Preston, 61, also retired as a teacher, choked up as the names of the Challenger dead were read during the memorial service. The former space shuttle pilot reciting the names of all 24 astronauts killed in the line of duty over the years, Jon McBride, had to fight back tears.
“All of a sudden, I couldn’t breathe,” Preston later confided to a reporter. She represented Utah in the teacher competition.
About 40 of the 113 remaining semifinalists for teacher-in-space traveled to Cape Canaveral for the anniversary commemoration, the biggest gathering ever for a NASA memorial like this.
“We felt we all wanted to be part of it,” said Connecticut semifinalist David Warner, 63, who still teaches science, robotics and rocketry.
The ceremony was one of several NASA memorials that took place Thursday at Arlington National Cemetery and elsewhere around the country.
At Kennedy, rain moved the ceremony indoors, directly in front of the “Forever Remembered” exhibit. The gathering took place beneath the suspended shuttle Atlantis, which in 2011 made the final shuttle flight.
