25th anniversary of the Challenger disaster - Yahoo! News It’s so hard to imagine that 25 years have passed since that day. I was in the Philippines doing some field service work when the news came out that day.
Man, this makes me feel so old........My youngest daughter was six weeks old at the time, and I wrote about the Challenger disaster in her baby book. My husband had woke me up that morning to tell me the news; we sat there in front of the TV watching the explosion replayed over and over, and all I could think about was Christa McAuliffe and her poor parents, who looked so confused at first and then horrified as they realized what had happened. I went into town later, and the few people who were out and about just walked around in a daze. Nobody spoke; nobody seemed to know what to say except for President Reagan, whose speech about how the Challenger crew had "slipped the surly bonds of Earth, to touch the face of God" still gives me chills, even though I know those weren't his own words.
25 years, my how time flies. here is the poem that those words came from High Flight Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air. Up, up the long delirious, burning blue, I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace Where never lark, or even eagle flew - And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod The high untresspassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand and touched the face of God. Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee No 412 squadron, RCAF Killed 11 December 1941
