This is Outside In, I'm Nate Hedgie. 40 years ago this week, the Challenger space shuttle broke apart. It claimed the life of Concord High School teacher Krista McAuliffe, as well as the six other astronauts on board. We talked about that day in our last episode, and how it might impact the way we think about sending people to space in the future. But what we really didn't do is linger on Krista herself. The space program is a science or math or technological adventure right now. I want the students to get a little bit of ownership. I want them to feel that they're part of the space age because they're the future and their children or grandchildren are going to be pioneering that. Her death was a huge national story, but it was an especially big deal here. The station where we make Outside In is just a couple of miles from Concord High, where Krista taught social studies. So today, we've got a series of stories and interviews that are all part of NHPR series, Remembering Krista. We'll hear from a local journalist that covered her story. We walked in and I observed other reporters weeping. The students who knew her best. The poor decision making that was made at NASA, that this would be a topic that I could easily see her teaching about. And the community charged with remembering her legacy. She was a feminist, empowering women and girls. She was a pioneer. Stay tuned. Insurance isn't one size fits all. And shopping for it shouldn't feel like squeezing into something that just doesn't fit. That's why drivers have enjoyed progressives name your price tool for years. With the name your price tool, you tell them what you want to pay and they show you options that fit your budget. Enough hunting for discounts, trying to calculate rates and tinkering with coverages. Maybe you're picking out your very first policy or maybe you're just looking for something that works better for you and your family. Either way, they make it simple to see your options. 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Our first story is one that really resonates with me as a journalist. I've had to cover some tough stories before, but I really can't imagine documenting a national celebration, only to then have it turn into a national tragedy. Roger Wood had to do exactly that. He was working as a radio news reporter in January 1986 for WOKQ, a small country music station based in New Hampshire. When he was sent to Florida ahead of the launch. Here he is. My name is Roger Wood. My job, of course, was being a news reporter on air. When I learned that Krista McAuliffe was picked to be the first teacher in space, I went to Concord. They had a kind of a congratulations parade. This is most certainly Krista McAuliffe's weekend in her hometown of Concord, the photogenic 36-year-old teacher, wife and mother of two, riding in an open car through downtown capital city Concord in the Lions Club Parade. Photographers and citizens alike, acknowledging her newfound celebrity status. America's first teacher in space, Krista McAuliffe, social studies teacher from Concord High School. I've got one quick question. Do you ever think it'd be like an instant media celeb? Well, I had thought about that. When I was one of the ten, we got a lot of attention, so I knew it was probably going to increase, but I'm enjoying it. Then your car pulled away. I decided that it would be good to actually be there in Florida at Cape Canaveral during the liftoff of the Challenger spacecraft. I also traveled with my friend Jim Van Dungen. Jim was the news director at NHPR. On that flight were a number of people that were involved with the Concord schools. I'm Jim Van Dungen for WEVO. Concord school superintendent, Mark Beauvais, says, just looking at the palm trees and feeling that it's become a lot more real. When the airplane was landing, I looked out of the window on my left, and I saw this giant structure to my left, and I assumed that has something to do with the NASA center down here. That made me excited. We checked into the hotel and figured that the next morning would be the launch day. But it wasn't. It was postponed. It was comfortable with the whole thing. She's not concerned. Worried and nervous. She's anxious to go. It was postponed on a day-to-day basis several days. We went back and the weather forecast was bad. It's very cold, especially for Florida, 25 degrees. WOKQ's Roger Wood is with me live. Roger? Weather expert, Colonel Robert Nicholson is calling for only light winds and scattered high clouds with cold, freezing temperatures at launch time. So I wandered into the actual media center, and there was a NASA weather person. So I asked this person on tape. Have you seen temperatures ever this cold for a subtle launch, though? Well, we had temperatures about this low last year at this time when the first DOD payload shuttle went up. We lost launch day by one day then because of freezing conditions on the pad. It looks like they're ahead of that problem this year, and that we're a go-for-launch. And basically dismissed my question. The sky is bright and blue and not a cloud in it as far as within your fear with a shuttle launch. And it looks like right now all systems are go. We traveled over to a grandstand which had some audio connectors on it, and we plugged our recorders into that. We were hearing the chatter from the space center. We just sat there and they were counting down. Suddenly, it launched. And now I'll start to hear the roar at the grandstand. And the roar of the shuttle had a huge smoke billowing out from below. Sound was unbelievable and was five miles away from the actual space shuttle. The ground is literally shaking with the power that's coming out of that jet. That is. Smoke of white, brown. You can still see a small bit of flame from our position. Jim, the sound is starting to die out, but the spectacle is amazing. You can still see quite a bit of flame coming off the back of it. Now we've lost it in the smoke. There's sort of an orange flame in the middle of that cloud. So it's happened, Jim. New Hampshire's Kristen McCollough is on her way. We were off the air because we had made an announcement that the shuttle was aloft. Copy. Flight, FIDO. Go ahead. RSO report's vehicle exploded. Copy. FIDO, can we get into the... We walked over to the media center. We walked in and I observed other reporters weeping. Then one reporter from New Hampshire said, I can't go on. You've described the scene the most you can. Well, when the countdown began reaching zero, the crowd showed signs of smiles and happiness. Because the delay had taken such a long time, everybody thought they were going to go back to Concord without seeing the shuttle launch. The rocket took off and I don't think the crowd knew what was going on. Right away, it took a while when they didn't notice that the shuttle had continued to go up. And then I think the first person who noticed what was going on was Christa's mother. I was focused on the parents and the brother and sister. And I noticed that she showed the first signs of fear and looked towards her husband. And by then everybody had realized what had happened. So it was extremely, extremely sad in there. That was Roger Wood. If you walk around Concord today, you'll see a statue of Christa McAuliffe on the lawn of the state Capitol building, ducked out in her NASA suit. And a few minute walk away, you'll pass Christa McAuliffe Middle School. Her name is everywhere here. But for this next story, we wanted to hear from the kids who knew her when she was their high school social studies teacher. She supervised an independent study for me. I had an internship at the state house down the street. So she was in charge of that. Rick St. Hilaire is a lawyer. He was one of Christa's students at Concord High School. She mentored him through an independent study that got him interested in civics education. By the way, you'll hear him mention the O-ring. That was a rubber seal on the Challenger that investigators determined caused the explosion. It failed because of the cold weather and allowed combustible gases to escape and blow up the rocket. Here he is. What I really remember was that she's the kind of person that used to stir that kind of independent interest. She was extremely enthusiastic. That's one of our hallmarks of her teaching style, that enthusiasm, her cheerfulness to be able to support students in a very happy and kind way. My last encounter with her, I think, is just an illustration of her general personality. This was about the time that she was doing the anti-gravity testing, you know, when they go up in the plane and down and up and down, so that they get to float in the plane. And I ran into her the hallway. We were talking about this and her personality just really shown big smile on her face, extremely enthusiastic about what it is that she was doing, and trying to communicate this great adventure that she had to a student, to myself, so that it's transmitted. You know, she was one of those great teachers that really just passed on, not just knowledge, but it's the kind of appreciation for learning, and you don't even know that you're learning. You know, when you hear from somebody who's so, so enthused about what it is that they're doing, she was the ultimate student, which made her the ultimate teacher. The Challenger disaster is a failure of decision making more than a failure of hardware. When you're 17 years old as I was, and you see this disaster occur, and starting to understand you're not just dealing with an O-ring, you're dealing with somebody who made a decision that overrode other people who had better knowledge of not to launch. And so that has stuck with me throughout my entire career, that it's entirely possible to be in positions of authority and not be armed with the kind of information that you need to make the right decision, where it's important to defer to others who have better knowledge than you do, to be able to make better judgment calls. And it's stuck with me in all kinds of executive decision making that I've made throughout the years of remembering that a really bad decision was made that had tragic results to it. And I have to say too that Mrs. McAuliffe, in terms of her teaching about civics and social studies and history, you know, she was always very reflective about decision making that occurred over time. History wasn't simply a sequence of events. She was always talking about how things all worked together, how all the pieces fit together. So, you know, it's kind of fitting, as I reflect back on Mrs. McAuliffe as a teacher, and the decision making, the poor decision making that was made at NASA, that this would be a topic that I could easily see her teaching about, that you have a historical moment that led into a tragedy. How did that happen? And can we learn lessons from that that are still applicable today? And, you know, the answer, of course, is yes, absolutely. And so that's part of the legacy that we need to remember that her ability to teach critical thinking is something that's still alive today, certainly something that lives with me. That was Rick St. Hilaire. Today, Rick says McAuliffe's mentorship and the tragedy of the Challenger disaster continues to shape his decision making. Andrea Rice was a senior at Concord High School in 1986, and like a lot of kids back then, she remembers watching the launch live from school. My senior year was very unique, and I feel like by the end of it, a lot of the walls in between the different groups of people really came down. They were wiring up all the rooms with cable, so every classroom could watch it, you know, as we were getting really high tech stuff. This was specifically so they could wheel those TVs in on those big carts. I happened to be in the cafeteria, though, on the day of the event. We had those long, from mica kind of laminate tables with around seats, and everyone was just kind of sitting there in front of the TV, the back of the cafeteria standing up against the wall where all the teachers and everyone was sitting there. What I remember most about that day is turning around the moment of the explosion and seeing all the teachers in the back and seeing their faces and just having like this real epiphany that they weren't just teachers, that they were human beings, and that was their friend, and that was their people, that was their family, and that, I think, broke me almost more. So that can, there was this whole new reality of just seeing them in a totally different light, and it was heartbreaking. I think I became closer to the people who were close to me, but you also had a lot of empathy towards other people in the school. Like, you weren't alone going through this, and it wasn't just your classmates, it was your teachers, and it was the people who worked in the office, and we all went through this together, and we had this shared experience, and it created a tie that I don't know that other high school senior classes had. I'm a nurse, and I took care of our vice principal in the hospital, and it was so lovely to reconnect with him as an adult and just have some conversations talking to him about that. I just felt this extra level of love and like, and I'm going to take care of you because you took care of us when we were struggling and when all this horrible stuff was going on in my childhood, you took care of me, and now I'm going to take care of you. That was Andrea Rice. More stories from Remembering Christa after the break. So, I started playing music again. I actually just played this folk festival recently, and now that I'm playing music, I need to look a lot sharper than my typical athleisure sweatpants working from home outfit, right? So, I picked up this blue chorecoat from Quince that I absolutely adore. It's durable, it fits great, it looks cool, and it costs less than $100. You see, everything at Quince is priced 50-80% less than what you'd find at similar brands. 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You're going to hear things like a climate scientist on how climate change demands the most of our humanity, or a cancer survivor on what it means to turn pain into possibility. I'm really looking forward to listening to her interview with Robin Wall Kimmer. She's a favorite writer of mine. She's also got an interview with Roxanne Gay. It's great. To listen to The Nature Of with Willow Defabaugh, search for The Nature Of with Willow Defabaugh on your podcast app. That's The Nature Of with Willow Defabaugh. Wait, wait, wait. Don't skip this. Don't skip this. Don't skip this. This is not an ad. This is me, Nate. And I'm here to tell you that it is yet again time to open up the outside inbox to listen to her questions. We have been getting the most random submissions lately. Like, can bobcats get hairballs? Or why does warm dirt smell so good? But we need more questions, so please send us the weirdest, wackiest questions about science in the natural world that you can think of. It is super easy. You can call our hotline at 1-844-GO-AUTER. Or even better, send us a voice memo to OutsideInRadio at nhpr.org. OK, back to the show. This is Outside In. I'm Nate Hedgie. The year after Krista McAuliffe died in the Challenger explosion, Lori Mackenzie Gordon began teaching at Concord High. One of her courses was American Women's History, which was originally developed and taught by Krista. It wasn't revolutionary, but the late 70s and early 80s having a woman's history class, that was unusual. She was a pioneer. We asked Mackenzie to reflect on teaching that class and on the lessons we can learn from a Culliff today. Seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary, to me, that's a big piece of Krista's mission. She was a feminist, empowering women and girls, absolutely part of her mission. And she did that through the study of history, primary documents, primarily diaries, journals, that kind of thing. For example, Martha Ballard was a midwife in Maine. And she just lived such a rich life. It would have been the 18th century. And every day she would take copious notes in this journal. And not only did she deliver a life, but she was a mom. She was a wife. She lived in this town. She was a citizen. She just was all these things that each of us does every single day. You had to keep the fires burning. There was no door dash. You had to go, like, cook the food. You had to get the food. The history is just so profoundly rich. But the gift that she gave us was that she just wrote it all down. I would take the American Women's Students to the Concord Burthing Center. That was one of the field trips that I took that Krista was sort of famous for. And we talked about giving birth, which, again, is so ordinary and yet profoundly extraordinary. Please describe the project you outlined in your application for your time in the space shuttle. Having been a history teacher for quite a few years, I've been very aware of the fact that social history, or the history for the majority, is often unknown or forgotten. When I was thinking about doing a project for the space shuttle, I felt that doing a diary or a journal and keeping these notes would help personalize the space program. The students and the teachers and others who I would speak to would have somebody else's viewpoint other than an astronaut to look through. There's another sort of legend about something she said to one of her astronaut meets about being a footnote in history or becoming a question on a trivial pursuit or something. She was so ordinary and then did this extraordinary thing. And what would have happened if things hadn't happened the way they did? It just all went according to plan and she did her journal and then went on. What would her legacy of look like? Were she her own ambassador? Obviously, you know, we don't know the answer to it. I think it's worth thinking about. She became bigger than she was, but then I think that would be her point. We have to find the extraordinary in the everyday. That was Laurie McKenzie Gordon, who taught at Concord High after Krista McAuliffe's death. Krista McAuliffe was selected to be the first teacher in space aboard the Faded Challenger mission. But Phil Brown was a runner up. Here he is. Why did I want to go to space? I had seen images from satellites without any geopolitical borders and just the beauty of this blue sphere and the background of blackness. And I wanted to get a feeling of what that was all about. I just thought, I want to do this. I picked up newspapers at Goff Sound High School at the time back in 84. And then I would use them to start fires in my wood stove in the basement. And there was an article that where President Reagan had declared in August of 84. But today I'm directing NASA to begin a search in all of our elementary and secondary schools and to choose as the first citizen passenger in the history of our space program, one of America's finest, a teacher. There was going to be a teacher in space as I was crumpling up the newspaper to put it in the fire. And I said, I want to try for this. New Hampshire is a small state and I have a good chance. Sometime in the winter of 85, I got notification that I was one of the six finalists. And I, along with those finalists met at a Department of Education building and we presented to a committee. That was the first and only time that I ever met Krista. And she was just effusive. She was happy and charming. We were all sitting six of us in this room, right? And I was like really serious because I wouldn't have all my ideas that I presented in my application ready and at the front of my brain. But she was just happy. And the beauty of hers was she was going to keep a diary. She was just going to share her feelings and what those feelings meant to her and how they might be able to impact students. The beauty of it was its simplicity. The summer of 85. So that was when things really got going. After she had been selected and at that point we just waited for the big day, which was supposed to be January 22nd. Strangely enough, for me, January 22nd has a different meaning. My daughter Morgan was born on that day. And I think quite as excited about the Krista McCall experience that day. But then as the days went on after that, and there was one postponement after another, after another. And I remember watching with my students in the classroom and 73 seconds into the flight. I knew it wasn't right. I knew that she and the other astronauts were gone. And I knew that night that there were going to be a lot of families of the astronauts who were never going to get to hold. As I was holding my loved one, Morgan, my brand new daughter in my arms that night. It was so sad. And I was holding her that evening as I watched on the news the reruns of those 73 seconds. The two words that just kept coming into my brain that night as I was holding Morgan. About 70 seconds into the launch sequence. Challenger, go and throttle up. Challenger, go and throttle up. Or throttle up. And I thought about Krista's statement. You know, I touch the future. I teach. I was a teacher, but her future was gone. She wasn't really going to be able to touch the future anymore. And as I looked at my daughter Morgan, I made a vow right then and there. I said, I am going to do something to honor the memory of this woman. So that we as teachers and our students that we try to guide and mold into good human beings and good citizens. We'll be able to have a successful future on this planet. And I did. That was Phil Brown. After the Challenger disaster, Phil developed a curriculum to conduct research with students that was used by NASA. This program spread across the Northeast and eventually across the world. This series of stories, Remembering Krista, was produced by NHPR's Patrick McNamee King. You can find links to the original stories and the rest of the series in our show notes and at NHPR.org. This series was edited by Mary McIntyre. Special thanks to Emily Quirk and Rick Galey for archival work, retrieving and digitizing reel-to-reels, and to Roger Wood for providing audio of his newscasts. Thanks also to Kim Blyre and Melissa Edwards. If you have memories of Krista, her legacy, or you were impacted by the Challenger disaster, you can share them with us via email at outsidein.nhpr.org. Outside In staff includes Marina Hanky, Felix Poon, Justine Paradis, and Jessica Hunt. Taylor Quimby is our executive producer. Rebecca LaVoy is our director of podcasts. I'm your host, Nate Hedgie. Music in this episode came from BluDOT Sessions and Epidemic Sound. Outside In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. 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