Where were you 25 years ago today?

[Dulcinea]

Today is the anniversary of the Challenger disaster.

I was in college at Penn State, headed back to my dorm after swimming. Passing through the student union, I saw a crowd around the TV, so I stopped to see what was going on. It was snowing hard that day, & I vividly remember the snow falling on my wet hair. I was numb, & not just from the cold.

How about you?

[ProdigalJunkMail]

1. Snow day out of public high school...

watching launch on the telly. Stunned, really...

sP

[justiceischeap]

7. Ditto (eom)

[Dogmudgeon]

2. Watching the Shuttle blow up

But Reagan just had to do that Press Conference in Space that night ...

--d!

[bluestateguy]

3. Elementary school

We had a brainless substitute teacher in the classroom who didn't set up a TV for us to watch it in class. Later in the day she told us very casually and off the cuff that the space shuttle blew up.

[closeupready]

4. I was also in college, the UI-Champaign in the fast food grill near the dorms.

The big-screen TV was tuned in to the disaster, and I wasn't sure what was going on, but I knew it was something horrible.

[hlthe2b]

5. I was on the phone with a medical wholesaler...

ordering clinical supplies... I had no access to tv or radio, so this phone conversation was how I learned about everything going on. Neither of us wanted to end the conversation, so I got a "play-by-play" by phone for probably an hour and a half with a perfect stranger, but one that was as distressed as I.

[niyad]

6. on my way to work at a veterans' outreach center--it was one rough day

[sinkingfeeling]

8. IBM Managers' Class in Armonk, NY.

[rox63]

9. College cafeteria between classes

Heard it from the radio they had playing in the kitchen area. Went to my next class a short while later with a stunned look on my face.

[JHB]

10. Watching those two boosters going off in separate directions...

...and thinking "awwww, fuck! it finally happened."

[ThatsMyBarack]

11. When it happened.....

I was in freshman-year high-school gym class, dismayed at having to take swimming for the next six-week grading period.

I found out about it later that day at lunch when a friend said, "Space Shuttle when KA-BLOOEY!" :wow:

[damntexdem]

12. San Francisco. Going to work.

Surprised when I arrived there and heard the news.

[JackintheGreen]

13. Home sick from 6th grade

I remember I was watching the launch on TV.

[TK421]

14. I was ten, and I still remember the news coverage...and all the tasteless jokes

[ROFF]

15. Working in the maintenance shop

One of the salesmen from the TV department told us of the event.

[treestar]

16. Going to work

I heard it on the car radio

[Tippy]

17. I was at work.......

[cbdo2007]

18. I don't remember. I was 9 so I must have been at school....

like in the 4th grade but I can't remember when I first heard about it or anything. I'm pretty sure we weren't watching live in my class.

[wuushew]

19. In 1st grade watching live on tv...

not the best thing for a young mind to observe.

[a la izquierda]

20. I was a third grader in New Jersey...

we watched the launch in class. Our poor teachers had to deal with a couple hundred freaked out kids after that. We all knew what happened.

My grandma was waiting for me outside school (she was the school nurse). We walked home and talked about it.

[laylah]

21. Sitting glued to the tv in the family room

while my oldest, then 4, was playing in her room, and my youngest, 1, was napping. What a travesty that was. :cry:

edited for spelling.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

22. On vacation in Central Florida. Pulled over on the side of the road, watching my first launch.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x292959

[Sedona]

23. Margate, Florida

and very very pregnant (had the baby on March 1st), watched the launch from my front yard. It was FREEZING! in the mid 20's

and I was 100 miles south. Its was SO weird. I saw almost all of them in person, from my

yard or further north. Was on the base for several. I knew right away something went very very wrong. The Y shaped smoke trail was

WAY F'ed up. I ran in the house and put on CNN, and was SO horrified. It was the biggest news deal in my life at that time (until

Hurricane Andrew and 9/11) I considered naming my daughter that was born a few weeks later Christa, but we had already settled on a

name. She turns 25 in a few weeks.

[uppityperson]

24. Working 2 jobs to make money to move to AK, no tv, minimal radio

I figured if something happened, someone would tell me, but was at work and watched it there. It was something.

[Frosty1]

25. Working for ITT Corporation.

Most of my life I have worked at nonprofits except the 5 years I spent at ITT.
The difference is amazing. Corporate America has the finest phones, faxes, office supplies, christmas parties and pay rates.
Unfortunately my heart was always with the nonprofits.
At ITT I fulfilled the office social worker position even though my job was director of communications.

[The Doctor.]

26. I had a dream the night before...

I had heard about the launch on the news just before going to bed. I remember my last thought before falling asleep; 'After so many launches, I wonder what the likelyhood of an accident is'. I had a dream about the shuttle bursting into flames.

It was all coincidental of course, but I still felt very strange when I heard about it. I was off from school that day and was working on an architecture project at my parent's kitchen table. I still have the table, and the strongest association I have with it is of the Challenger.

[one_voice]

27. Waiting for my nephew to be born...

his grandmother--my ex-mother-in-law--said it was an omen that he was born on the day the Challenger blew up. He died when he was 4. He drowned because of his mother's neglect. The story of that child's short life is very sad. His father did everything he could to get his son away from the mother. The courts didn't believe she was unfit, we all knew better.

My daughter was born not quite a week later--Feb. 3.

[Mojorabbit]

28. I walked into a patient's room with some meds

and he was watching tv and asked me to look out the window to see if I could see anything. I saw what are now famous images and was just floored. It was a long shift.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

29. At home with my new baby.

I had a three month old. I didn't turn on the TV all day, so I didn't hear about it until I turned on the evening news.

She's 25 now.

I remember reading that they did something really awful in New Hampshire -- they buried Christa McAuliffe in the MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT so the town did not get a chance to grieve. That was weird.

[redwitch]

30. Javits Center, NYC

So sad.

[Nordmadr]

31. Standing in front of a television in the school library.

I was 12.

[dembotoz]

32. out patient waiting room at hospital with my wife who was slowing dying from cancer

waiting to see one of her doctors.

[supernova]

33. Living in MD

in an apt with my soon to be first hubby. I was working in downtown DC and he was a grad student at U of MD. My how time flies.

[Dawgs]

34. I was heading to my chemistry class in high school.

A bunch of students were talking about it because they watched it live in an earlier class.

[GreenPartyVoter]

35. In the Physics room of our high school. I saw it happen on TV. It was so shocking and so very sad.

[Diclotican]

36. Dulcinea

Dulcinea

I was 9, and I guess I was in school, when the accident happend.... But somehow I do understood that something specially had happend, as I was really interesting in everything related to the space... I guess I never understood what i really was about - as I had other interest at age 9 than to worry about a space Shuttle...

But I do rembember that i was a lot on the news, for a long time....

Diclotican

[Donnachaidh]

37. working the graveyard shift in a medical parts factory

Injection-molding machine to be exact. And we had the TV on, and watched as it happened.

[eridani]

38. Unemployed. At home listening to NPR

Local science fiction fans gathered later for a memorial, at which we sung Hope Eyrie

http://www.ovff.org/pegasus/songs/hope-eyrie.html

Free mp3 download
http://tomsmith.bandcamp.com/track/hope-eyrie

[JoePhilly]

39. First year of grad school ... sitting in a special lounge for the graduate

student teaching assistants for the Psych department. We often watched the soaps (with endless mocking of the characters).

That day we watched the launch.

The explosion of the shuttle shocked all of us into total and complete silence.

Except for one asshole. I will never forget what he said. "So much for the first teacher in space." Then he got up and walked out.

No one liked this much guy to start with (he had a tendency to say inappropriate things) and this solidified his place as a social pariah. Personally, I found it hard to look at him from that moment on.

I get pissed thinking about it.

[GSLevel9]

40. Watching it live...

bad news...

[DFab420]

41. Not alive :/ n/t

[AngryOldDem]

42. Working as a copy editor at a midsized daily,

My job that day was the wire desk, where I had to monitor, update, and get stories off various wire services.

Needless to say it was a crazy day.

(As an unrelated aside, I also recall that as the day when I got my passport picture taken for a fall trip to Great Britain. Weird what you remember.)

[Hissyspit]

43. I was asleep in my dorm. After I got up, someone in the hall told me about it.

[DainBramaged]

44. At an employer-sponsored new products show on Long Island

I walked into the lobby of the Long Island Marriott because everyone was screaming and people were running out of the lounge crying, and then I saw it on their projection TV. On top of the huge snowstorm, the show was a bust and people were basically depressed and horrified. I will never forget that day.

[Recursion]

45. Elementary school, watching on TV

like I had all the other shuttle launches.

[Name removed]

46. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Ghost in the Machine]

47. On the roof of a building we were working on in Miami...

We were watching for the launch and saw the plume. We didn't know what happened until we went back downstairs where the radio was...

[Sabriel]

48. I was in Target, where they announced it on the PA

The whole store was dead silent...people left their carts and went home.

9/11 reminded me of that day.

[Lucian]

49. I was three years old.

I have no idea.

[era veteran]

50. Day off at home watched it happen.

When boy came home from daycare, we asked him what he did " we watched the spaceship blowup"