Teacher Brought Space Flight Into Our Hearts

February 9, 1986|By Bonnie Sundin Bumb

Challenger was the Children's Flight.

While for years children have heard the names, titles and ranks of astronauts and have watched in wide-eyed awe as the graceful shuttle again climbed higher and higher, the astronauts and flights never before had flown with children as the prime spectators.

The titles and ranks, while impressive, were not interesting to children. The missions accomplished on shuttle journeys were obviously the work of men and women who are indeed brave and awe-inspiring, but quite unlike the real people children know.

But the excitement began to grow as children

learned that a teacher was a passenger on this Challenger mission. Teachers are people that children see everyday. Christa McAuliffe had titles and ranks -- teacher and mother -- that a child could understand. Now the fantasy trip seemed real.

McAuliffe was supposed to teach classes in space and make space exploration real for children. This shuttle flight was for the future astronauts who eagerly awaited the ''space teacher'' to take them with her on ''The Ultimate Field Trip.''

This flight was for the average person, too.

Like children, most of America has a limited idea of what the shuttle crew actually does in space. Although we admire and applaud their feats and bravery, their vocabulary and technology are not part of our everyday lives.

We don't feel that astronauts are the average next-door neighbor with an average job.

But I would have been happy to have Christa McAuliffe as my neighbor. Teachers speak a language for average people and the technology of teaching is not as bewildering as that of the spacecraft. We all shop in the same grocery stores and see the same children.

Christa McAuliffe was everyone's friendly next-door neighbor. She could have been my neighbor about to share her space ride with me. How easily she captured our hearts and imagination. How totally we accepted her challenge to us to dream.

Christa had gone through six months of rigorous training to prepare her for the greatest ride imaginable, and I suspect she was going to have fun.

I had planned to watch the ''space classes'' and I

can imagine Christa, bubbly and excited, telling us how wonderful ''our'' trip was. I can imagine her joy and eagerness. Vicariously, I was making this flight with her and I was so eager to hear about it.

I shared my excitement with my family. My husband and sons know I would ride the shuttle tomorrow if I had the opportunity. They felt my loss as the television showed over and over again my dream -- which had begun in shouts and cheers -- end in terrible silence and a horribly misshapen cloud of smoke. Thank you, God, for giving Christa the joy of the flight. And thank you for taking her so quickly that she knew none of the horror and suffering that her family and the rest of us average Americans will never forget.

Orlando Sentinel Articles