Is That Legal?

I remember the morning I learned John Lennon had been shot, at home with my parents in Saint John, New Brunswick. And I remember - for some reason - when Reagan was shot, at boarding school.

I don't have a memory of the Challenger. I was in Toronto at university, but I couldn't tell you what I was doing.

There has been a pretty powerful documentary on Discovery (?) lately about the disaster that I found very moving.

Yes, I remember both of those events too--vividly.

I was in 7th grade, sitting across from an 8th grader, working on some "map" project in the school library. It was a 7th-8th grade combo history class. (I remember the other kid's face and his name--and only because of this event. I don't think we went to the same high school after jr high, and there's zero reason for me to remember the guy if not for this.) Our teacher, Mrs. Mason, came in from the adjacent teacher's lounge to let us know the space shuttle had exploded. At that point, space shuttle launches were so commonplace that none of us knew a launch occured that day; most of us figured it crash-landed upon re-entry.* It wasn't until I got home and watched TV that I learned what really happened. That event, and 9/11, are the only -- and hopefully, last -- equivilants to the JFK assassination experiences for people in my generation.

*Mrs. Mason was sobbing as she told us the news, and no one felt comfortable asking her details about the explosion. At the time, and even in retrospect, I've always thought Mrs. Mason's sobbing was strange. It was a horrible, shocking event, but her crying, for some reason, always seemed a little out of place to me.

Challenger: I was home sick from school (it must have been middle school or late elementary), coughing my head off on the couch. It didn't improve my day.

Regrettably, I'd offer the OJ/white Bronco chase as another "what were you doing when it happened" moment.

I remember it well. I remember hearing the Reagan address in the cafeteria (I was in college; it was the only time they actually played the radio, instead of muzak, that I can recall) and having the same reaction Eric did: Reagan said just the right things in just the right way.

And then we spent the day watching those damned pictures, over and over and over.... I still can't watch them, any more than I can watch the 9/11 videos.

Eric, I thought about asking this very question on my blog, till I realized I didn't exactly remember where I was. I was somewhere in an EDS office building in Bethesda, Md., and I want to think I was in a cafeteria line, except there was no cafeteria. I think what strikes me most is how different the world is--entirely--now.

Also, it struck me that poor Daniel Zwerdling of NPR, whose beat wasn't even science or space or technology that I could tell, just happened to be covering the launch and then he got stuck with the story for months, and months, and months. He did a great job, actually, with those Morton Thiokol O-rings and the awful truth behind them, but I wondered how he felt about his fate.

I was in third grade and living in Orlando, FL when the Challenger exploded. The shuttles would often take off early in the morning, before school started, and my dad and I would go outside to watch. Even though they took off about an hour away, we could see them once they got up. Of course the Challenger took off later that day bc it was cold, so I was at school. I didn't feel well that day and was in the nurse's office. A lady with red hair from the housekeeping staff came in and announced it.

My Navy ship, the USS KING DDG-41 was in Florida cannot remember the port and a few of the guys and myself actually had no clue the shuttle was even scheduled to take off that day, it had become such a what we thought was routine event. We were outside on deck and happened to look up and saw the smoke trails and wondered what the heck is that after going inside we saw that the News was broadcasting on the mess decks and we found out that 7 great human beings had died when the Challenger
exploded. President Reagan , who was a great President, gave a heart felt speech and we all began to realize just how dangerous space travel still was.

I'm a space activist, and I heard of the explosion when a reporter called me to ask my opinion of what it meant for the space program.

I heard about the Kennedy assassination in my home room in junior high.

I heard about Reagan getting shot when I came into work.

I found out about the Oklahoma City bombing when I turned on CNN. I saw the dateline was Oklahoma City and immediately knew something was terribly wrong, before they showed any details.

I found out about the earthquake during the 1989 World Series when I came back to work after a lunch break and my co-worker told me the series game had been cancelled. I thought he was kidding me.

I was at Yale too at the time, as an undergraduate. I heard the announcement while I was out on my Yale Recycling run -- having picked up paper all over campus, I was dropping it at the recycling plant, where there was a radio playing inside. The DJ delivered the news in one quick headline and went back to playing music. (She probably didn't actually grasp the meaning of the words herself until afterward.)

Stupid question...if he was supposed to give the SOTU that day, why was he so obviously not in DC?

I remember that same sense of, "what's the punch line".

I was at work, in the family bookstore" and my roommate called to tell me. Stunned doesn't begin to describe it.

I can recall where I was when Reagan was shot, and the news of Lennon (though it was walking to school in the grey morning, and singing to myself I most clearly recall of that).

9/11, not so much. The pictures bring the sensations back, but, perhaps because I was asleep, or because I'd been expecting a big attack, it doesn't have that time stopping effect.

TK