Shuttle Tragedy Brings School Special Grief

On the tiny desk-top television, the tragedy of Challenger was being shown again.

Several eighth-grade students at MacArthur Fundamental Intermediate School in Santa Ana were watching. Most had strained expressions.

“It’s real sad. It’s shocking,” said Steve Buehler, 13, as the TV screen showed the obliteration of the spacecraft carrying the first teacher in space, Sharon Christa McAuliffe, and six other crew members.

Nearby, two teachers, their faces pale, talked in muted tones.

Outdoors, during the mid-morning break, the normal cheers and shouts of sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders were mostly absent. Students clustered in small groups and talked about the news they had heard over the school’s loudspeakers.

One student, huddled as if in grief, sat alone on an outdoor table. “Yeah, I was thinking about the explosion,” said Martin Turley, 12, a seventh-grader. “I was thinking how dangerous it is to be an astronaut. I was also thinking how hard this must be on the families.”

School in Shock

Principal Thomas Reasin said the whole school had been plunged into shock.

“This explosion is a real tragedy,” he said. “Certainly it’s a tragedy for all Americans. But to localize it to the school level, without educators and education there would be no space program. To have the honor of having a teacher as part of this great venture was to reward all teachers. At the school level, we’re all very shocked.”

Like most other school systems in Orange County, the Santa Ana Unified School District had made plans for many of its classes to have special instruction tied to the teacher-in-space launch. Few space launches in the nation’s history had been so intimately linked to schools and schoolchildren as was Challenger’s flight with McAuliffe aboard.

Teachers said children felt attached to the flight because they could identify with teachers. The loss, therefore, was one with which children closely identified, Reasin said.

Dawn Stone, 12, and Lisa Pinedo, 13, both in the eighth grade at MacArthur, said they knew about the national search that had led to McAuliffe’s being selected for the flight.

“It (the flight) should have been happy and exciting,” Lisa said. “She was the first teacher going up; she was representing all the teachers, but it turned out real tragic.”

Couldn’t Believe It

Dawn said: “I was just shocked. I couldn’t believe anything like that would happen because NASA is supposed to be so careful about everything.”

She paused as she tried to sum up her feelings about teachers. Then, slowly, she gave a one-sentence tribute to all teachers, but thinking, at the time, of the doomed teacher on Challenger: “Teachers help give us confidence so we can try to be the best we can.”

Meredith Fogleman, 13, said: “I was in class and heard Mr. Reasin announce it. I knew about the teacher. I knew it was supposed to take off yesterday (Monday), but I didn’t know it was taking off today. I thought it was safe; I didn’t know that an explosion could occur.”

Albert Lai, 13, said: “I didn’t think something like this would happen because everything looked so normal. I’ve thought about being in space, probably as a technician.” But he added that he was now having second thoughts.

‘It Was Scary’

Edward Romero, 13, said: “It’s sad for the whole country. It’s a shock. I thought it was under control--just a little explosion--but then I saw what happened on television. It was scary.”

Scott Marshall, 14, talked briefly with the principal about the explosion. “The parents and children and relatives must be really sad,” he said. “It seemed like nothing was wrong, and then, boom, it was gone. I always wanted to be an astronaut. And I still do.”

Inside the school’s administrative offices, math teacher Lisa Butler explained why the tragedy seemed especially close to her: “My husband’s a Marine Corp helicopter pilot at El Toro,” she said.

“We’re close enough here that on some days I can see the smoke rising (from El Toro) when the crash crew has their practices,” Butler said. “I always go to the phone, and as casually as I can, I say to the guard out there, ‘Oh, is the crash crew practicing today?’ When he says ‘yes,’ then I go on to lunch, but you never know it’s a test until you call. It always makes my heart stand still.”

Joy Bower, office manager for the school, said that her husband, James, an executive with Rockwell International Corp., was at Cape Canaveral on Tuesday “and was watching the liftoff.” Bower said her first thoughts were for the families of the doomed people on the spacecraft. “I’m sure they were devastated as they watched this on TV,” she said.

English teacher Elaine Hart said that the space flight was not in vain--that McAuliffe is a heroine who will never be forgotten in American education.

“We all have to die,” Hart said. “She (McAuliffe) was doing something she really wanted to do.”