Concord Remembers Its ‘Teachernaut’

Friday was to have been the day that Sharon Christa McAuliffe taught her first class from space. Instead, the 37-year-old “teachernaut,” as people here have taken to calling their most famous citizen, became the subject of a day’s worth of public remembrances.

“She taught us to reach. She taught us to go forward,” said 16-year-old Scott Kibby, a junior at Concord High School, where McAuliffe had taught social studies, history, law and women’s issues. She was killed Tuesday with six other crew members when the space shuttle Challenger exploded.

Like nearly all the school’s 1,200 students, Kibby had attended a private memorial for McAuliffe at mid-day Friday in the school’s gym.

Mood Is Upbeat

The mourners sang songs--in solo and in unison--and then, one-by-one, teachers and students advanced to the front of the gym to share their memories of the popular teacher who became, for 73 precious seconds, America’s first private citizen to fly in the space shuttle.

The mood at the school was upbeat--”as Christa would have wanted it,” several people said later--but still fraught with emotion, especially when a student sang a special song for McAuliffe called ‘Love Is a Rose.’ “There were a lot of people in tears,” Kibby said.

But the students listened raptly as student council president Jill Seymour read a letter from President Reagan that lauded McAuliffe as “a woman of courage and caring, an educator of boundless energy and inexhaustible enthusiasm, an inspiration to young and old alike.”

Friday’s school service was closed to the press and the public in large part to encourage openness among students and faculty.

“I guess all of us as humans don’t like to display our emotions too publicly,” School Supt. Mark Beauvais explained. “Especially adolescents. They wouldn’t participate in something like this if they think people are looking.”

White House Gently Rebuffed

The same desire for some semblance of privacy in this capital city of 32,000 was what prompted a gentle rebuff to earlier inquiries from the White House about a possible presidential appearance during the school cememony. “It wasn’t the President we were turning down,” Beauvais explained. “It was the office of the President and all the attendant madness.”

But Friday evening, as a soft afternoon snowfall gave way to a clear, starry sky, several thousand of Christa McAuliffe’s friends, neighbors, students and admirers filled the courtyard in front of the state capitol for a final farewell to McAuliffe.

“A little girl said she hoped Christa would come back and teach us all about space,” the McAuliffe family’s priest, the Rev. Chestet Mrowka told the crowd.

“Christa, I believe, is teaching us from space.”

Join Hands to Sing

Packed closely together to ward off the chilly night air, the crowd heard tributes to McAuliffe from New Hampshire Gov. John H. Sununu and Concord Mayor James MacKay. Rep. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) read a portion of President Reagan’s speech earlier in the day at Houston’s Johnson Space Center.

Then, shivering, the townspeople joined hands to sing “America the Beautiful.”

McAuliffe’s death had gripped this city with grief for the same reason her selection as a space traveler had filled the community with joy.

“Not everybody knows everybody in Concord,” Beauvais said. “But everybody knew her.”

‘A Death in the Family’

“It’s been like a death in the family for the whole town,” Concord Monitor editor Mike Pride said.

In that very family spirit, Concord High School principal Charles Foley said the healing process would be a community effort.

“We’re going to lean on each other. We’re going to deal with this like family,” he said.

At McAuliffe’s high school, the library and media center were to stay open this weekend to allow local residents to read the tributes to McAuliffe that have poured in from around the world.

“And flowers!” Beauvais said. “God Almighty, there are just thousands of flowers.”

On Monday, a funeral mass is planned for McAuliffe at St. Peter’s Catholic Church, where McAuliffe and her family worshipped.