Maybe Next Year

Requiescat In Pace, 1986. But the year that ends this midnight will live on through grim images etched in the American psyche--many dark stains, few shining pictures of joy or inspiration.

Above all, 1986 will shadow our footsteps in time as the year of Challenger. At 8:39 a.m. (PST) on Tuesday, Jan. 28, America’s proud record of space-shuttle travel erupted in a mass of orange flame and twisted arms of white smoke that spiraled grotesquely into the cobalt Florida sky. It was one of those rare, awful events that caused an entire nation to scream silently: No. This can’t be happening . We wanted to rewind the videotape and play it again, the right way, and watch Challenger continue to soar toward the stars. But the reruns told the same tragic truth as gravity over-came hope and dragged Challenger and crew into the sea.

And then the tears came, for what else could one do?

Mankind may master machines, but not always to perfection. The invisible stain of radiation from Chernobyl will reap its toll for decades as, most likely, cancers germinate in the bodies of the infected and eat away life from the inside, cell by cell.

The lesson of Challenger and Chernobyl is a simple one that humans seem destined to learn over and over again: There is no substitute for painstaking attention to detail.

Another legacy of 1986 is the old story of man’s ability to do violence to fellow man and even to himself: apartheid, hijacking, terrorist bombing, toxic waste, death by drugs, poverty, illness, hunger, homelessness and dirty little wars in places like Nicaragua and South Yemen.

There were bright spots: Filipinos booted out a greedy dictator. The British did it their way again with a royal wedding. Americans celebrated Lady Liberty, tax reform and amazing baseball playoffs, but the government was left with a full plate of Old Business: trade and budget deficits, AIDS, nuclear arms, “Star Wars” and many more things, including the unraveling of an incredible tale of trading arms to Iran for hostages and back-channeling the money to Nicaraguan contras .

Jeana Yeager and Dick Rutan helped salvage 1986 with an audacious journey from California to California, by way of the rest of the world, in a spindly flying machine called Voyager. Their achievement allows a battered world to edge into 1987 with a measure of hope, for we know that Voyager flew not just on aviation fuel but also on the power of the human spirit.