Challenger Families Begin Drive to Raise $50 Million for Center

Families of the Challenger crew Wednesday began a nationwide, $50-million fund-raising campaign to build a center for teaching America’s youth about space.

At a news conference three weeks before the first anniversary of the space shuttle explosion, the families asked businesses to donate 10% of their sales on Jan. 28 to The Challenger Center, a living memorial the families hope to build.

“We’re a team,” June Scobee, widow of shuttle commander Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, said of the families of the seven Challenger astronauts. “We had a very difficult year, but what we want the nation to do is help us close that chapter . . . and look forward to the next chapter with hope.”

The families want to raise $25 million to build a space science laboratory for students from elementary grades through college in Washington and a regional center in Houston.

Scholarships Planned

They also hope to raise another $25 million for an endowment to provide scholarships for students and paid sabbaticals for teachers to attend the center. The money also would pay for materials for students to study before coming to the center.

The center would be a laboratory where students and teachers could conduct math and science lessons in a environment that simulates space flight, said Scobee, who chairs the center’s board of directors.

“The Challenger crew members were not the type of people who would have wanted granite memorials,” said Steven McAuliffe, whose wife, teacher Sharon Christa McAuliffe, died in the disaster. “They weren’t people who dwelt in the past. They weren’t static people. They were people who cared about the future.”

Since the center was formed in October, it has raised about $400,000, including donations from some aerospace companies that helped build the space shuttles.