Holloway Reaches for the Stars to Honor the Challenger Seven

Autograph hounds. You can’t avoid ‘em.

They were clustered like flies outside the New England Patriots’ dressing room, still buzzing about the big win that had put the team into the 1986 NFL playoffs. Super Bowl fever. Brian Holloway, the Patriots’ 6-foot 7-inch, 288-pound offensive tackle, didn’t have time to sign autographs. He was eager to meet his family and start celebrating the big win.

As he pushed politely but quickly through the crowd, a young woman, holding one child and with another at her side, approached Holloway and asked for an autograph.

Brian stopped, stared, did a double-take. He knew this woman. His jaw dropped.

“You’re the teacher-astronaut!” Holloway said.

It was Christa McAuliffe, the teacher who was to be shot into space a month later on the space shuttle Challenger. From her classroom orbiting the Earth, McAuliffe was to teach America.

Holloway was a big fan. He had followed Christa’s story in the newspapers and on TV.

Brian’s respect for teachers and education is profound. He’s a Stanford graduate and a future law student. His wife went to Harvard. His dad is a retired Air Force pilot who ran for Congress.

Holloway loves teachers. But this was a very special teacher. She would risk her life to teach. She represented about 1,000 ideals that Holloway holds dear. And she was standing there, smiling, asking for his autograph. He told her he wanted hers.

Holloway dropped his bag and dashed back through the locker room, into Coach Raymond Berry’s office. He grabbed a sheet of team stationary and rushed back outside. As he handed Christa the sheet of paper, his hands were trembling. He leaned forward on tippy toes, like a monstrous kid, and stared at her hands.

Christa McAuliffe wrote a message in large, bold script, each line slanting upward:

“To Brian-- Reach for the stars! I’ll be there!” They chatted briefly. Brian told Christa about his extreme fear of flying, and, like a gushy fan, told her it was an honor and pleasure to meet her.

The Patriots advanced to the Super Bowl, and lost. Then Holloway flew to Honolulu for the Pro Bowl, his third in a row.

In his hotel room, one year ago this morning, he woke up, turned on the TV, sat on the edge of his bed and watched the Challenger explode.

“I sat there and wept,” Holloway says. “I felt an incredible feeling of helplessness. I decided that some way, somehow, I was going to do something.”

Within a couple of days, he decided he would stage an auction--collect uniforms, helmets, autographed footballs, anything, and auction them off. He wasn’t sure how the money would be used, except to somehow honor the astronauts who had perished.

“I had no idea where I was going, but I was heading there fast” he says.

He soon found a direction. Contacted by relatives of the astronauts, Brian agreed to channel the funds to the Challenger Center for Space Science Eduction. It seemed a fitting tribute to Brian’s heroes.

“This group of people (the seven astronauts) felt so strongly and were willing to surmount odds, challenges, dangers, to bring greater awareness and emphasis to education of our nation’s youth,” Holloway says. “Their willingness to put it all on the line for those principles and ideals makes it easy for me to be totally obsessed, to pick up the torch that fell to the sea.

“I wanted to be one of the people to rescue and rekindle the flame, and invite America to join with me and with the NFL to complete the mission.”

During the season, Holloway’s every spare moment went into letters and phone calls, seeking items to auction. He became an autograph hound. He was in the stands at the Super Bowl, collecting the signatures of Joe DiMaggio, Neil Diamond and other stars.

The day after the game he stood outside a Phil Simms press conference and handed out press packets to the media, outlining the NFL Celebrity Auction.

One item likely to fetch a nice bid at the auction is Brian Holloway’s Super Bowl ring.

“The lessons I was taught, in courage and discipline and persistence and belief in America, are far, far greater than anything football has given me,” Holloway says, twisting the ring on his finger. “So I will auction off this championship ring. That is my gesture.”

That, and the fact that for seven months he’s been charging like a bull, collecting boxes and boxes of goodies, spreading the word, drumming up interest.

The campaign has spread from the NFL to the NBA and major league baseball. By next year, $50 million will have been raised, and soon thereafter, so will the Challenger Center.

“When the last brick is laid and the doors opened, then the Challenger mission will be complete,” Holloway says. “And it will be a success.”

Notice how Holloway speaks like a well-educated person?

He’s been influenced by some great teachers, including one he knew for only five minutes.