For former N.H. students, details of Challenger story still vivid
'All of a sudden we were the center of the universe, or so it seemed to us.'
It was the adventure of a lifetime for 9-year-old Sarah Carley and her third-grade classmates from Concord, N.H.: a weeklong trip to Florida to watch the launch of the space shuttle Challenger, which would roar into space with their own hometown hero, Concord teacher Christa McAuliffe, on board.
Anticipation of the trip had been building for months. The third-graders from Kimball Elementary School, including McAuliffe's son, Scott, had closely followed the teacher's astronaut training. They had studied the space program in their science classes. Now, the day of the launch -- Jan. 28, 1986 -- had finally arrived, bright and cold, after a series of postponements.
Sitting in bleachers near the launch site, waiting and watching the sky, the children wore matching track suits donated by an athletic wear company. Temperatures were in the 30s. After a whirlwind of excursions to Disney World and NASA headquarters -- plus the fun of shuffleboard games at their hotel -- they were ready for the culmination of their field trip.
Twenty years later, the details of that January morning are still sharp for the New Hampshire students who watched history explode into tragedy.
Carley, now Sarah Thompson, remembers the steady stream of control-room chatter broadcast at the launch site. And then, silence.
''It was cold, and we were sitting out in the bleachers for hours," recalled the 29-year-old, now a professional gardener in Maine. ''I remember the countdown clock, and the constant talk on the sound system -- and then the intercom went dead."
McAuliffe, 37, a Framingham native who taught social studies at Concord High School, had been chosen from among 11,500 applicants to join six other astronauts on the shuttle. Leaders of NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, hoped her participation would revive fading public interest in the space program.
In Concord, home to just 35,000, her selection was a phenomenon. Residents celebrated their space-bound teacher at parades, and marveled at the media spotlight trained on their sleepy city. Watching the shuttle lift off that day, Concord teachers and students felt deeply connected to the mission.
McAuliffe's ascent also promised her students a place in history. From the Challenger, she was to have taught the first lessons from space, and back in Concord, where schools had been equipped with television sets for the occasion, the young Granite Staters were eager to play their part.
''All of a sudden we were the center of the universe, or so it seemed to us," said Zach Fried, 29, who watched the launch as a third-grader, and is now a graduate student in environmental psychology at the University of Michigan.
The launch, first scheduled for Jan. 22, was postponed four times. When the day arrived, students at Concord High School watched on television sets in the auditorium, library, cafeteria and classrooms. In the auditorium, exuberant seniors wore party hats and popped party favors. Cheers rippled through the school when the shuttle finally lifted off, at 11:38 a.m.
The cheering continued for more than a minute. But the end of the dream for McAuliffe, and for Concord, was very near.
One minute and 13 seconds into the launch, the shuttle broke apart in a cloud of white vapor.
It was not immediately clear to many students what had happened, and cheering continued. ''Then one of the teachers belted out for everyone to be quiet," Trisha Carter, a senior at the time, wrote in an e-mail. ''I remember the complete turnaround of feelings, the horror, the not believing."
In the principal's office, where he was capturing the sounds of celebration on a tape recorder, senior Rick St. Hilaire felt a strange dislocation. Long fascinated with the space program, the 17-year-old had seen many shuttle launches. As he watched the rocket boosters tear away from the core of the shuttle, the senior knew something was wrong -- but for what seemed like hours, he said, the cheering around him continued.
''I remember thinking, that's not supposed to happen, but no one else recognized it, so it felt awkward," recalled St. Hilaire, now 37 and the chief prosecutor for Grafton County, N.H. ''Even now, I can feel those feelings, of seeing something no one else saw, and realizing it's not just a machine -- there are people inside, and someone you know."
In Florida, that instant of uncertainty was captured on the face of Ben Provencal, another third-grader from Concord. A photograph of the 8-year-old gazing anxiously at the sky, hands pulled into his sleeves, was published in Newsweek and became an enduring image of the tragedy.
The third-graders were quickly hustled away from reporters and onto a bus, where many cried on the way to the airport, Fried said.
In Concord, reporters and photographers were ordered out of the high school, and classes were dismissed. St. Hilaire arrived home to find reporters camped outside his house; he packed a bag and went to stay with a friend.
Students at the high school learned about what had happened by watching the television coverage, while the younger children discussed the event with their teachers and chaperones. For a few hours, students said, there was hope that the astronauts might have survived. By day's end, those hopes were gone.
For Carter, the senior who had watched the launch from the school auditorium, the grief of that day is compressed in one memory. Leaving school after the dismissal, she saw a teacher who was a close friend of McAuliffe's taking a moment to collect herself.
''I noticed her sitting alone on the side of the building, on a little piece of metal landing and stairs, in a daze. I didn't dare speak and felt guilty watching her," Carter, now 37 and a Florida real estate agent, recalled. ''The sadness in her body language frightened me. I think she was smoking a cigarette, something that was against the rules. It was the first time I realized how this would affect our school."
Many of those who were seniors in 1986 are now 37, the same age McAuliffe was when she died. But their teacher is still ''Mrs. McAuliffe" to them. ''I can't say 'Christa,' " St. Hilaire acknowledged. ''Time continues, but she's frozen in time."
Some former students say they have been affected in lasting ways by the tragedy.
Carter, a mother of three, said she is fiercely respectful of teachers because of McAuliffe's sacrifice.
Thompson, who had once imagined being an astronaut, ''never felt that way again" after the accident. Nor did she feel the same way about the US government. ''I remember feeling frustrated that something simple had gone wrong, and no one [from NASA] would say that," she said. ''The cover-up was not lost on me, and I consider it a formative experience in my abiding distrust of the government."
A presidential commission concluded that NASA's decision to launch the shuttle that day -- in the face of design problems and repeated warnings about safety -- was seriously flawed.
Matthew Mead, a Concord senior in 1986, said the tragic ending of McAuliffe's story did not make her passion less inspiring. The 37-year-old said McAuliffe's example may have made him more willing to take risks, such as starting his own company, which produces photo layouts for magazines, in Concord instead of in a major city.
''I feel, and maybe always felt, that you can make it happen, whatever you want out of life," he said. ''Regardless of whether Christa McAuliffe was able to teach those lessons from the shuttle, the greater lesson was, here's your local teacher, going into space. I got that lesson loud and clear."
Phil Browne, 57, a science teacher at Concord High School since 1987, was one of the other state finalists for the teacher in space competition.
His daughter was born Jan. 22, 1986, and if he had been chosen to fly, he would not have lived to know her -- a realization that flooded him with emotion 20 years ago, and overpowers him again every January.
''I live it every year," he said.
Jenna Russell can be reached at jrussell@globe.com. 