Twenty-One Years Later
Yesterday was the twenty-one year anniversary of the Challenger Explosion. I was in first grade at the time. When I try to remember the events of that day, I picture my class in the library, ready to take part in a lesson from space. Then we all watched in shock and awe and horror.
This almost certainly never happened.
Had my memory been correct, I’m sure I’d recall how our frantic teachers reacted. I’d probably be haunted to this day. Our relationship with Lakeview Elementary School librarian Babs Danilack would have been forever changed. None of these things occurred.
The only time I remember watching breaking news in the classroom came nine years later, the day we learned Orenthal James Simpson was not guilty. I know I’m not making this up, because it happened in Mass Communications class, and the teacher filmed us watching The Juice go loose. The footage is in the 1996 Morris Knolls Eagle’s Eye video yearbook (in case you don’t believe me).
So if any Lakeview alums out there have more accurate accounts of what we did January 28, 1986, enlighten us.
Adam Said,
January 31, 2007 @ 5:30 pm
While I can’t fill in the blanks as to what went down at Lakeview, those of us in Fairfield, Connecticut had a snow day. So we were spared school-wide mental-scarring.
Katarina Said,
March 20, 2007 @ 12:08 pm
I went to Lakeview in I think 88/89 and 89/90. I think. So that was after the explosion.
When the Challenger exploded, I was in James Mowatt elementary school in Alberta, and I remember us all piling into the library to see it, and we had a lot of conversations with our teachers about it. I remember feeling sick to my stomach. I also remember it being the topic of conversation in the school yard for months, as they recovered bits and pieces of the shuttle and the astronauts. We would horrify each other by telling about someone finding a socked foot in the water. After it happened and we watched it at school, we watched it at home a lot too. It was everywhere. And I also believe we held an assembly for the deceased. There was a lot of fuss in our school.
When the OJ verdict was read, I was having coffee in the student area of Concordia College in Edmonton, and the whole atrium area fell silent as we waited to hear it. Usually the TV up in the corner wasn’t turned up so you could hear it. This time it was, and there were about 200 students listening. When the verdict was read there was a sudden break in the weird silence as everone reacted in their own ways to the verdit.
By the way, I remember Babs Danilack. I was a library assistant!
jasonenglish1 Said,
March 20, 2007 @ 12:41 pm
Great stories, Katarina! We welcome all former Lakeview Lions here at jasonenglish1.com. Especially former library assistants.
I think I did that, too. I remember being somehow involved in the check-out of books.
Are you still in Edmonton? I’m going to grab lunch with a co-worker who moved to NY from Edmonton last year. How does it compare to Denville?