Ed Wood "The Right Stuff" Published Feb. 5, 2003

Will you remember?

We now have another infamous day to add to that list of where we were when it happened -- Saturday, Feb. 1, 2003. I first saw the news on the Internet, and then rushed to watch the tragedy unfold on TV. Again and again, I watched the fragmented vapor trails splitting the clear blue Texas sky. Wondering what the final few minutes of the crew were like. Wondering if an instant break-up was more humane than an advance warning of impending disaster. Traveling nearly 40 miles above the Earth, 12,500 miles per hour, exterior skin temperature of 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, the slightest glitch in anything, and not much of a chance.

Had they known, what would the crew have been thinking? Thinking of family? Thinking of the ones they loved? Thinking of the lost opportunities to tell them so? Thinking of where they would spend eternity? This time, probably no time, for any of those things.

My first thoughts took me back some 17 years earlier, to Jan. 28, 1986. As circumstance would have it, I was on a flight from Boston, on final descent into Tampa. The captain came over the intercom, advising those who could to look out the left-side windows for a possible opportunity to witness the launch of the space shuttle Challenger. I would swear the Delta 727 tilted to the left as all of us crowded to peek out the row of little windows. Finally, there it was!

A beautiful column of white condensate, growing ever taller and more mighty as we watched. The Challenger crew must have been thinking, as did John Gillespie Magee Jr. when he wrote:
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of.
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

And then it happened. We watched as the magnificent column of energy burst into the now familiar fragmented plumes, arching upward and outward, and then spiraling silently back to the Earth from which it had come only seconds before. And it was over. All over.

An initial gasp of disbelief from the passengers as our brains tried to absorb what we had just seen. We returned to our seats in stunned silence. No one said a word.

Seat backs up, tray tables locked securely in place, we landed. The terminal was an eerie place. Little knots of people huddled around the few television sets available. No one rushing. No one talking. Something more important had overshadowed our personal cares of the day.

We got our bags and headed outside for ground transportation. The white plumes were still in the sky. Mute evidence of the reality we had just witnessed.

Then, like today, we wondered about the last few moments in the lives of those on board the Challenger. We now know that about two minutes of oxygen was used from several emergency oxygen tanks. So they must have known. At least for a few minutes.

We grieved then for the families who so proudly gathered to applaud their personal heroes into the uncharted vastness of outer space. We grieve today for the families who were gathered at the same spot, vainly searching the Florida skies for the first glimpse of their personal heroes. To welcome home the space shuttle Columbia. A routine exercise we have all witnessed dozens of times. But this time, for the first time, it was not routine. It was tragic.

So I will go out now and lower my flag to half-mast. A tribute to those I did not know, who gave their lives for those they did not know. I will pray for their families. I will pray for our country. And for our president. And I will prepare myself, spiritually and emotionally, so that if my time should so abruptly come, there will be none left behind doubting my love for them.

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Ed Wood is a resident of Sparta, TN. His column is published each Wednesday in the Crossville Chronicle.