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Challenger explosion, 25 years later: Punky Brewster helped us deal
Twenty-five years ago, the space shuttle Challenger explosion rocked America's children. As a country, we're infatuated by space travel anyway, but this mission has a special reason for having held the attention of our nation's young folk.
Aside from the seven crewmembers on that mission, it was to transport Christa McAuliffe, a teacher from Concorde, New Hampshire who was selected from 11,000 applicants to be the first schoolteacher in space.
As a result, America's teachers felt a great sense of pride and on Jan. 28, 1986, schools across the nation wheeled their TVs on shaky stands into their classrooms or auditoriums for the big launch. Who could have known that 73 seconds after the launch, the space shuttle would explode? And, because of McAuliffe's participation, an unprecedented amount of America's children witnessed the horrible sight.
We're TV fanatics at Zap2it, after all, and our memories quickly went back to our favorite mismatched misfit, Punky Brewster (played by a 10-year-old Soleil Moone Frye), who helped express our pain in the episode, "Accidents Happen."
In the 80s NBC series, Punky wanted to be an astronaut when she grew up and then she witnessed the Challenger explosion. And for a nation full of children who had way too many questions after watching it all go down, Punky helped us process.
Watch a clip below:
How do you remember the Challenger explosion?
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Photo/Video credit: NBC
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I was 11 the day Challenger exploded. In a sixth grade classroom of a two story school, directly above the first grade and kindergarten classrooms who were permitted to watch the launch. Our school administrators felt going to space had become a routine event and so instead of watching each launch as we had done only 2 years prior, the kindergarten and first graders watched. Our teacher was a huge fan of the space program and interrupted her lecture to remind us the shuttle should be launching at the appointed time. Within a few seconds we heard cheers and clapping from beneath us, then screams and crying. The lecture continued until another teacher came into the room and whispered in our teacher's ear. Her head fell into her hands. She looked back at the other teacher and nodded, swallowing hard. Then slowly told us what happened. We sat there quietly listening to the children beneath our room crying for about a half an hour. We talked about it or tried to, but mostly just sat quietly. Our principle dismissed us early allowing us to go home to our families. Most of us went back to empty homes to watch CNN. It's not an exaggeration to say Punky helped. I think that episode aired 6 wks later, when adults stop talking about, or think the kids have moved forward. We hadn't. Punky crept into show and share, science crept into our essays, we kept talking, and our teachers let us. Not unlike the West Wing post 9/11 storytelling aberration, Punky offered kids and their grown-ups an indirect way to talk about it. The show was never shakespeare, but they knew what to do with the opportunity, and I'm still grateful.