Space shuttle Challenger explosion: Looking back at tragedy that claimed Akron's Judith Resnik

Editor's note: This essay was originally published on January 28, 2006, on the 20th anniversary of the space shuttle Challenger disaster.

Twenty years ago this week, people born after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy witnessed their first "I remember where I was" moment.

Challenger disaster: Photos provide look back at space shuttle explosion that shook Akron and the world

I don't know exactly how the space shuttle Challenger disaster found that niche, but it's true. If you ask someone born in the 1960s or '70s what they were doing when they heard about the Challenger, they will be able to tell you in precise detail.

That's even more likely to be true in Akron, the hometown of astronaut Judith Resnik, whose death made the event all the more personal.

It was a cultural moment that happens once in a generation. Until Jan. 28, 1986, nothing bad had happened to us. We were becoming adults, and it seemed like we were going to escape, youthful innocence intact.

Challenger disaster: Akron astronaut Judith Resnik remembered as brilliant, strong-willed

In fact, it seems almost like a literary device that my dominant memory of that day is the brilliant blue sky above me as I walked from a morning class to my car at a University of Akron parking lot. Nothing but blue skies, until I turned on the Sparkomatic radio jury-rigged under my dashboard. The news was coming at me live, and I remember thinking I had to get home as soon as possible so I could watch it, over and over and over.

I don't think of the Challenger disaster as a single image, the way we think of other historical events in terms of single images (Lee Harvey Oswald mid-grimace; the V-J Day sailor and nurse in perpetual embrace; Pee-Wee Herman's greasy mug shot).

Instead, I think of the Challenger as a continuous video loop. It's burned into my memory by virtue of repetition. It never holds still.

The Beacon Journal's coverage that week included an article specifically about television's treatment of the disaster. (A thousand soap opera fans called ABC to complain about their shows being pre-empted.)

More: Teachers who sought to fly in space look back at Challenger disaster

That "coverage of the coverage" was a new phenomenon but hardly restricted to the Challenger. The assassination attempt on President Reagan a few years before played on constant repeat, and Tiananmen Square a couple of years later got the full info-tainment ride.

But there was something more with the Challenger. It said something about us. As children, we had seen a man walk on the moon. What had been a primal myth for all previous generations of humanity was presented to us on the same gently curved screen as Ernie and Bert.

Space travel seemed like our birthright. We drank Tang from Apollo commemorative glasses and ate Space Food Sticks and rolled our eyes at the quaint reruns of Buck Rogers and his fictional 21st century. Fiction? We were killing time on the Atari until the real 21st century arrived.

And there was a real person on board. For most of America, that real person was Christa McAuliffe, a teacher, a civilian, living the Everyman dream. For those of us in Akron, that real person was Resnik, who went to our schools, whose father was one of our doctors, whose footprints mingled with our own.

Space travel still seemed like magic, but the degrees of separation were growing fewer.

Then a flash of fire brought the illusion crashing down.

The reality of that moment was hammered into our brains by the endless

replay.

How many times did I see that explosion? More than I can count. And I kept

watching.

In fact, I realize now, after reading 20-year-old accounts of that day, that my strongest memory is itself an illusion, born of that repetition.

The Akron sky was not blue on Jan. 28, 1986. It was cloudy. My blue sky comes from the video, from watching that arc rising across the cerulean Florida sky, then exploding into a billowing gash.

The experience trained us for Sept. 11, 2001, when another blue sky exploded, triggering instant, endless replays.

No distance or time for reflection. We'd learned to swallow history whole.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Space shuttle Challenger explosion: Tragedy that hit home for Akron