Remembering Challenger Thirty Years On

The Space Shuttle Challenger at the 2005 Huntsville sesquicentennial, with the fireworks in the background, is a revenant of the 1986 disaster.

I took this photo at the Huntsville Sesquicentennial celebration back in 2005. It certainly does seem to be an appropriate revenant, with all the fireworks in the background, symbolizing the Challenger disaster 30 years ago today. (I think I used that term, revenant, correctly.)

Folks like to talk about where they were “when it happened” and I remember well. I was standing outside of a retail store, on a sidewalk in the cold air looking at snow and ice on the ground, when an acquaintance walked up and told me about it.

It’s such a shame that the lives of good people should be needlessly taken like that.