Came home from school for lunch. The TV was on. I was transfixed and in shock. Spent part of the afternoon discussing the tragedy in the classroom.

Fast-forward to September 2001 and again it was on a TV screen that I witnessed one of the world's most notorious tragedies when the Twin Towers collapsed. At first I figured it was a clip from a new movie. As it became clear it was real life, it was almost too overwhelming to believe.

These are moments that stay with you. Too young to have been alive when JFK was shot, but the two aforementioned events are my equivalent.

JFK came to Houston the day before he was killed. I was in first grade and my dad worked downtown at one of the big oil companies. My mother kept me out of school to meet up with my dad and watch the motorcade. It was a beautiful cool, sunny day. All I remember is that his limo when by pretty fast and my mother pointed him out. His hair looked red in the sunshine.

When the Challenger exploded, I was a 6th grade science teacher. Shuttle launches had become routine and my class wasn't watching. Some others were though and my students in my following class told me. I held it together at school, but when I was watching the news that evening and they started talking about Christa McAuliffe, the teacher, I just lost it. It was also my 29th birthday.

9/11, I had just turned on the Today show and they had moved the set around so that you could see the first tower burning in the background. At the time, they were saying it was a terrible accident. Then the second plane flew very close, looped back, and crashed into the South Tower. That's when everyone realized it was no accident.

I remember it like is was yesterday

Apollo 1 fire:





I was in the fourth grade, was in school at the time, but didn't hear about it until I got to my grandparents' house, where I went after school. They told me about it, and let me watch the evening news about it. I can still remember Walter Cronkite reporting it as only Walter Cronkite could. I was shocked! Never imagined anything like that could ever happen!

Wednesday will be fourteen years since the Columbia disaster. What a horrible stretch of time this is for us!

I remember all of the NASA losses. Astronauts are brave driven and slightly crazed(last is suspected not proven).
Course, given that we a nation of immigrants {except for natine Americans} most of our ancestors got here on a boat, they are just taking the next logical step.

The teacher took a break from math and got a TV up in the room so we could watch the launch live. It was an incredible shock and the teacher was at a loss for words.