Evening in America: 31 Years After the Challenger Explosion
January 28, 1986. We were out of school that day for snow. My best friend, Donna, and I were riding sleds off the strip mine across the road from my house. My mother came out onto the porch and hollered, telling us to come in "right now". She didn't say why but her words telegraphed over the frozen air to us that something bad had happened. I had not wanted to miss school that day because we were scheduled to watch the launch. There had been a special station set up for schools to watch via NASA and it was always exciting when the massive television was wheeled into our classroom on its metal stand. This was a time when children were very interested in the space program and the space shuttles had made us even more interested. There were action figures and model kits and toys dedicated to the space missions. We learned all about the astronauts in class. We were the children of the Cold War, still three years from the fall of the Berlin Wall, and ther