Nows and Forevers

Every Jan. 28, I pause to remember the seven men and women who died in the 1986 Challenger explosion. They were extraordinary, by any measure. They were heroes – not just by being aboard the shuttle. Judy Resnick and Ellison Onizuka switched on the emergency air for the pilots in the flight deck after the explosion. That could not be done by the pilots. Most of the crew if not all were alive for three minutes afterward til the flight deck hit the water, something NASA took years to admit. The crews’ oxygen tanks were not only open but mostly depleted, something that can only be done by breathing.

I bring that up as a prologue to this remembrance of Onizuka by the late CDB Bryan, was published in The New York Times a few weeks later. Bryan knew Oniziuka, and he and his stepson attended the launch 37 years ago as the astronaut’s guest. I have kept this piece, from the Times magazine, all these years because it inspires me in something that I have been called to do, writing remembrances of people who have passed.

Everything I have read about Onizuka and Resnick and Christa McAuliffe and Ron McNair, and the entire crew, compounds the profound sense of loss. They were bound for even greater things after their flight.