THE CHALLENGER

As the adjutant of my army Air Corps post during the war, I'd had the responsibility to call the parents of combat cameramen who had been killed in action and tell their sons wouldn't be returning from the war. I learned then that there is not much you can say to comfort people in such a situation, but you have to try. All I could do was tell them how much they had to be proud of, and that we had to believe God's promise that one day we will all be united with our loved ones. As president, I frequently had to speak to the families of men and women who had died in the service of their country. Because of what I'd done during the war, it wasn't a new experience; but it was not one I ever got used to, and this responsibility, this weight on my shoulders, felt like a ton of iron. On a tragic day in January 1986, after my usual staff meetings, I began the morning with a conference with congressional leaders from both parties at which I had a few words with Tip O'Neill over my continuing (and still frustrated) efforts to cut federal spending. Then Alaska Senator Frank Murkowski brought in a family of his constituents he wanted me to meet. Next came a briefing from Larry Speakes, the acting press secretary. I was scheduled to have a lunch a few minutes later with the television network anchors prior to the State of the Union address that night. We were in the midst of the briefing when several members of the staff rushed in to tell me the news of the Challenger space shuttle had exploded after takeoff a few moments earlier.

We all headed for a television set and, like millions of other Americans that heartbreaking day, we watched the film of the explosion played and replayed again. One of the astronauts on that flight, Christa McAuliffe, had come to the White House with other teachers who had wanted to go into space, and I'd announced that she had won the chance. For some reason, this - this added proximity to the tragedy - made it seem even closer and sadder to me. After postponing the State of the Union speech, I made a five-minute address to the nation expressing our collective grief over the tragedy. I said we would not be deterred but continue to reach out to the heavens: "Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journey continue." The rest of the day, I had to go on with the balance of my schedule. It became one of the hardest days I ever had to spend in the Oval Office.

The following day, I telephoned the families of the seven astronauts and tried to say things that might give them comfort. Every one of them asked me to do what I could to ensure that the space program continued; they all said that that was what their loved ones would have wanted. Three days later, as Washington was carpeted with fresh snow, Nancy and I took off from Andrews Air Force Base on a sad journey to the Johnson Spacecraft Center in Houston and a memorial service for the astronauts. It was a very difficult time for everyone, but especially for the families of the astronauts. Nancy and I sat between the wife of Francis Scobee, commander of the Challenger's crew, and the wife of crewmember Michael Smith. I found it difficult to say anything. All we could do was hug the families and try to hold back our tears.

The Challenger disaster was a catastrophe that bestowed pain and grief on all Americans. But after a lengthy and thorough investigation pinpointed the cause of the explosion, we picked up the space program, the space shuttle flew again, and we launched a new program aimed at establishing a permanent station in space. In time, I'm sure this project will advance not only our knowledge of the universe but the state of American technology as well, and it will ultimately produce an economic payoff, as yet unforeseen, on earth. Now more than ever, I'm convinced that the seven who died aboard the Challenger would want us to continue the space program. At the memorial service, Mrs. Smith handed me a card on which her husband had written a few words by H. G. Wells which he had intended to read from space. They expressed better than I could why the seven astronauts of the Challenger had lifted off into a blue sky on the morning of January 28, 1986:

For man, there is no rest and no ending. He must go on - Conquest beyond Conquest. This little planet and its winds and ways, and all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him, and, at last out across the immensity to the stars. And when he has conquered all the depths of space and all the mysteries of time - still he will be but beginning.

Courtesy of Simon and Schuster