I was sitting at my desk at Marvel comics. In those days I was Marvel’s direct sales manager. My phone rang and I answered it.
It was Myra, my then-wife. She was audibly sobbing. Naturally I thought something had happened to Shana. “What’s wrong?”
“The Challenger blew up,” she said, her voice choking. She’d been watching it on TV and had actually seen it blown out of the sky.
I was stunned. So much had been made about the Challenger, including Christa McAuliffe as the first civilian to take part in the space program. And now they were gone? Just like that? I could barely believe it.
Some years later Bill Mumy and I made our own small tribute to her by naming our spaceship “The Christa” in our TV series SPACE CASES. I’ve no idea whether her family was ever aware of it, but I’d like to think they would have appreciated the shout out.
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