Christa McAuliffe
| Christa McAuliffe | |
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| Spaceflight Participant[1] | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 2, 1948 |
| Died | January 28, 1986 (aged 37) |
| Other occupation | Teacher |
| Selection | Teacher in Space Project |
| Missions | STS-51-L |
| Mission insignia |  |
Sharon Christa Corrigan McAuliffe (September 2, 1948 – January 28, 1986) was an American teacher from Concord, New Hampshire, who was selected from among more than 11,000 applicants to participate in the NASA Teacher in Space Project. She was one of seven crew members killed in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
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Early life
Born Sharon Christa Corrigan on September 2, 1948 in Boston, Massachusetts, McAuliffe was the oldest of five children of Edward and Grace George Corrigan. Her father, Edward Corrigan, was Irish, and her mother, born Grace George, is of part Maronite Lebanese origin through her father (Christa's grandfather) and is a niece of historian Philip Hitti.[2][3] The year Christa was born, her father was completing his sophomore year at Boston College. Not long there after, he took a job as an assistant comptroller in a Boston department store and the family moved to Framingham, Massachusetts, where she attended and graduated from Marian High School in 1966. As a youth, she was inspired by the Apollo moon landing program, and wrote years later on her NASA application form that "I watched the Space Age being born, and I would like to participate!"
Career as an educator
McAuliffe attended Framingham State College in her hometown, graduating in 1970. A few weeks later, she married her longstanding boyfriend, Steven J. McAuliffe, and they moved to the Washington, DC metropolitan area so Steven could attend the Georgetown University Law Center. They had two children: Scott and Caroline, who were nine and six respectively when she died.
McAuliffe took a job teaching in the secondary schools, specializing in American history, social studies, law, economics, and a self-designed course: "The American Woman". They stayed in the Washington area for the next eight years; she was teaching and completing a Master of Arts from Bowie State University in Maryland. They moved to Concord, New Hampshire in 1978, when Steven accepted a job as an assistant to the state attorney general. Christa took a teaching post at Concord High School in 1982. She was a Social Studies teacher and taught several courses including "American Culture", "Economics", "American Foreign Policy", and Women's Studies". A large part of her teaching techniques were field trips or bringing in speakers. In 1984, she learned about NASA's efforts to locate an educator to fly on the Space Shuttle. NASA wanted a teacher, or an ordinary person who would spark the interests of the Americans further into the studies of space. The intent was to find a gifted teacher who could communicate with students while in orbit.
Teacher in Space Project
NASA selected McAuliffe for this position on July 19, 1985 (another teacher, Barbara Morgan, served as her backup). In the autumn of that year, both she and Morgan took a year-long leave of absence from teaching (NASA paid their salaries) to train for an early 1986 space shuttle mission. While not a member of the NASA Astronaut Corps, she would be part of the STS-51-L crew and would teach lessons from space. After being chosen to be the first teacher in space, McAuliffe was interviewed by many TV personalities, including the likes of Larry King, Johnny Carson, David Letterman, and Regis Philbin. She had an immediate rapport with the media, and the Teacher in Space Project received tremendously popular attention as a result. It is in part because of the excitement over McAuliffe's presence on Challenger that the accident had such a significant effect on the nation.
Barbara Morgan became a professional astronaut in January 1998, 12 years after McAuliffe's death. Morgan flew on the space shuttle mission STS-118 aboard Endeavour (the orbiter that replaced Challenger) to the International Space Station on August 8 2007, 21 years after the Challenger disaster.
Legacy
She was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.[4]
After her death, she was honored at many events, including sports events such as the Daytona 500. The Christa McAuliffe Planetarium in Concord, New Hampshire and the Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center in Pleasant Grove, Utah are named in her memory, as are asteroid 3352 McAuliffe and the McAuliffe crater on the Moon. At least 35 schools have been named after her, including Christa McAuliffe Elementary School in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, Christa McAuliffe Middle School in Boynton Beach, Florida, McAuliffe Elementary in Palm Bay, FL (located in Brevard County, where the shuttle is launched), McAuliffe Elementary in Sammamish, Washington, and McAuliffe Elementary in McAllen, TX. A residence hall located on the campus of her Alma Mater, Bowie State University, is named after McAuliffe: The Christa McAuliffe Residential Complex. Also, part of the seventh grade at Annie Sullivan Middle School in Franklin, Massachusetts is named after Christa McAuliffe. Christa McAuliffe Street in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina is also named in her honor. Located nearby in Myrtle Beach are Dick Scobee Road and Ronald McNair Boulevard. A portion of U.S. Route 460 passing through Roanoke County, Virginia was renamed Challenger Avenue in honor of the seven fallen crew members. Christa McAuliffe Intermediate School 187 is a school for the gifted in Brooklyn, NY.
McAuliffe was portrayed by Karen Allen in the 1990 TV movie Challenger. A documentary film about McAuliffe and Morgan, produced by Renee Sotile & Mary Jo Godges aired on CNN in January 2006, called Christa McAuliffe: Reach for the Stars.[5] It commemorated the 20th anniversary of her death. The 75 minute feature version narrated by Susan Sarandon with songs by Carly Simon.
The Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference has been held every year in Nashua, New Hampshire since 1986. The conference is devoted to educational technology, with a broad vendor presence and presenters both from technology companies and from regional schools, with an emphasis on curricular technology use and classroom management techniques.[6]
Twenty years after the Challenger accident, Christa's son Scott is a multimedia specialist. He married in 2004. Meanwhile, her daughter, Caroline, grew up to pursue the same career that her mother had pursued: teaching. Steve remarried and became a federal judge in 1992. He serves with the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire in Concord. Christa's mother Grace, is still talking to school children about McAuliffe.
In the And Now A Word From Us Kids section in the PBS Kids TV series Arthur episode Locked In The Library, the kids in this section sing a song about heroes and heroines. They mention her along with "she went into space". She did not actually go into space due to the Challenger disaster.
The McAuliffe star system in the Wing Commander computer game series is named for her. The spaceship on the children's science-fiction series Space Cases, about a group of students lost in space, was called the "Christa". She is mentioned in the Dan Brown book Deception Point. There were many cartoons that honored McAuliffe. One such tribute is when cartoon characters, such as the Animaniacs, put up a statue of McAuliffe on display.
Many states honor teachers in Christa McAuliffe's name. Beginning one year after the explosion, the Nebraska McAuliffe Prize has honored a Nebraska teacher for courage and excellence in education. Winners receive a $1000 cash prize and a plaque featuring Christa McAuliffe's picture and a picture of a mural by Jeanne Reynal entitled, "The Blizzard of '88". This mural hangs in the north wing of the Nebraska state capitol building and depicts another courageous Nebraska teacher, Minnie Freeman, who led her students to safety during the "Schoolhouse Blizzard" of 1888.
Her grave is located in Blossum Hill Cemetary in Concord, NH
Quotes
- I cannot join the space program and restart my life as an astronaut, but this opportunity to connect my abilities as an educator with my interests in history and space is a unique opportunity to fulfill my early fantasies.
- I touch the future. I teach.
- No teacher has ever been better prepared to teach a lesson. So says I.
- Reach for it. Push yourself as far as you can. And never give up, never.
- What are we doing here? We're reaching for the stars.
- May your future be limited only by your dreams.
References
External links
- Christa McAuliffe at Find A Grave