"Obviously a Major Malfunction"
- Jan 28, 2016
- 2 min read
Those were the words of Stephen Nesbitt at Mission Control 30 years ago.
I'm was driving to work today and on the news they say that today is the 30th anniversary of the space shuttle Challenger exploding. Instantly my mind flashes back to that time.
I was working at WXAN radio in Ava, IL. I had just recently moved to Southern Illinois and had taken the job there to learn the radio business. Of course it helped that Dad was the general manager there.
"Back in those days"....lol, I can't believe I just said that, we got our news in the radio world mostly two different ways....from a newspapar, or from the AP teleptype that most media outlets had somewhere in their building.
The AP printer in our office was a dot matrix printer with a box of continious feed paper that would sit on the floor under the printer. The printer also had a bell system that alert you to big news or breaking news stories. The AP printer would ring 12 times for major news.
I was in the studio working when "the wire" starting ringing bells. 1...2...3...4...5...6 I wondered to myself "I wonder whats' going on?" 7...8....9 "Wow! Something pretty big"! 10...11...12!
I got up from my chair and started making my way to the printer which was down the hall. Before I could get there, it rang twelve more times. I can remember saying outloud as I picked up my pace "I wonder if something happened with the shuttle?". Something had happened. I reached the printer and read what was typed on the paper.
At first I just couldn't believe what I was reading. I went in to the studio to announce the breaking news, then immediately made my way down the hall to where the other staff had turned on the TV to see what was going on.
The rest of the day was spent walking back and forth from the studio to the TV to the AP wire to the studio.
I just kept waiting for the the report to come back that they had found the astornauts on board and they were going to be fine. But, you knew that it wasn't going to happen.
I guess this was the first real national trajedy that I can recall. One that made me stop in my tracks and pay attention. That I couldn't walk away from watching on tv. The first that made me truly emotional at the loss of seven heroes.
President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation that evening.
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