25 Years Ago

This is the day the shuttle Challenger exploded during launch. It’s one of those events that you remember where you were and what you were doing with crystal clarity. I was in Las Vegas giving a talk to hundreds of people about the AMRAAM missile. It was my first visit to that city and my first Reliability Symposium. It was terrible news and since some of the attendees were from NASA—and this was a reliability oriented meeting—a special session was arranged for us to get as much detail as was available.

Besides the shuttle there are at least 3 other moments I recall exactly where I was when an event occurred. Two are the assassination of President Kennedy and the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald.

I heard about Kennedy as I was boarding the city bus to go home from high school that day. I remember hearing a black girl on the bus say that she was glad that “they finally got him”. That shocked me because I thought everybody loved Kennedy.

The Oswald shooting was broadcast live. The networks were covering the assassination story full time (this is well before 24-hour news stations) and I was parked in front of our black & white TV most of that Thanksgiving weekend. We usually didn’t eat in front of the TV but on this day I wanted to and my Mom said it was OK. I was sitting there with a big plate of spaghetti on one of our metal TV trays watching them march Oswald out the parking garage in the police station bringing him to a car to be transferred to another facility. All of a sudden there was a pop and Oswald folded over in pain. My first impression was that someone had jumped out and stomped on his foot or kicked him. That’s what it looked like to me. Then the commentator started shouting that Oswald has been shot.

There are other events that many people have strong memories about. One is when Princess Diana died, one the day OJ was found not guilty and the 3rd the day Michael Jackson died. I have no strong memory of where I was when these things happened. They just didn’t have an strong emotional content for me.

Of course, the 3rd for me is 9/11. I was again on the road for work driving down to Orlando. I was listening to an audio book oblivious of the day’s events until about 12:30. I got a call from Penny saying we were being recalled to base because of the attack. I’m thinking what attack? I missed all the agony of watching the towers fall in real time.