Rebuilding Rob

38 years ago today I was in the sixth grade. I came home for lunch that day, just as I had most of the days during the school year. After all, my home was less than two blocks from my school.

Those really no particular reason why I chose to come home for lunch. I ate the same things at home that I would’ve eaten if I had packed my lunch in a brown paper bag. If anything, coming home for lunch, give me an opportunity to recalibrate for a few minutes and sometimes catch a little bit of The Price is Right

But this particular day was going to be special. The night before, Hulk Hogan, then the world champion who seldom appeared on televised events, was wrestling Brutus Beefcake on WWF primetime wrestling. I was able to watch this match that day; thanks to a new appliance our family had gotten the prior Christmas called a Video Cassette Recorder.

The match itself was nothing memorable. It was vintage 1980s Hulk Hogan. following the typical Hogan script, the white meat, baby face got beat up by the heel until he “Hulked up“ before a various crowd. The finish of the match was very much by the numbers: punch, punch, big boot, leg, drop, pin. But this was a rare treat in the days before monthly pay-per-view events and the Monday night wars. Televised Hulk Hogan matches were a few and far between; so I was excited.

I remember the match ending and assuming that I would catch the last few minutes of the prices right before I went back to school. To my surprise, Dan Rather was on with breaking news. The space shuttle challenger had exploded.

I was much more interested in the space shuttle program a few years prior; at the time, when NASA was hyping, the holy hell out of it, trying to win public support.

In fact, when I heard the news of the explosion, I was like “oh yeah, isn’t this the one that the teacher was going up in?” And it was. My mom, dad, and I watched the news for the next hour. The story unfolded as facts trickled came in, in the way that has become all too common in the age of the 24 hour news cycle. By the time I had gotten back to school, everybody had already known what had happened.

This was obviously a national tragedy. I’m sure most people of my generation remember exactly where they were about the challenger explosion, as I do. But I also remember thinking that this was going to be THE great tragedy that defined my generation. I remember thinking that this would be to my generation with the Kennedy assassination was for my parents and their contemporaries.

Then 9/11 happened.

Then Trump.

And Covid.

I don’t mean to sound like a typical middle-age person, but sometimes I think the world really is getting more dangerous, more intense; more harrowing.

Months after the Challenger disaster, I remember thumbing through my brothers high school yearbook. I believe he was a sophomore at that point. As part of that year theme, there were various poll questions scattered throughout the book. Students would be asked things like “what is the worst prank that you would pull on a senior?”

In one poll, teachers were asked “In light of the recent Challenger disaster, would you, as a teacher, still want to travel into space, if given the opportunity?” There were only three or four answers that were listed. Most of them said things like “I would have before, but now I don’t think so”. There was one teacher who was in the minority opinion. She said, and forgive me as the exact quote escapes me:

"The search for knowledge is a dangerous business. While the Challenger explosion was a great tragedy, the search for knowledge must continue. Most definitely, I would still go into space."

As a supporter of manned space exploration and as an educator, this quote resonates with me to this very day. Had the Challenger explosion never happened, I can only wonder how far of the space program would have progressed. I have to believe that we would have landed human beings on Mars by now.

If you have the opportunity, check out the documentary Challenger, currently on Netflix. It is eye-opening, to say the least. For members of my generation, it is pretty heavy.

Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier related posts:

• Rob Reviews: Tron Ares (2025)
• Sunday is borrowed time
• Teacher Armor and the Saturday Clearing
• The Extra Day: A Ten-Year Memory
• Of Training Wheels and Christmas Lights

The article “Rob Remembers…The Challenger Explosion“ originally appeared on Rebuilding Rob