The mid-1980s may feel distant to today’s Northwestern students. But to me, a 22-year-old senior at the Medill School of Journalism — nearly 40 years ago, today — that time is forever etched in memory.
It was Jan. 28, 1986, and I was looking forward to an afternoon of writing and socializing at The Daily Northwestern. Located then in a sprawling office at Norris University Center, The Daily overlooked Lake Michigan’s seemingly endless blue water through panoramic wall-to-wall windows.
I arrived and immediately knew something was amiss. The usual scene was one of staffers on the phone or hunched over manual typewriters and early desktop computers with green screens. But that day, everyone huddled in the center of the room, eyes fixed on a TV that had been wheeled in.
A fellow writer noticed my puzzled expression and gestured to the TV, which displayed a rocket climbing into a bright winter sky, white exhaust plumes streaming behind it. “It’s the Space Shuttle Challenger, Bob,” he said. “It blew up.”
The shuttle? Exploded? For a generation that few major news events had personally touched, this was something most of us couldn’t process. I knew I couldn’t.
Our parents had lived through World War II or the Vietnam War or both, as well as the assassinations of the ’60s. They were accustomed to a perpetual stream of events that shocked and appalled them and tested their faith. At the same time, they saw economic inequality and racial unfairness at home. Some became outraged and sought to transform society through protests.
We who came later, the NU students of the mid-’80s, were mostly part of Generation X. Unlike those before us, who had lived through wars, assassinations and upheaval, we of Gen X were more focused on personal growth, career planning, leisure, individuality, self-reliance, fitness and material success. These were ideals, of a kind, but they were highly personal ones. In many ways, we were the first generation to be less engaged with the broad social struggles around us and less aware of global affairs.
We were the masters of distraction, immersed in entertainment options. Nintendo and Atari games. The Commodore 64 home computer. An endless parade of blockbuster movies, which were as close as the neighborhood theater or video rental store. And a smash-hit cable sensation named MTV, which promised to occupy us endlessly with the sights and sounds of Michael Jackson, Madonna and Cyndi Lauper.
But on this day at The Daily, diversion was nowhere to be found. Nobody could tear themselves from the uninterrupted news coverage. We were struggling with unprecedented events that we couldn’t change, yet were unable to accept. Seven astronauts, strong and confident one instant and gone the next, nine miles high on a crisp, clear day. Families left weeping and alone at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, traumatized and with no answers. The world had gone mad.
To make matters even harder to stomach, among the dead was Christa McAuliffe, the 37-year-old schoolteacher from New Hampshire who was to be NASA’s first “Teacher In Space,” and who was planning to conduct lessons from the Challenger. Millions of youngsters watched the explosion, live on TV, from their classrooms. These children were now going through confusion and anxiety due to the incident, and in some cases would suffer lasting emotional effects.
When I was a child, space travel had been a source of delight. I built Apollo rockets out of Revell model kits, gluing dozens of pieces together and applying decals with pride. I wore spacesuits on Halloween. The first item I took out of my school library, in first grade, was a picture book titled “ABC’s of Space” by Issac Asimov. Even as late as college, I purchased vanity license plates for my car that read “BEAM UP” to catch the attention of Star Trek fans like me.
My boyhood fixation on space occurred to me as we at The Daily watched the broadcast networks replay the tapes of the steadily ascending rocket, the families watching the launch with eventual horror and the accident itself — the tremendous blast catching everyone by surprise, expelling thick white smoke in all directions and sending vast amounts of debris into the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast.
The audio from the TV competed with noise from The Daily’s teletype machine in the corner, constantly churning out pages with wire service news. It clattered unceasingly and its bell rang out commensurate with the importance of the story. The bulletin for the Challenger disaster was no doubt labeled “FLASH,” meaning the event had “transcendent” urgency. A flash was sent with 12 bells.
After leaving briefly to conduct a scheduled interview for a Medill class in downtown Chicago, I boarded a CTA train to return home. I noted the preponderance of passengers who seemed lost in thought, even troubled. The news of the Challenger, so unthinkable and unreal, had unexpectedly invaded our personal space earlier that day. Our train was moving as usual, but psychologically we were all stuck in that critical moment.
I returned to The Daily that evening, close to the deadline and persuaded editors to let me write a column for the next day. I knew that I’d witnessed history, not only in the reports on TV but in the sad and stunned faces of those riding the train with me. I saw those faces as a reflection of the grief the whole country must have been feeling. This was my chance to capture the mood for posterity and myself.
In the column, I noted that nearly all of the 40 or so people riding with me in my train car through the Loop had probably watched the shuttle explode on the news at work that afternoon multiple times. I recalled their silence, which seemed paradoxically loud, and I surmised how strange my fellow passengers must have felt to abruptly encounter such a violent tragedy on TV.
The airwaves of 1986 were dominated by comedies crafted to make life seem like a never-ending stream of one-liners. The top-ranked programs included “The Cosby Show,” “Cheers” and “Family Ties.” That afternoon’s bizarre, unrelentingly grim news reports must have seemed like transmissions emanating from another world entirely.
“Television,” I wrote, “a keeper of dreams that had guided them all their lives around the world’s realness, had betrayed their trust and shown them their own nightmares. A glimpse of chaos, of a baffling arbitrariness that they now saw clearly and would try to work out, by themselves.”
After finishing, I walked to Alice Millar Chapel, where an evening memorial for the astronauts had been organized. It was crowded inside. Students were sitting quietly, listening to anyone who asked to come to the pulpit to speak. Many came up, though some found they were too choked up to express themselves. Several in the audience were crying. Friends and strangers sat side-by-side, indistinguishable.
Together, we tried to grapple with questions that none of us could adequately address on our own: What is the reason for catastrophes? Why do good people get killed? Does the world make sense or not?
We had no simple answers. But if solutions could not be discerned, they could be deferred.
We patiently listened to our peers address the crowd, surrounded by awe-inspiring, towering stained glass windows depicting the triumph of the spirit and the ultimate victory of good over evil. Snow fell on the North Shore that evening, but inside we were dry. Wind chills had dropped to below zero, but inside we were warm. We were together.
While we didn’t understand the ultimate meaning behind misfortune, the resilience and solidarity we shared that night reminded us of something essential: To cherish our relationships while we had them, because life came with no guarantees.
As I walked out into the frosty air, the collective unity we had inside lingered in my heart. A favorite phrase of mine used often by French-Algerian author Albert Camus resonated inside me: “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”
Life might be absurd, as Camus insisted, but that day 39 years ago I learned that each of us carries within us the capacity for genuine empathy and compassion. This was no small discovery. These are qualities, I think, that help make our lives worth living.
The NU community’s response pointed to the indomitable ability inside each of us to reach out to a person nearby who needs it. We’d gathered to support one another, just as all good families do in a time of loss. That night, we found something invaluable: the simple, irreplaceable strength of being together. Perhaps, at that moment, that was all we needed.
Robert Kazel (Medill ’86) is a former Daily staffer, retired freelance writer and former magazine and newspaper staff reporter. He lives in Niles, Ill. He can be reached at [email protected]. If you want to respond publicly to this essay, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected].