the brave die more than once

 

Christa McAuliffe, from Concord, New Hampshire, was one of seven crew members who died when the space craft carrying them and the shuttle Challenger exploded soon after taking off on January 28, 1986. Christa was 37 years of age. In 2004 she was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honour.

Christa was a brave human being who unselfishly gave her life for something she believed in and for a cause designed to help our understanding of our planet.

So why now, why should I put this piece together today? Well, many reasons really. 

It is important to remember brave, unselfish people. Particularly at this time when the world is awash with greed, more than greed; avarice and people who are at the opposite end of the brave spectrum from Christa.

When our world brimming over with blame and people sitting in judgement who have no idea about bravery and risk taking. People who, if things do not change, will shut us down. While these people rule, the chances of putting another foot on the moon is not even a dream.

I had a concern that by allowing the very thought of such people on the same page as Christa would somehow tarnishes her memory. But you know, it won't, she was in a different universe really and those with an ounce of humanity and decency will understand. It can only enhance her memory.

What follows is beautiful, sensitive prose and I think so fitting for what happened that terrible day in 1986 and penned by a person more articulate than most could ever aspire to, well certainly me; Nancy Banks-Smith:

'The President was not watching television. There is, it seems no set in the Oval Office, so he went to his study where there is one.

The parents of Christa McAuliffe weren’t watching television either. Their faces turned blankly to the sky. Her mother’s mouth was working away all the time. Her father’s fell open and, full of teeth, seemed to smile. Then he looked down at the people in front of them in a puzzled, questioning way.

Life and death are less confusing on television. People explain in detail. In slow motion.

I thought the brave died only once, but it isn’t so. Newsnight, among others, worried away at it.

I think they forgot how it hurts.

The picture of that parachute, small as a dandelion seed, keeps drifting through the mind. It meant nothing.

They kept explaining it meant nothing, but it looked like hope.'

Nancy Banks-Smith was and may still be a television critic in the UK, she began writing for the Guardian in 1969. She declined an OBE in 1970.