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| Texas A&M Research & Extension Center |
I wasn't allowed to help with the decorations, which drove me crazy. I had to sit at my desk and I could hear all the whispering and giggling was going on in the conference room. The shower was supposed to start at noon.
At around 8:45 am, my phone rang. I answered the way I always did and heard a strange, choking sound. I couldn't figure out what it was until I heard my mother's voice saying "Oh my God, it blew up! It blew up!" I had no idea what she meant so I kept saying, "What? What blew up? What are you talking about?" Finally she was able to say "The Space Shuttle, it blew up!". I laid the phone down on my desk and ran into the conference room and told someone to turn on the TV in there. Of course, the news was on every station. It was true.
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| Space Shuttle Challenger January 28, 1986 |
After that, the girls kept decorating, but the joy had gone out of it. My mother and grandmother arrived around 11:45 and they were both in tears. So were we. We tried hard to have a great time at the shower, but after the lunch and cake were eaten and the presents were opened, the somber mood returned and we just watched TV off and on for the rest of the day. It seemed too awful to be real.
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| Space Shuttle Challenger Explosion |
In an odd coincidence, on February 1, 2003, almost 17 years later to the day, the space Shuttle Columbia exploded on Benjamin's birthday. At the time, I was having DishNetwork installed on our TV and the first picture I ever saw with Dish was the Columbia disaster.
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| Space Shuttle Columbia February 1, 2003 |
Benjamin has always felt as though he jinxed the shuttle program somehow, the Challenger on his shower day and the Columbia on his birthday, but it was just a sad coincidence.
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| Space Shuttle Columbia Explosion |