McAuliffe remains vivid to still-grieving NH city

Associated Press

CONCORD, N.H.

In the 25 years since the Challenger exploded on liftoff, Felicia Brown has gone to college, become a psychologist, gotten married and had kids. Fresh in her mind is the memory of Christa McAuliffe, a teacher at her high school and family friend who was to be the first teacher in space.

“I know how important her field trip into space was to her and how much she hoped to learn and share with students everywhere,” said the Concord High School graduate, who at 43 is now older than McAuliffe was when she died at age 37. “I wouldn’t want her sincerity to get lost in a textbook.”

A whole generation — including McAuliffe’s own students — has grown up since McAuliffe and six other astronauts perished on live TV on Jan. 28, 1986, a quarter-century ago this Friday. Now the former schoolchildren who loved her are making sure that people who weren’t even born then know about McAuliffe and her dream of going into space.

Students who didn’t know her now will when they attend a new school named in her honor.

Concord, a city of about 42,000 where the popular McAuliffe taught social studies, carries her legacy as a source of both fierce pride and painful memory. Some residents had mixed feelings when the name of space pioneer Alan Shepard, a New Hampshire native, was added to a planetarium originally named just for McAuliffe. Some people still tear up at the mention of her name.

But in ways both quiet and public, the city she left behind is making sure she lives on where her husband still resides, her children grew up and her remains are buried.

Keeping McAuliffe’s memory alive is also important to Holly Merrow, who graduated from Concord High in 1986 and now teaches in Portland, Maine. Merrow, taught by McAuliffe in a class about women in history, recalled that she made lessons fun, interesting and real — and Merrow tries to do the same.

The space mission would have been the ultimate field trip for McAuliffe, who stressed real-world, hands-on experience, high school alumni recalled. She volunteered after school with the Youth and Government club, which sent students to the Statehouse for a mock Legislature.

Former club member Daniel St. Hilaire, 43, now has an 18-year-old son and is on the state’s Executive Council, which approves contracts and appointments. Long interested in astronomy, he worked at the planetarium in the 1990s and is president of fundraising.

When he thinks about McAuliffe, he believes the most important lesson children can learn from her is to be involved in their community.