40 years ago today, a high school social studies teacher--a woman--was chosen to be a passenger on the 10th mission of the Challenger space shuttle
There was a lot of excitement and inspiration before there was grief.
July 19, 1985: Vice-President George H. W. Bush and NASA Administrator James Beggs announce the winner of the nation-wide competition to be NASA’s “Teacher in Space: Christa McAuliffe, a New Hampshire high school social studies teacher with a master’s degree, was married to an attorney, and was the mother of two elementary-age children. Photo, from today’s story in the Smithsonian.
This isn’t a story about the tragedy of the Challenger; this is a story about the six months before the tragedy, when the selection of Christa McAuliffe was a triumph.
On August 27, 1984, President Ronald W. Reagan announced the Teacher in Space project as part of NASA’s Space Flight Participant Program to expand the space shuttle experience to a wider set of private citizens who would communicate the experience to the public. From 11,000 teacher applicants, each of the 50 states and territories selected two nominees for a total of 114. After meeting with each candidate, a review panel narrowed the field down to 10 finalists. These 10 underwent interviews and medical examinations.
I was then the editor of Savvy, a magazine for “executive women,” a definition that included Christa McAuliffe—and all women who were using their brains as well as their bodies to contribute to a better world. It was that simple. It really was.
We were thrilled at the choice—because not only was a woman the winner—her “back-up,” the #2 selection, was also a woman, Barbara Radding Morgan, a Stanford grad1 who later in life became a “real” astronaut: the science-y kind. The mission crew already included another woman, Judith Resnik, who had a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the U. of Maryland.
We—at least we at Savvy—were thrilled, and also cynical. President Reagan, in the early and undiagnosed stages of Alzheimer’s, was running for a second term. And his numbers among women were well-deserved: dreadful. “The gender gap” was widely publicized, and his henchmen 2 (I can’t recall any henchwomen, but I’ll work on that) quickly put together every possible turn-around they could invent. One was a national tour of the Small Business Administration that included convention-style gatherings of women in business with booths and panels of speakers. I was one of those speakers. I was signed up for six or seven events across America and I did just fine in the first two or three and then I got to Los Angeles—and I got comfortable.
The keystone of these business events was what was going to be the establishment of an office in the West Wing for Women in Business. In Los Angeles, while mentioning the Reagan Administration’s announcement, I said, “Yeah, I’d wait until November 7th [the day after the election] before getting too excited about that.”
My mic was immediately removed from my hand and I was hustled off the stage. Three weeks later—in a simple scenario where a worker bee for the SBA calls his college roommate who is a worker bee for the IRS—I got a notice of an audit from the IRS for more money than I had grossed in three years. Two years and $3K in accountant fees later, they found I owed nothing. I didn’t speak up again in public until last October. That isn’t a oft-told joke; that’s the truth.
So, yes, the Teacher in Space program was a direct child of the political effort to shrink Reagan’s “gender gap.” But—hindsight is wisdom without an audience—that takes away nothing from its influence, from the inspiration of the concept, the thrill of seeing that gathering of the crew of Challenger #10 (two women, a Black man, an Asian man—this is America, we thought, and we were very proud).
Here’s what DEI—one of America’s best ideas since 1789— looked like before it got MBA’d into an irritating acronym. From left, bottom row: Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair; (back row) Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, and Judith Resnik. Photo: NASA.
So, if you’re a teacher, and today’s your birthday, today—one of the holy days of a profession that you aced— is the present from your friends at And Then What Happened. 3
A Phi Beta Kappa who began her teaching career in 1974 on the Flathead Indian Reservation at Arlee Elementary School in Arlee, Montana, where she taught remedial reading and math. From 1975-1978, she taught remedial reading/math and second grade at McCall-Donnelly Elementary School in McCall, Idaho. From 1978-1979, Morgan taught English and science to third graders at Colegio Americano de Quito in Quito, Ecuador. This link is to a terrific interview with her after her retirement from NASA.
The linked 1984 reference is to The New York Times, which dismissed the “woman problem” and lauded Reagan’s “extraordinary appeal to men as a ‘man’s man’ .” He was, at the time of that writing, already in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. There’s much humor to be mined from all this, but the load of irony is so heavy I have to put down the wheelbarrow for a moment and consider chugging a Scotch.
Happy Birthday, Mrs. Leonardi.