controlledfury

Twenty-two years ago my parents took me with them on a trip to Florida.

My father frequently had to travel for conferences across the country.  Whenever possible he would take my mother and I with him and would do his best to extend the trip into a unique vacation.  Because of this particular trip, however, I will always hate Florida.

It was cold.  I remember much of the mornings there starting in the 30′s (F).  People were a little freaked out by it… especially the out-of-towners such as ourselves that held grand visions of frolicking in the surf among the sun-kissed palm trees.

Being in Orlando, we spent the obligatory time at Walt Disney World (which I still dislike to this day).  We slept at a Disney owned hotel, which to this day is one of the noisiest and most unpleasant places I’ve ever had to lay my head in.

The second-to-last night, we stayed in to watch the New England Patriots (our home team) get pummeled by the Chicago Bears in the Super Bowl.  Leading up to this trouncing, we had to deal with the unending annoyances of traveling Bears fans ridiculing the Pat’s everywhere we went throughout Florida.  Well, they certainly were pleased with the results that night…..

The next morning, tired and dejected, we left for the Orlando airport.

Upon arrival we met a famously friendly red-cap who mentioned that if our flight wasn’t for a little while we would have the rare opportunity to see the Space Shuttle Challenger take flight from the sidewalk.  He had worked there many years and had seen every shuttle launch in the distance.  He pointed over to a bunch of trees in the distance.   Behind them, he claimed, we could get a spectacular view of the Shuttle as it raced skyward.

Being an obsessive-amateur photographer, my father thought this would be too good of an opportunity to pass up.  My mother and I were just as excited about the possibility.  My grandmother had worked at NASA in it’s heyday (which resonated greatly with my mother), and I was a geeky space-obsessed teenager. So my father spoke to our airlines about catching a later flight so that we could witness a moment in history with our bare eyes and not through a television tube.

History indeed…..

I remember being anxious and excited. My father, who always carried a Mamiya medium-format camera with him, pulled out his lens that most resembled a small rocket launcher.  As I recall, it was as big as my arm.  He layed out some cartridges that would enable him to quickly change film… not unlike a police officer’s speedloaders.  Open the back, pull out the spent cartridge, and pop in a new one.  No winding, no fuss.

About 15 minutes before launch someone at the side of the loading/unloading zone rolled down their car’s window and turned up their radio so that everyone could hear the news narrators as that pratted on about the Challenger and Christa McAuliffe… all the while talking over the official sounding NASA countdown.

As the moment of launch drew near my father readied himself.  I never took my eyes away from the treeline.  All my attention was focused on the spot that the red cap had told me to watch.

Before I new it, the Space Shuttle Challenger launched.

Within moment we saw it.  The Shuttle itself was small from our vantage point.  What was the most noticeable at first was the pedestal of smoke that it was riding.  But there it was, pointedly at the top of the plume.  The Shuttle.   It was the coolest thing I had ever seen up until that point in my life.

My father’s finger was practically glued to the trigger of his camera, the automatic film advance whirring and grinding away as picture after picture was exposed to what was before us.  Up until this point, I had no real awareness of anyone outside of my parents and my, although I’m sure that we were surrounded by people taking in this amazing site.

I remember the radio narrator said something about the upcoming booster separation.  I believe I even heard the now infamous “Throttle Up” command, but that could just be my memory mixing what I experienced with what I read.  It was at that point that we could see the smoke plumes from the two side boosters move away from the central body of the Shuttle.

“Holy Shit! Holy Shit! That’s not supposed to happen!”, the red cap exclaimed.  “I’ve seen every launch from here, and I know that it’s not supposed to do that!”  All the while my father continued to take pictures of what was unfolding before us.

It was at this point that I realized that the booster rockets were not moving away and DOWN from the Shuttle… but were in fact moving UP.  What had been propelled upward but the giant main column of exhaust had stopped gaining altitude, and was being beaten in it’s race skyward by the two booster rockets. I myself understood that this was wrong, but could grasp the implication of it all until I heard a radio announcer calming say that “…there appears to be a minor malfunction on the Challenger”.

Understatement of the century.

Everything around us got very quiet.  Nobody said anything.  We all stood there, staring at the rolling credits but not understanding that the movie was over.  No one there could really comprehend what we were seeing.

A little at a time, people filtered into the airport.  On our way to our gate we found a shoeshine stand that had a small portable TV.  I don’t remember how long we stayed transfixed to that little TV, but it must have been a while.  I’m not sure how long it was before that let the planes into the air after an air disaster with the most tremendous of implications had just occurred outside of Orlando’s airspace.

I don’t remember much about the flight home except it was very quiet.  It seemed odd to get on a plane after having watched that explosion.

Weeks later, and pictures of the explosion was still front page of the Boston Herald.  My father had his photos developed, and I would dare to say that they came close (if not rivaled) what was being shown in the media.  In fact, I remember when the papers first showed the picture where you could see the cabin and various fragments (highlighted and circled by the editors) flying through the air.  Everyone made a big deal out of that shot.  But I had already seen them in the magnified exposures the developer made for my father.  I remember thinking how funny it was that I had already seen what the media was just now seeing.  They were behind the times as far as I was concerned.

To this day when I think of Florida, I think of the New England Patriots and the Space Shuttle Challenger.  The three will forever be connected in my mind.  That’s one reason why I hate Florida.  I’m just afraid of what might happen if the Patriots lose this years Super Bowl.