Scobee is center, front row

This 28th day of January in 1986, was tragic for my friend June Scobee Rodgers, her family and our nation. On that sunny Florida morning, June and the families of the other Challenger Space Shuttle (STS-51-L) crew members – Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik, Michael J. Smith and Ronald McNair, watched in disbelief as the spacecraft disintegrated after launch. I can’t imagine the anguish they experienced.

June’s husband, Challenger Commander Dick Scobee, a former combat pilot and distinguished test pilot who had previously commanded a shuttle flight, knew well the dangers inherent with space missions and had expressed concerns about the inclusion of civilians on such missions. It was 19 years earlier, almost to the day (27 January 1967) that Apollo 1, the first crewed mission of the United States Apollo program to land the first man on the Moon, was in a pre-launch test at Cape Kennedy when a cabin fire killed all three crew members – Command Pilot Gus Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White, and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee.

Just over a minute after the Challenger launch, at T+68, Commander Scobee confirmed, “Roger, go at throttle up” — the last communication June, and the nation, heard from Challenger. June’s son Rich, then a cadet at the Air Force Academy and now a USAF Lieutenant General, and her daughter Kathy, watched the launch with their mom at Cape Kennedy – and witnessed, as did the nation, their husband and father perish.

That evening, President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation, saying, “The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’”

In the years that followed, June has turned that tragedy into a triumph, honoring the loss of her beloved husband and his crew with the establishment of the Challenger Science Technology Engineering and Math Learning Centers. There are now almost 50 Challenger STEM centers across the nation inspiring countless young people toward careers in the sciences. I know few people who embody June’s level of character and unbridled optimism. You can read her story in a tribute I wrote in 2009, “A Silver Lining to Storms of Sorrow.” Watch an interview with June filmed this week about her experience that day.