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These seven touched the face of God.

I remember where I was when JFK was killed.

I remember what I was doing when the twin towers came down.

And between those dates, I remember where I was when the Challenger flew apart.

Like many Houstonians, I grew up with NASA in my backyard. My father was a caretaker of a large park that backed up to Timber Cove and lay across Taylor Lake from El Lago, the areas where most astronauts lived at the time. I remember trying to keep up with John Glenn as he jogged through our park. Names like Conrad, Armstrong, Grissom, Schirra, and Carpenter were common in my Cub Scout troop, little league team and elementary.

In 1967, I was nine years old when I called my friend Mark Grissom. His father, Gus, had just been killed in a fire aboard the Apollo 1 capsule at the Cape. The conversation was short and painful. Two years before his death, Grissom had said, “If we die, we want people to accept it. We’re in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.”

Nineteen years later, the Challenger 7 perished shortly after takeoff. In a mere 73 seconds, dashed were the hopes of those seven individuals and all those on the ground pulling for them.

I sat in the crowd at NASA when then President Reagan eulogized these seven. He both comforted the crowd and challenged a nation.

Sometimes, when we reach for the stars, we fall short. But we must pick ourselves up again and press on despite the pain. Our nation is indeed fortunate that we can still draw on immense reservoirs of courage, character and fortitude–that we are still blessed with heroes like those of the Space Shuttle Challenger.

In earlier remarks on television, Reagan in his characteristic eloquence closed with a quote from the pilot’s creed:

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.”

On this 25th anniversary of the Challenger 7, we are all children of NASA.