CONCORD, NH (AP) — Decades after she was selected as America’s first teacher in space, Christa McAuliffe is still a pioneer – this time as the first woman to be memorialized on the grounds of the New Hampshire Statehouse, in the town where she taught high school.
McAuliffe was 37 when she was killed, one of the seven crew members aboard the Challenger when the space shuttle broke apart on live television on January 28, 1986. She did not have the chance to give the lessons she had planned from space. But people are still learning from her.
Benjamin Victor, the Boise, Idaho, sculptor whose work was unveiled Monday on what would have been McAuliffe’s 76th birthday, said McAuliffe’s “inspiration was not lost in the disaster and her memory will live on forever.”
Her ex-husband Steven McAuliffe said Christa McAuliffe was proud to represent the teaching profession and would be happy to receive the honor “as long as it is shared with all teachers and educators.”
“It’s a great honor for Christa. And at the same time, it’s a great and well-deserved honor for teachers and educators across the country,” he said. “I hope teachers from all over the world will come and watch it. I hope they’re proud of their noble work. I hope students will come and watch it. And I hope they’ll be inspired to pursue their dreams,” he said.
The 8-foot-tall bronze statue, which shows McAuliffe in a NASA flight suit at crotch, is believed to be the first full-length statue of McAuliffe, who was known for her openness to experiential learning. Her motto was, “I touch the future, I teach.”
Governor Chris Sununu Implementing Regulation allowed the McAuliffe statue to be placed next to statues of leaders such as Daniel Webster, John Stark and President Franklin Pierce. He said Monday he looks forward to schoolchildren who visit the Statehouse each year seeing the statue honoring “our heroic teacher” and reflecting on what is possible.
McAuliffe was chosen from 11,000 candidates to be the first teacher and private citizen in space. Except for a public memorial service on Statehouse Plaza on January 31, 1986, the Concord school district and the city of 44,500 have observed the Challenger anniversary quietly over the years, in part to respect her family’s privacy. Christa and Steven McAuliffe’s son and daughter were very young at the time of their deaths and were buried in a local cemetery. Steven McAuliffe, who was a lawyer at the time and is now a federal judge, wanted the children to grow up normally in the community.
But there are other monuments, dozens of schools and a library named for McAuliffe, as well as scholarships and a commemorative coin. A science museum in Concord is dedicated to her and her son, Alan Shepard, the first American in space. The auditorium of Concord High School, where she taught American history, law, economics and a course of her own design called “The American Woman,” is named for her. Students hurry past a painting of her in her astronaut uniform.
In 2017 and 2018, two educators-turned-astronauts recorded some of the lessons McAuliffe wanted to teach on the International Space Station, covering Newton’s laws of motion, fluids in microgravity, bubbling, and chromatography. NASA then released “Christa McAuliffe’s Lost Lessons” online, a resource for students everywhere.
Sculptor Victor comes from a family of educators. His mother is also known to talk a lot about McAuliffe while working on the statue, including telling him about his memory of watching the Challenger disaster on television as a second-grader in Bakersfield, California.
“My deepest sympathies go out to the family, but there is a silver lining in all of this, and that is what we celebrate today. And that is that their lesson is taught again and again,” said Victor, who created four of the statues in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall, more than any living artist.
Also present at Monday’s event were one of McAuliffe’s students, Kris Coronis Jacques, now a teacher, and Nathaniel Dunlap, who won a student essay and said McAuliffe inspired him to “look for all opportunities and take them.” There was also a choir from Concord High School, which sang “See the Light, Be the Light,” and James Scully, chairman of the commission charged with erecting the memorial in just 18 months.
Pam Melroy, NASA’s deputy director, told the crowd that McAuliffe’s death was not in vain and led to advances in spacecraft design, risk management and the safety of human spaceflight.
“The statue will stand as a symbol of the indomitable human spirit that Christa embodies and remind us of the risks and rewards of space exploration. Christa’s impact on NASA is timeless. Her mission catalyzed change and led to a safer, more inclusive and more educational space program,” she said.
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In this story, the spelling of Kris Coronis Jacques’s last name is corrected.
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Associated Press writer David Sharp in Portland, Maine, contributed to this report.
