Pete Sayek: A Radio Memory, of Challenger

I meant to post this, months ago, but the original email, go shifted
around somewhere... Pete is a radio colleague, and this terrific
memoir, goes back to his days, at WKRB, in New York...

JIm Burns (James H. Burns)
____


"Challenger...20 Years Ago Today"
PETE SAYEK

Twenty years...it's amazing how time just files by like leaves in the
wind. Anyone else working that day have a story to share?

I was in the production studio doing some pre-production and carting for
my afternoon shift. The studio was just a short walk down the hall from
the news room, and I had the door open. Through one side of the glass, I
could see the guy currently on the air at the time. Behind me was the
open door to the hallway. The place was pretty empty save for the two of
us.

I remember I was rewinding the reel-to-reel, cueing something up on a
turntable (remember those?) and in the background din you could hear the
news machines - two little serial data printers (AP and UPI) - chugging
away with the usual news headlines, sports scores, weather, and whatnot.
All of a sudden I hear four bells go off on the AP machine. Remember,
four bells was usually not a big deal - could have been a weather alert
about how blisteringly cold it was, or the snow flurries we'd had that
morning...so I didn't even think twice about it. After a couple of
seconds, eight more bells went off. I thought that maybe someone famous
or important had died, so I said to myself, "As soon as this tape is
ready I'll go check that out". Before I had a chance to start the tape,
TEN bells went off. My heart dropped immediately because I knew ten
bells meant something BAD. Who died? Had a plane crashed? The last thing
on my mind was the Space Shuttle. Without hesitating, I bolted into the
newsroom to rip the paper off the machine.

The first (four bell) bulletin merely said, "THERE APPEARS TO BE A
PROBLEM WITH THE LAUNCH OF THE SPACE SHUTTLE 'CHALLENGER'. MORE...". The
next one (eight bells) said, "THE SPACE SHUTTLE CHALLENGER APPEARS TO
HAVE EXPLODED A MINUTE AFTER LAUNCH. MORE...".

I felt like I'd been hit in the stomach. I couldn't believe what I was
reading. The ten-bell bulletin was still coming across. It read
something along the lines of, "THE SPACE SHUTTLE CHALLENGER HAS BLOWN TO
PIECES A MINUTE AFTER LAUNCH...".

Before I could read any further, my eye caught a piece of copy that had
been sitting in the recyling bin from the early morning's newscasts.

It said, "NASA hopes to launch the Space Shuttle 'Challenger' today
after days of delays. Below-freezing temperatures are not expected to
cause a problem...". I remembered that the launch had already been
postponed for days for a variety of reasons: a loose bolt, a loose
door...I remembered thinking the day before, "I hope this thing launches
OK".

We interrupted the (top 40) music to go to the wall-to-wall coverage we
were getting off the Net News feed (United Stations at the time) and the
on-air guy and I just stared at each other in disbelief as we listened
to the news flow out of the monitor speakers. I remember just feeling
sick to my stomach. We wheeled the TV in from the jock lounge to watch
the coverage on TV.

The thing that sticks with me about that day was the wierd,
"out-of-body" feeling I had all day that day (I've felt the same way
only five other times: when John Lennon was killed, when Reagan was
shot, on 9/11 and when both my parents died). I still had to go on the
air - albiet just to "host" the Net News continuous coverage - so I was
stuck in the studio until 7PM. People came in and out the front door
looking stunned. We all sat around the studio and talked about it, sort
of like a group therapy.

Everyone hung around until night to see Reagan's statement. Many of us
had tears welling up in our eyes as we listened, and the reality what
had happened started to sink in. On the air, we'd gone back to mostly
music, but kept it to a somber, slow mood. Just writing about it now, it
feels like yesterday. As a side note...does it seem to anyone else that
the shock of Challenger somehow took some of the sting off the Columbia
accident? I remember being shocked and saddened that day...but not to
the extent of the Challenger explosion.

1-28-06


© Copyright 2006 Pete Sayek