THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 27, 1996 TAG: 9601270355
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Charlise Lyles
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
It will be a quiet commemoration Sunday.
She'll fasten on her artificial leg - a little awkward at the hip - pull on her coat, and fetch her cane.
Then, in her determined, rocking gait, she will head west on Virginia Beach Boulevard toward the Barnes & Noble bookstore, where she'll note the death of Sharon Christa McAuliffe.
``It's a kind of sacred place to me, where I go to learn and explore,'' said Gayle Colson. ``So I'll go there and give her a moment, my memorial moment.''
Colson grieves for all seven victims of the 1986 Challenger space shuttle explosion. But it is the death of the teacher that aches most.
The smiling, button-eyed, high school social-studies teacher was selected by NASA to be the first ``citizen in space.''
``She made a fantasy reality,'' said Colson. ``She wasn't a rocket scientist, not someone who spent years and years training, just an ordinary person in an extraordinary situation.''
Though she doesn't see it that way, Colson herself is an ordinary person in an extraordinary situation. Colson was born with a recurring malignant tumor, and her leg was amputated when she was five. Sometimes, movement is difficult. But her trim figure thrusts powerfully forward, piston-like and resolute.
Her physical limitations have not limited her imagination. Her brow is often furrowed quizzically, her lips pursed in thought and her eyes dark dots of curiosity. An avid science-fiction and fantasy fan, she has cultivated a marvelous imagination and ability to wonder. And a great wit.
In a way, McAuliffe was Colson's legs, allowing her to wander vicariously into outer space.
She was 19 when the Challenger rained down in pieces over the Atlantic Ocean. She had just returned home from the Woodrow Wilson Rehabilitation Center in Fishersville, Va.
She learned work and independent living skills there after graduating from Kempsville High School.
Colson can recite from memory the very second of the explosion: 11:39 a.m., EST. Those last words: `` `Major malfunction.' '' And she still hears the horrible silence from Mission Control.
``I was at work,'' Colson said. ``When I got home, it was still on television. I started crying at the dinner table.''
``I was excited by the Challenger - to see something that isn't ordinary, beyond the day-to-day business of groceries, cleaning house,'' said Colson, who works at Lillian Vernon in Virginia Beach.
``Something to make you know there is more out there than the everyday things that surround you.''
And Colson believes that McAuliffe would be especially pleased to know that the 10th anniversary of her death has coincided with the discovery of two new planets within 35 light years of Earth.
``How wonderful it would've been for her to have returned from space to teach children to imagine,'' said Colson, turning with ease to go.
``JFK died before I was born. I hardly knew Martin Luther King. The same with Robert Kennedy. I don't remember them. But the Challenger is the tragedy I knew.
``I put Christa McAuliffe up there with them. She's my martyr. How many people die making a dream come true for people? That's what she did, you know.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo GARY C. KNAPP
Sunday, Gayle Colson will remember the ill-fated Challenger and
McAuliffe, ``my martyr.''
by CNB