McAuliffe Was to Be First Ordinary Citizen in Space

Mrs. McAuliffe, a high school teacher from Concord, N.H., won a nationwide competition to go on the Challenger mission and was going to broadcast two lessons from space to students around the country. She was married to Steven McAuliffe, and the couple had two children; the three of them, plus her parents and hundreds of students from Concord, gathered in Florida to watch the launch. Schools across the United States tuned in to a live broadcast. “The passage of 30 years since the Challenger accident is not of great personal significance to our family,” Mr. McAuliffe said in a statement to The Associated Press. “For us, Challenger will always be an event that occurred just recently. Our thoughts and memories of Christa will always be fresh and comforting.”