CONCORD, NH — Decades after she was chosen to become 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 city where she taught high school.
McAuliffe was 37 when she died, one of seven crew members aboard the Challenger when the space shuttle broke up on live TV on January 28, 1986. She did not get a chance to to teach the lessons she had planned to teach from space. But people are still learning from her.
“Beyond the tragedy, her legacy is very positive,” said Benjamin Victor, the Boise, Idaho, sculptor whose work will be unveiled Monday in Concord, on what would have been McAuliffe’s 76th birthday. “And so it’s something that can always be remembered and should be.”
The eight-foot-tall bronze statue on a granite pedestal is believed to be the first full-length statue of McAuliffe, known for her openness to experimental learning. Her motto was: “I touch the future, I teach.”
“Seeing a hero like Christa McAuliffe remembered in this way will undoubtedly inspire the next generation of students every time they visit the New Hampshire Statehouse,” Gov. Chris Sununu said in a statement. His executive order ensured that McAuliffe’s statue joined statues of leaders such as Daniel Webster, John Stark and President Franklin Pierce.
McAuliffe was chosen from 11,000 applicants to become the first teacher and civilian in space. Aside from a public memorial at the Statehouse Plaza on January 31, 1986, the Concord school district and the city of 44,500 have celebrated the Challenger’s birthday quietly over the years, in part to respect the privacy of her family. Christa and Steven McAuliffe’s son and daughter were very young when she died and were buried in a local cemetery. Steven McAuliffe wanted the children to grow up normally in the community.
But there are other memorials, 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 is named for her at Concord High School, where she taught American history, law, economics and a course of her own design called “The American Woman.” Students run past a painting of her in her astronaut uniform.
In 2017-2018, two teachers who had become astronauts on the International Space Station recorded a series of lessons McAuliffe planned to teach, on Newton’s laws of motion, fluids in microgravity, effervescence, and chromatography. NASA then posted “Christa McAuliffe’s Lost Lessons” online, a resource for students everywhere.
Victor comes from a family of teachers, including his mother, with whom he spoke about McAuliffe several times while working on the statue. He also remembers watching the Challenger disaster on television as a second grader in Bakersfield, California.
“It was so sad, but I think the positive, all these years later, is that her legacy has lived on,” he said.
Victor sculpted four of the statues in the National Statuary Hall of the U.S. Capitol, the most of any living artist. To represent McAuliffe, he looked at many images and videos and met with Barbara Morgan, who participated in the Teacher in Space program as McAuliffe’s backup for the Challenger mission. Morgan also lives in Boise and lent him her uniform, the same one McAuliffe wore.
“Talking to Barbara about Christa, learning even more, that’s just something that’s irreplaceable,” Victor said. “Just hearing about her character. It’s just amazing.”