16 NJM 2020 in MoMoMo

16: What is your earliest memory of a major/world event?

Chernobyl and the Challenger space shuttle incident. Growing up on the reservation, we didn’t have much in the way of “world education”. We knew that the nuclear issue was bad, but they went a little overboard, from what I remember. We had “drills” in school: if we saw “weird fogs”, we were to run down to the shop area of our school that was originally meant to be a bomb shelter.

I remembered the Challenger equally because the teachers were crying, as one of the crew members was a teacher. I remember watching the footage, it was looping over and over, and I could only think…*”I hope she didn’t feel anything”. But, I’m sure there was fear. I’m sure there was a lot of praying.

Not sure why I thought about that, but I did.

Last updated November 22, 2020