CONCORD, N.H. — For the first time ever, the statue of a woman now sits outside the New Hampshire Statehouse. Christa McAuliffe, who was picked to become America’s first teacher in space, died in the Challenger space shuttle explosion.
She was given the one-of-a-kind honor Monday in her home state. Gathered at the unveiling were her family, former students, and admirers.
"She was always encouraging her female students to do what they wanted to do. If they had to knock on a door and the door didn't open, knock the door down. That was Christa," Steven McAuliffe, Christa's widowed husband, said.
McAuliffe says it was his late wife's bravery and desire for adventure, but mostly her passion as an educator that led her to apply for NASA's Teacher in Space program more than 30 years ago. She became the first civilian headed to space.
"But that selection and all the celebrity that followed didn't change her. She was adamant that when this experience was over she was going back to classroom teaching, otherwise it wouldn't be authentic," Steven McAuliffe said.
Unfortunately, McAuliffe didn't get that opportunity. When she boarded the Challenger in 1986, to the shock of the world, the space shuttle exploded mid-air.
Even though her mission didn't make it to space, it made it to Concord, New Hampshire, where her legacy lives on not just on the lawn, but in the future generations she inspires. "I love that this is on her birthday, rather than the day of the accident. It's more of a true testament of it being about her than the incident," Kristin Jacques, who knew Christa as "Mrs. McAuliffe," said. Jacques was one of her students in Concord.
"She didn't just teach us about the world, she taught us how to be part of it," Jacques said. For Jacques, being part of the world meant becoming a teacher herself, a job McAuliffe always stressed the importance of and one Steven McAuliffe believes is engrained in her legacy. "She was fiercely aggressive about making everybody understand it wasn't about her, it was about the teachers," he said.
As McAuliffe would have wanted, she will not only be known as the first woman permanently honored on the Statehouse lawn, but also the first female teacher.
"We all confidently anticipate Christa's statue will be inspiring and moving and I suspect for people in New Hampshire for a while longer still, painfully beautiful," Steven McAuliffe said.