On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

A friend of mine reminded me of an anniversary this month. A sad one.

Tomorrow is the 30th anniversary of the deaths of the "Challenger Seven".

I remember the circumstance by which I learned the news. I'd just gotten home from marketing classes at Algonquin College for the day, I was tired, and I wanted to go to my room to decompress or whatever it was we called recovering from classes back then. When I got there, I turned on the TV, and that was it.

I remember sadness, having to plough onward with my studies because those weren't going to wait on anything. Mostly, I just kept going. Kept an eye on the news as best I could in those days before the internet was a thing the general public could really use for news-tracking. My "internet" back then was the public library and the library at Woodroffe Campus. Not much else, really. Not like it was with Columbia in 2003, barely a month after my own father had died.

In January 2003, I was angrier. In large part because of the timing of it. These were still strangers to me for the most part, but I valued - still value - the work they did, and because of that and the timing, I was angrier about those deaths. Maybe being able to learn more, faster, about the whole thing added to it. I can't say for certain.

But it's been thirty years since Challenger as of tomorrow. And those of us still here after the passage of those thirty years have done a lot of living, and learning. Hopefully, a lot of the latter in particular.

But the exploration hasn't stopped either, and I am grateful for that above all. To those who've kept going, wherever you are on or off this planet, I thank you all for that.

Please. Keep going.