Students at Ronald E. McNair High School paused at 11:38 a.m. Thursday morning for a moment of silence to remember their school’s namesake.
Afterward, many of the high schoolers attached challenge strips to a wa—ll in the cafeteria, having written personal missions they want to accomplish before the year ends.
It’s a small remembrance, but something to show the students about McNair and the six others who perished just off Cape Canaveral in Florida on Jan. 28, 1986.
“If we don’t take the time, we lose the significance and the lessons (of McNair and the crew),” McNair High Principal Loukisha Walker said Thursday morning. “It’s important that our students know who he is, and that they can do some of the same things McNair achieved.”
Three schools in DeKalb County bear the astronaut’s name.
His brother Carl McNair, who lives in Atlanta, started McNair Achievement Programs and the Dr. Ronald E. McNair Foundation, which allows hundreds of students annually to learn through STEM-based activities at summer camps.
McNair was killed with six others when the space shuttle Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds after takeoff the morning of Jan. 28, 1986.
Students at McNair High, at 1804 Bouldercrest Road in Atlanta, paused at 11:38 as Walker, the principal, read the names of McNair and the crew.
In addition to the high school, there's a Ronald E. McNair Middle School and the Dr. Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy, which was the scene of a school invasion in 2013 that caught national attention. Michael Brandon Hill pleaded guilty to the August 2013 school invasion, no one was shot, and received 20 years in prison. Hill was talked into surrendering by Antoinette Huff, a school employee, while he held her hostage in the principal's office. Whils Hill had fired his rifle while in the building, no one was injured.
Ronald McNair became an expert in laser physics. He was to conduct experiments with cancer cells in zero gravity during the Challenger mission, with hopes of finding a cure.
A sealing gasket, called an O-ring, on the shuttle’s right solid rocket launcher had shrunk in the 36-degree weather. That allowed superheated gases to escape, causing the disaster.
Teacher Christa McAuliffe and astronauts Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis and Judith Resnik also perished in the explosion.
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