30 years later, family and friends remember Dr. Ronald McNair

LAKE CITY, SC (WBTW) – Thursday marked the 30th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

All seven crew members died the morning of January 28, 1986, when a booster engine failed and caused the shuttle to break apart just 73 seconds after launch from Cape Canaveral.

One of those who died was Dr. Ronald McNair of Lake City.  It would have been Dr. McNair’s second trip into space.

Thursday night people gathered for an annual vigil in McNair’s honor.

“It was the one morning in my 8 years on the west coast that I did not turn on my radio or the television,” said long-time friend and Lake City Mayor Lovith Anderson, as he reminisced on what happened 30 years ago.

“My wife, who’s here, was pregnant at the time with our first child.  I turned on the TV and the next thing if know there’s this spacecraft launching,” explained Carl McNair, Ronald’s older brother.

McNair, just 10 months older than his brother Ron, left with his wife just a day prior after an expected delay of the launch.

“So we got communications from Ron that it doesn’t look like we are going to launch tomorrow the 28^th,” he mentioned.

Ron was one of seven astronauts on board the space shuttle challenger.

“And all of a sudden it appeared to explode.  I just burst out into tears, because I knew what that meant,” McNair said.

Anderson, who had just started his shift, would soon get the news.

“So when I got to work everyone was like…are you alright?  They said the shuttle blew up this morning. And guys my heart dropped because I knew not only was Ron on their but other members of the crew as well,” Anderson stated.

What took a minute and 13 seconds to unravel opened an entirely new chapter

“Ron probably made more positive impact and life changing impact on lives in death than we would have in life,” McNair said.

A memorial to the challenger astronauts also took place at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday.

The crowd of 500 included family members of those killed in the Challenger explosion, in the 2003 Shuttle Columbia disaster and in the Apollo One fire in 1967.