Memorial recalls teacher

Press, 1 February 1986, Page 10

Memorial recalls teacher

NZPA-AP Framingham Christa McAuliffe’s parents joined 1500 people yesterday at a memorial service for the girl who overcame childhood illnesses to reach for the stars.

In their first public appearance since witnessing the death of their daughter and six others when the shuttle Challenger exploded on Wednesday, Edward and Grace Corrigan sat in the front row of a hushed and crowded auditorium. Two of their children, Stephen and Betsy, who now live in California, also attended. The parents wept as they sang a hymn, “Let There Be Peace On Earth,” and departed silently after the service at Framingham State College, which is near their home, and from which their daughter graduated. The Rev. John Culloty cited Mrs McAuliffe’s zest for life and said that she would "not want us to dwell on her tragic death too long.” United States Air Force experts today are examining a bundle, of bones and tissue to determine if they were human remains from the Challenger. The bones and tissue, enclosed in blue material, were found washed up on a beach 48km south of the launching site. The seven astronauts were wearing blue uniforms. In the Atlantic a Coast Guard ship worked to recover a large piece of wreckage believed to be part of the spaceship’s fuselage,. along with objects that may have come from the crew cabin. ' Another “large object" was detected beneath the floating wreckage by ship sonar and officials said they were calling in divers to search the ocean floor.

A souvenir-hunter found the bones and tissue — measuring about 2.5 by 10 by 15.2 cm — on a beach in the town of Indiatlantic, N.A.S.A. officials said. He notified the local police, who took the find to a hospital at nearby Patrick Air Force Base. N.A.S.A. officials were

reluctant to identify the material as human remains. ? A spokesman, Hugh Harris, said experts would “examine it and make some kind of determination as to its origin.” If the study proves positive, it would be the first discovery of the remains of Challenger’s crew, who were killed when the spaceship blew up.

• The official Soviet press commented for the first time yesterday about the shuttle disaster, giving what diplomats described as a gentle lecture to the United States about the importance of using space peacefully.

The news media had confined themselves to factually reporting the explosion of the Challenger with the loss of six astronauts and a teacher.

But yesterday the Communist Party daily, "Pravda,” expressed surprise that some American politicians had continued to advocate the “star wars” programme after the tragedy, which it said should have underlined the need for the peaceful use of space. A separate “Pravda" editorial described Ronald Reagan’s strategic defence Initiative for a space shield against nuclear missiles as the main obstacle to total disarmament by the year 2000 as proposed by the Soviet Union. The two articles were balanced by the publication on "Pravda’s” front page of a telegram of condolence to Mr Reagan from the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.

Western diplomats said Moscow seemed to be extracting' some political mileage from the accident while being careful not to be seen to be gloating. Soviet press reaction would have been much more savage had the shuttle been on a military mission, the diplomats said.

The comments in “Pravda” and two other newspapers echoed one of Mr Gorbachev’s main themes — that space should be preserved for peaceful research only.