Robert ‘Bob’ Hohler shadowed Christa McAuliffe for 200 days.
He first met her when the Concord Monitor sent him to Houston in July of 1985 to cover her participation as one of the top ten finalists in NASA’s Teacher in Space competition.
“On the afternoon I arrived, we sat on a cool granite bench in the shade and talked about her home, her family, her fears, her dreams,” Hohler wrote in the preface of his book “‘I touch the future…’ The story of Christa McAuliffe,” published in 1986.
As Vice President George Bush announced her selection, Hohler stood there among the press, taking notes. In the subsequent months, he traveled the country with Christa, from Concord to Houston, to Washington, D.C., to her hometown of Framingham, Mass., and ultimately to Cape Canaveral, Fla.
“I became her conduit to folks back in Concord to relate how her journey was going when she was away from home. All these people, whether they were students, colleagues, neighbors, friends, just the city in general, everybody was excited about what was going on, but they weren’t there,” Hohler said.
As a reporter from Christa’s local newspaper, Hohler received up-close access in covering her journey. Beyond his role as a journalist, he provided a familiar face for Christa when she was far from home and meeting many new people on a regular basis.
From the moment they met, he felt a sense of connection. They were only a few years apart in age and had both grown up in the Boston area. He saw in her what the NASA selection committee — and eventually, the world — did: a “certain charisma, that sort of person-next-door genuineness” that led people of all walks of life to relate to her.
His book renders exactly those qualities, introducing readers to the woman he got to know well during his months of reporting on her space preparations.
“She just had this sort of infectious enthusiasm about her, and more than that, just not a drip of pretension, just a genuinely good and engaging person who was curious and caring, and it came through,” he said.
While covering Christa became a newsroom-wide effort at the Monitor ahead of the launch, Hohler remained the closest to the story. He was there, in the stands with Christa’s family and her son, Scott’s, third grade classmates at Cape Canaveral on the day of the fateful launch.
He had his back turned to the shuttle when it exploded; he had been looking at her parents through the lens of his camera, snapping photos of their faces.
He recalls their excitement turning to confusion. He remembers the silent crowd’s disbelief and, eventually, horror.
In 1986, the Monitor was an afternoon paper, so when the tragedy occurred, there was only enough time to write the most basic parts of a vastly devastating story before the press deadline.
It would be another 24 hours before the next edition came out. Even as Hohler, in shock with the rest of the world, mourned Christa and the other astronauts aboard Challenger, he had a job to do.
“I remember just staying up until three in the morning and just writing and trying to sort it all out,” he said.
His column, ‘Our Lives Won’t Be The Same Without Her,’ was published the following day.
“Christa McAuliffe died yesterday with a few of her favorite things: her son’s stuffed frog, her daughter’s cross and chain, her grandmother’s watch, her Carly Simon tape. She died with little things. Ordinary things,” he wrote. “Put her by a swimming pool with her family, a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich and a cold beer, and she needed little more from life. Give her a compass, her childhood friends and a forest, and she flourished. Call her a hero and she shuddered.”
He never set out to write a book. In fact, when the offer came from Random House after his column had been nationally reprinted, he wasn’t sure he should take it.
“I really wrestled with it because, as you probably know, the city really turned inward in a lot of ways after this happened. I mean, the media just swarmed, really swarmed in a major way,” he said.
Not to mention, the story wasn’t about him — it was about Christa. However, this same argument ultimately led him to say yes.
“I had a responsibility, I think, to keep her legacy alive, to tell her story,” he said.
Hohler donated much of the proceeds from the book to Concord’s Christa McAuliffe Planetarium project, as well as to educational scholarships and other causes she would have held close to her heart.
The book captures intimate moments from Christa’s time as Teacher in Space, testifying to all the things she mentioned to Hohler during their first meeting sitting in the shade on a bench in Houston: her home, her family, her fears, her dreams.
The biography illustrates Christa’s impact, something she only partially got the chance to see during her life.
“It’s how she touched young lives. I talked to a number of people who… did become teachers or educators in some way and were inspired by her,” he said.
When Hohler thinks of Christa, he recalls their final conversation over the phone ahead of the launch. He wished her good luck and told her to have fun. She replied, “I will.”
“In the 200 days I knew her, Christa went from a Concord High School classroom to a spacecraft bound for an infinite frontier in the sky,” he wrote in his column. “She asked to be nothing more than an ordinary person on an extraordinary mission.”
This story is part of our series, ‘Christa’s Legacy: Concord’s pioneer woman, the world’s teacher. To read more visit www.concordmonitor.com/christas-legacy.