As a boy, Chris Sununu traveled down to down at Cape Canaveral with his father to watch the Challenger take off in person. But then the weather intervened.

Sununu, a fifth-grader back in January 1986, went to Florida for the weekend with his father, John H. Sununu, who was New Hampshire’s governor. The younger Sununu had already met Christa McAuliffe on several occasions. She was set to be the first high school teacher to be launched into space; she had of course met her home state’s governor and his family.

The weather was clear that Saturday, but cold. NASA called the launch off for the day. It was cold and cloudy the next day too. NASA rescheduled the launch to Tuesday. Father and son went home to the Granite State.

Chris Sununu returned to his classroom at North Salem Elementary School, with plenty to report back from his behind-the-scenes tours of the Kennedy Space Center. He’d seen the launch pad for the Challenger, and he’d taken a close look at the space shuttle Columbia, and its heat shields.

“Engineering was pretty cool,” he said, noting his dad’s interest in the subject as well. “We were kids in a candy store in terms of the technology.”

He wrote down everything into a journal, drew pictures of what he saw, presented to the class, and settled down with his classmates to watch the big launch at 11:38 a.m.

The next 73 seconds would cement itself into millions of American children’s minds.

“We all sat there in our classroom, watched it take off and you know, obviously the rest is just unfortunate history,” the 46-year-old governor said in an interview with the Monitor 35 years after that day. “It was just shocking.”

That morning unfolded with a jolting progression of emotions. Students cheered when the shuttle took off. Yet even when the screen became a picture of carnage – a ball of fire and a jagged plume of smoke – many kept hope alive, Sununu recalled. At first: maybe it was just the solid rocket booster breaking off. Later: Maybe the astronauts had ejected safely into the Atlantic Ocean.

“And then, my gosh, it was about 10 seconds later, it was like ‘oh no, this is a catastrophic failure.’ ”

It took hours for the school, and the country, to fully come to terms with the tragedy.

“It was like a year of build up, of excitement,” he said. “And to end it – it wasn’t just a moment of tragedy, it was the build that led to it, which I think took everybody by shock. Not just the whole country but especially us kids here in New Hampshire that were watching this hero of ours.”

For Sununu, though, McAuliffe’s tragedy wasn’t the end of his fascination with science and engineering – it was more like the beginning. From space camp to the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a charter school in Fairfax, Va., to his environmental engineering degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sununu said he was inspired by the attention McAuliffe’s pursuit had brought to the sciences. He wasn’t alone.

“It was this very heroic thing,” he said. “After the tragedy, that doesn’t just go away. Those feelings of that inspiration just really stick with you for a lifetime. And that’s why we still talk about it today.”

Earlier in the day, he tweeted about McAuliffe.

“Today, we remember her bravery, passion and commitment to teaching, and service to our  country.”

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