The following is an original production of WTCI.

That is one of those tremendous tragedies that becomes so personal tragedy becomes so public that no one can be prepared for that.

So how did this amazing woman deal with such an intensely personal, yet public tragedy, and how did she turn it into something truly positive for children around the world?

Find out as this week I sit down with Dr. June Scobee Rodgers, June Scobee Rodgers.

She may be best known to many as the wife of Dick Scobee, who was tragically killed in the space shuttle Challenger explosion.

But as you will see, there is so much more that defines this very special woman.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, she spent much of her youth moving around the southeast in early childhood.

She found inspiration from a teacher that would one day become an integral part of her life's work.

And as a teen, she met the man she would later marry, Dick Scobee.

June, welcome to the A-list.

Thank you so much for joining us.

It's my pleasure.

Thank you.

Thank you.

When did you know you wanted to be a teacher?

I think at first grade, we didn't have kindergarten all those years ago back there with the dinosaurs.

But first grade, I loved that teacher.

And I saw how we could change the perspective of these youngsters as they learned to read.

And I had I was I could already read.

So the first thing that Ms.. Gosset did was to get me to help the other youngsters learn to read.

And it was it was so much fun.

And I felt I felt empowered that I could be a teacher.

And from that moment on, I was all about wanting to be a teacher.

And I understand you've taught literally every grade level from kindergarten through college.

Yes.

I started teaching in high school.

And then every time my husband, who was in the military, was assigned to a new city, I took on a new job.

So wherever we went, I took on the opening for that year.

So I taught all the grade levels in middle school and high school.

And then once I was working on a Ph.D. at Texas A&M University, then I got into the reading programs and early education program.

So I taught the earlier programs.

Once I had the Ph.D.s at college, students at the university and.

And your next question is, which do I like best?

Yes, I love them all.

I love them all.

I was fortunate to have a job wherever we went, but I love teaching every grade level and every one of them has a story.

Now, when did you first meet Dick Scobee?

Ah.

Dick Scobee and I met as teenagers, so I was a senior in high school, and he came to my church on a it was it was in the fall and he came to a hayride and a friend introduced us and we went out on that hayride.

And at night we gathered around a fire that was being built for roasting hot, making hot dogs and marshmallows.

And he and I slipped off and started talking about the stars.

Well, I had been mesmerized about the stars the heavens for the longest, and he was aware of astronomy.

So we began that conversation as teenagers.

He was 18.

I was 16 at the time, and we grew a friendship.

And within a few months we married.

Oh, wow.

So we were very young teenagers when we married.

Where did you first live?

That I met him in San Antonio.

He was enlisted in the Air Force.

He worked on engines for reciprocal engines.

He was a mechanic for those airplanes.

After two years, a few garage apartments and their first child born, the young family made the move west for Dick.

It was a scholarship in aerospace engineering that lay ahead the first move towards fulfilling his dream of becoming a pilot.

And for June, time to pursue the education needed to achieve her dream as well.

Now, was that important to you.

In those early years, talking about your dreams, but also the way you're going to balance those out so that each of you could could accomplish those steps independently, but as a as a family unit.

It's just all in the timing of what you want to do.

Education was so important to me.

I knew it would help to take me out of this life of poverty that I had lived in.

And I wanted I wanted the education.

And I think that's what attracted me and Dick to each other, is that we both were had this burning desire to to go to college.

And we together started at San Antonio Community College to a community college.

And, you know, we studied, we helped each other.

I would take a turn at math and he would take a turn in English and we'd help each other out.

We had we had fun those early years.

So Dick was a pilot for a good many years.

And before he actually got into space travel.

He was a pilot for about ten years.

And those last few years he was stationed at Edwards Air Force Base.

He was assigned as a test pilot.

So they had the school there, the test pilot school, and then he was assigned as a test pilot and he flew fascinating airplanes, then all a whole variety of different airplanes ending up flying the X24.

The X24 is a prototype for the space shuttle, for the orbiter.

And one day he came home with an ad out of the Los Angeles Times and said, Look at this.

They need new astronauts to fly the shuttle.

And I said, But you told me that you would be an astronaut because you were too tall, you six two.

And he said, well, they've changed the height restrictions for the shuttle.

And because in the Apollo capsules, you had to be a shorter person.

So I said, Well, I think you should try for it.

You never know unless you try.

Well, there were thousands and thousands of people that applied for that position.

They narrowed it down to a few hundred and he filled out the application and went for all the physical testing.

And the interviews, came home from Houston and said, Oh, there were brilliant people, brilliant people who applied for this job.

I, I, there's no way they'll want me.

But within a few weeks, they called him and asked him if he was still interested in the job.

And so with a new job offer on the table, June became the wife of an astronaut.

The goals and hopes the couple had worked towards for so many years finally began unfolding before them, moving their two teenagers to Houston, Texas.

Dick Scobee flew his first successful mission into space to repair a satellite.

And as he stepped into the role of commander preparing for his second mission, NASA launched an initiative to send a civilian into space.

Our dreams were fulfilled.

I became a teacher, and Dick was now not just a pilot, but an astronaut.

And they made the decision it would be a teacher.

And they had this major competition to find the teacher who would fly in space.

And after they had selected ten finalists, Dick Scobee came home one day and kind of plunked his briefcase down and he said, What do you think about the teacher flying on my mission?

It's good.

It was so exciting.

It was so exciting.

I jumped as high that day as I did the day it was announced that he would be an astronaut.

It was fantastic.

And then as time went on and it was narrowed down to Christa and Barbara morgan is the backup they came to into our home and we got to know them and we were all abuzz while these guys were off talking about flying airplanes.

Chris and I were talking about teaching school, and I learned all about her being a history teacher.

And she was fascinating, amazing and the perfect teacher to teach history.

Chris and I talked about how she would write a diary for and take on on board the the Challenger and and keep records about what it was like to be a teacher on board.

She started her diary prior to the mission and she was going to keep it during that time and afterwards.

So I was I was thrilled about her idea.

But NASA wanted her to conduct some scientific experiments.

So that's when she and I began talking about what she could do regarding science in space.

And I got all excited about that and helped some of her reviewers with what her lessons would be.

So it was a combination.

I mean, if we ever met all of the all of the crew, Chris and I had our own mission that we were working on.

It was exciting to get to know them all and to love them.

Several education initiatives had been planned, like lessons taught by Christa McAuliffe via TV from orbit, as well as the return of millions of tomato seeds that had been on board a satellite.

Seeds that would be distribute it to schoolchildren all over the United States and in dozens of foreign countries for student experiments.

However, those lessons would have to wait.

On the day of liftoff, the Challenger crew was lost.

Were you at all nervous, though, as his wife?

Well, yes.

Dick Scobee and I talked about the rigors of being a pilot and then an astronaut early on before he became a test pilot.

And it was a difficult conversation.

And we talked about life and death.

We talked about what's important in life and really wrestled with what are we all about in our lives?

And anything worthwhile in life is a risk.

Even going to a job at a desk, driving down the interstate, You're in a car and that would be a great could be a risk as well.

More people are lost in automobile accidents than in airplanes.

So we we wrestled with those ideas and and accepted them.

And he had served in Vietnam.

And that was a risk.

It was a part of of our life and what and what we accepted.

And and he loved it.

So much.

He loved the opportunity to fly.

That was his dream back when we met.

And I was talking about being a teacher.

He was he was dreams into child early, very young, was to be a pilot.

So we accepted those as risks.

And that was calculated and was important.

I needed to love him enough to let him do what was important to him.

With all that said, though, could that have prepared you at all or on any level for what happened on January 28th, 1986?

I don't I don't think there's any way you can be prepared for an accident that people saw around the world.

You know, I at one point I taught Shakespeare, and I remember learning about the Greek tragedies and that there there are individual tragedies in our lives.

Any time you lose a loved one or illness or accidents, but when something reaches to across cultures and around nations to to people around the world, that is one of those tremendous tragedies that become so personal tragedies become so public that no one can be prepared for that.

It was it was difficult for all of the families to lose our loved ones in such a public tragic accident.

And then it was even more difficult to see it being repeated again and again on television for months and years and even now nearly 25 years.

There's always a story about it.

And and you see, once again, you're taken it.

It's you're surprised every time.

And it's like going back to the day of that accident when you see once again that it was solid rocket boosters screaming off on their own and the solid and this and the and it's still difficult to talk about it, but to see the the orbiter exploding in midair and knowing that you've lost your soulmate and all of your friends, and to turn then to their families and turn to your own children and try to explain it and to and know you hope it's a hopeless situation to know and and all you have is your faith that somehow we'll make our way through this.

This and make their way through.

They did establishing engaging education centers across the United States and the world, offering teachers and students lessons designed with each community in mind.

I had talked to the families about it's so difficult to speak to the public about the accident unless we can build something positive from it.

And we began talking about can we build a simulation experience for children so that they can continue the mission?

And that's what I wanted to say to the public is, is please don't remember them as they died.

Remember them for what they were living for, for their dreams, for their mission.

And that's when I asked them, Can we talk to the families?

Can we build a simulation experience so that everyone, especially their children, can see how these people lived and what they were willing to risk their lives for?

When did the first Challenger Center open?

Two years later and two years after the accident, we opened the first Challenger Center in Houston and the Houston Museum of Science.

It was greater than my dream, and we knew that would have some kind of mission control and some kind of shuttle.

But then we were thinking the future.

We thought it should be a space station.

So it evolved to be a space craft.

And and then with the teachers, the educators and the museum developers, it grew into this marvelous simulation experience that we had imagined but not fulfilled, fulfilled our dream much better.

Yes.

Today there are how many Challenger centers around the country?

Well, there are 50 challenger learning centers all over our across our country, one in Canada, one in England, at the University of Leicester, and one in South Korea.

In Seoul.

How does that make you feel?

I mean, to know that that that one kind of nugget of inspiration has turned into something that certainly is impacting lives of children and families across the world.

Oh, my goodness.

How does it make me feel?

I think the Challenger crew would be proud that their mission continues.

And I think especially Christa McAuliffe would like that.

Lessons are being taught that she didn't have the opportunity to teach.

But this outreach was so involved now in STEM education, science, technology, engineering, math that we are fulfilling this need in our nation.

The learning centers in all of these various cities are created based on the needs of the community and whether they're built on a university campus or built at a museum or at a school or on their own, they each fulfill the need that community.

They all have the same programs in the same simulator, but they they have different objectives.

Some are more involved in helping teachers with a special curriculum and instruction and programing.

Some are more involved with opening the doors to masses of children coming to a museum.

But every child that walks away has the same experience of an opportunity to do something that the Challenger crew loved so much, and that was to fly their mission in space and be challenged to work together as a team to solve problems and learn some science and math along the way.

What do you hope that students learn from these centers that when they walk away, once as diverse as their experiences might be, what's the underlying lesson that they learn when they walk out of one of those places?

The reward that I've had and hearing from these youngsters is that they tell me that they learned to do something hard, that they experience at a simulation that was tough, but they solve the problems and they're rewarded by their success.

Another lesson that's important to me is they come away with these experiences that open doors in their minds about a career that they might want to go into.

A quarter of a century has passed since the Challenger explosion.

The families of the astronauts became close.

The children have grown up and life continues.

On June, eventually remarried.

A few years after this tragedy.

You actually had kind of a renewal of life.

Yes.

Tell me about meeting your current husband.

Well, I met Dick Scobee at a church hayride, and I met Don Rogers at an Easter Sunrise service at Arlington National Cemetery.

And Dick Scobee was buried there.

And Don's first wife, Fay Rogers, had died.

And suddenly and she had her service there at Arlington.

And during that day, that Easter, it was a bit brisk and cool up in Washington, D.C., But one of our mutual friends had an idea to go for a walk on the Potomac River.

And Don and I became acquainted with each other.

I learned about the loss of his wife and their great love and his their son.

And I told him about Texaco because he said all of the Pentagon rested on the day of the loss of Challenger with a prayer.

They took moments aside to pray for the families.

So he said, not even knowing you, I prayed for you and the others.

And and he said that day, my loss for my wife was tremendous.

But I'm so happy that she didn't have to share, you know, losses so public like yours.

And we bonded in friendship that day.

And he was a great friend.

And over the next few months, we kind of our friendship grew in the shelter of each other.

I needed a good friend and he needed someone as well.

And the more we talked, the more I think friendship grew to love.

And he is a delight in my life and everyone who meets him.

And if the truth be known as I think Dick Scobee and Fay Rogers met up in heaven and and brought us together.

If Dick's Kirby could see the work that you've done, how would he react?

Dick Scobee was always proud of my accomplishments.

He would be humble about the attention to him and the crew and kind of kick rocks, you know, modestly and be humble.

But he he would be proud of my work.

And I know one of the reasons I'll tell you why is that all those years I waited while he got his he finished his degree first.

And then when it was my turn to finish and I got the did and he was already an astronaut, he went to my graduation ceremony with me and when we came home, he took a little black paintbrush and on our mailbox he rode out Mister and Dr. Scobee.

So which was a big surprise, and showed his pride in what we accomplished and what we accomplished together.

Yes, we were.

We were soul mates.

And so a part of me and what I do is all about his love and joy.

And we share that.

We still share that he's still part of me.

Well, I'll just say that one of my favorite quotes that I've heard is one that you've said, and that is I touch the future, I teach and I feel so, so blessed to have been taught by you today.

I feel like I have learned so much about you and also the space program and the importance of of exploration for our kids.

And just thank you.

Thank you for the mission that you've continued, not only in your husband's memory, but also on behalf of our entire nation.

And thank you for joining us today.

Oh, Alison, you're delightful.

Thank you.

Forever.

The teacher and torchbearer honoring the memory of those who are lost, opening the door to help develop inquisitive minds and showing all that even the sky has no limit.

June Scobee Rodgers resides in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with her husband, Don.

She's expanded her role in life beyond the classroom, authoring two books, appearing at speaking engagements around the nation and continuing her work with the Challenger Centers.

Be sure to join me next week as I sit down with Dancing with the Stars sensation Maksim Chmerkovskiy.

The 14 will move to the United States.

And I quickly realize that this is an opportune moment.

You know, you change your life.

This is the place to capitalize on on entrepreneurship and, you know, ability to venture out and start your own something and figure something out.

So I'm Allison Leibovitz.

See you then.