Public speaking and I are not friends.

In fact, I dread it. Perhaps fear is a better word choice.

Public speaking joins needles, clowns and marionettes, calamari and the Hallmark Channel in my personal pantheon of things to avoid. At. All. Costs.

Unfortunately, my college major required a course in public speaking.

I thought I had successfully blocked out the ordeal until earlier this month when news came of the passing of Allan McDonald.

McDonald, 83, died March 6 in Utah after a fall, according to his obituary in “The New York Times.”

McDonald, as reported by Howard Berkes of National Public Radio, working for National Aeronautics and Space Administration contractor Morton Thiokol was in charge of the towering fuel-filled rockets that propelled space shuttles into, well, space.

McDonald was in Florida for the launch of Challenger.

McDonald’s job, Berkes writes, “was to sign and submit an official form. Sign the form, he believed, and he’d risk the lives of the seven astronauts set to board the spacecraft the next morning. Refuse to sign, and he’d risk his job, his career and the good life he’d built for his wife and four children.”

McDonald refused to sign the form.

NASA approved the launch over McDonald’s decision.

Challenger exploded 73 seconds, a little more than a minute, after liftoff, Jan. 28, 1986.

All seven astronauts died in an instant.

Clay Risen, who wrote McDonald’s obituary for “The New York Times” described Challenger’s mission as “to be the first to carry a civilian into space, a teacher named Christa McAuliffe.”

I was in public speaking class when one of my classmates started his speech.

“I was one of Christa McAuliffe’s students.”

In memory, my college classmate stands at the front of the classroom. His name now escapes me; however, I remember his hands shaking as he held his note cards.

The rest of his speech, speeches by other classmates, even my own speech for that day’s assignment are forgotten.

“I was one of Christa McAuliffe’s students,” he said.

McAuliffe’s name returned to me with the news of McDonald’s death.

McDonald and engineers on his team “strenuously opposed the launch” of Challenger in January 1986, Berkes writes. The chief concern was low temperatures overnight could compromise O-ring gaskets and explosive fuel powering the rockets would burst out. Ice on the launchpad and shuttle itself damaging the heat tiles on the spaceship also concerned the group.

O-ring failure, Risen writes, “caused one of (Challenger’s) booster rockets to spin out of control.”

McDonald was particularly concerned ice hanging from the launch tower could strike and damage the shuttle’s heat shield made of tiles.

McDonald was not alone.

Morton Thiokol engineer Roger Boisjoly wrote a memo expressing concern in July 1985.

McDonald refused to sign the form and, less than two weeks later, spoke up at a hearing by a presidential commission investigating the explosion.

Berkes describes a NASA official as acquiescing Thiokol engineers had some concerns but approved the launch.

“He neglected to say that the approval came only after Thiokol executives, under intense pressure from NASA officials, overruled the engineers,” Berkes reports.

McDonald refuted the NASA official, recalling, according to Berkes, “So ... I said I think this presidential commission should know that Morton Thiokol was so concerned, we recommended not launching below 53 degrees Fahrenheit. And we put that in writing and sent that to NASA.”

In the aftermath of McDonald’s statement, the inquiry changed focus to include the O-ring gaskets and the heat shield tiles.

The effort to what quickly expiring vernacular might deem “throwing someone under the bus,” that someone being McDonald and other engineers, was reviewed too as were actions of NASA officials and Thiokol executives.

McDonald spoke up but not without repercussions.

According to Berkes, soon after he spoke out at the hearing Thiokol executives demoted McDonald.

Boisjoly, Risen noted, was put on leave.

McDonald, who was later reinstated as a vice president of the company, went on to also lecture on leadership.

Boisjoly did not return to Thiokol, according to Risen’s obituary for McDonald. Boisjoly died in 2012.

Robert Ebeling, another of the engineers who tried to delay the launch, died in 2016. Ebeling openly wept when Challenger exploded, Berkes wrote in his obituary tribute to Ebeling in 2016.

The choice by my fellow public speaking class student to tell his college classmates he was the student of an astronaut added a nuance to the importance of speaking up. Without his choice McDonald’s bravery may not have become another example of the importance of speaking truth to power set by luminary figures such as John Lewis, Elie Weisel, Ida B. Wells, Ai Weiwei, Malala Yousafzai, Misty Copeland, Sophie Cruz, Vernon Jordan, Greta Thunberg, Marsha P. Johnson, Roberto Clemente, Mary Wilson and others too numerous to list.

April Peterson

editorial assistant

East Penn Press

Salisbury Press