Ex-Kennewick teacher escaped death in the Challenger explosion. At 95, she still embraces life

Wanda Hamilton could have died in the tragic 1986 Challenger Shuttle explosion, except by a fortunate turn of fate she wasn’t on board.

She was never selected to be the first teacher in space. She was only a runner-up — a near miss that saved her life.

It was the early 1980s when Hamilton, a former Kennewick High School teacher, heard on the news that NASA was looking for candidates to apply for its Teacher in Space Project. Hamilton could not resist the offer.

“I just wanted to see what was up there,” Hamilton said recently in an interview with the Herald.

As part of her application, she researched space travel and put together a lesson plan that she could teach from the shuttle.

When NASA ultimately didn’t choose her out of the more than 11,000 teachers who applied, Hamilton was disappointed, but she didn’t dwell on the rejection.

The Challenger exploded during its launch on January 28, 1986, killing everyone on board, including the person who was chosen ahead of Hamilton to be part of the shuttle crew, civilian teacher Christa McAuliffe.

Hamilton heard about the tragedy from a friend. She said that all she could do was thank God it wasn’t her. Her family and friends also called to tell her how thankful they were she was safe.

Hamilton never found out exactly how close she was to being on that shuttle. But she said she was never scared of going to space; she only saw it as an opportunity for another adventure.

Still adventurous

She turned 95 last Wednesday, and her sense of adventure hasn’t changed.

Her house in Richland is a collection of foreign treasures from her world travels. It’s brimming with kitsch oddities, like taxidermied animals, marionettes, Chinese rugs, brass instruments and chandeliers.

“I like different things, different clothes, different things in the house,” she said. “That’s my nature — different.”

She also likes doing things that haven’t been done before. That’s what drove her to want to be the first civilian astronaut, and to be the first female teacher in the Tri-Cities to wear trousers.

She said she lives by the phrase “nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

“Try! Try! All they can say is no,” she said. “And that’s the way I have lived.”

Since the Challenger disaster, Hamilton has taught in China, Germany and Russia. She was a public speaker on the art of public speaking for years before earning a doctorate degree in leadership studies in her 80s.

NASA will soon be putting its first woman on the moon with the Artemis program, and Hamilton is glad that women are breaking new ground.

“Things you think are impossible and you want to do them, do them,” she said.