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Challenger Seven deserve honor of being on $20 bill : News
Thank you for your front-page article “A woman on the $20 bill?” (April 18).
While all four women proposed by the advocacy group “Women on 20s” to replace President Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill are worthy candidates, an even better idea would be to depict the crew of the space shuttle Challenger that exploded during liftoff on Jan. 28, 1986.
The Challenger Seven — Gregory Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Dick Scobee and Michael J. Smith — were collectively a cross-section of the very best of America. The two women and five men were diverse in their geographic and socioeconomic backgrounds (McNair, for instance, grew up in poverty as an African-American in the segregated South before becoming a renowned physicist and astronaut), their faiths (Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Baha’i), their professional backgrounds (test pilot, engineer, physicist, teacher) and their ancestral heritage (African-American, Asian-American, Irish- and Arab-American, etc.). Yet they were all brilliant, supremely accomplished, and were working together for the unifying goal of exploring space and pursuing science for the benefit of America and humankind.
They embodied this nation’s remarkable diversity, its promise of unlimited opportunity and, quite literally, its highest aspirations.
Source: www.stltoday.com
McCaulfe was an Arab American who was tragically killed.