What Goes Up Boston and Chicago. The movie grossed $5,290 in its opening weekend. Upon arriving in Concord, New Hampshire in January 1986 to cover the hometown hooplah for the looming Space Shuttle "Challenger" launch where Concord teacher Christa McAuliffe is among the mission's crew, reporter Campbell Babbitt (Steve Coogan) decides to call an old college friend, only to discover an apparent suicide. Babbitt, who has his own ethical baggage, gravitates toward his friend's high-school students in hopes of finding an unsung hero story about a teacher who made a permanent impact on the social misfits of the school. Instead, he discovers a
Christa McAuliffe (1922–1990) of Irish descent and Grace Mary Corrigan ( 1924-2018 ) (née George), a substitute teacher, whose father was of Lebanese Maronite descent. McAuliffe was a great niece of Lebanese-American historian Philip Khuri Hitti. She was known by her middle name from an early age, although in later years she signed her name "S. Christa Corrigan", and eventually "S. Christa McAuliffe". The year she was born, her father was completing his sophomore year at Boston College. Not long thereafter, he took a job as an assistant comptroller in a Boston department store, and they moved to Framingham, Massachusetts, where she