Big Bird, Carroll, and Christa: Just Because.
The yellow feathered bird would’ve been perfect for space.
At least, that’s what NASA thought in the early 80’s. Children weren’t interested in Space like their parents and grandparents in the sixties. Big deal, we went on the moon! However, a bird has never traveled into space. Why not the biggest bird of them all?
That, of course, would be Big Bird. When one watches the pilot episode of Sesame Street, you see Gordon walking a little girl named Sally to the neighborhood. Children of all colors are playing on the stoop, or eating at Hooper’s. Then we have this orange guy who was very very grouchy who was fond of the word “Scram!” Then we have Big Bird, a little slow, but he likes kids. This wasn’t Howdy Doody time. This was Sesame Street.
It was Carroll Spinney who was fitted into the orange legs and feet belonging to the legendary bird,then had to have a harness and stilts so Spinney could walk around. in the costume. He was also Oscar, who became green but still grouchy. It wasn’t a surprise that Big Bird and Oscar by 1979 incredibly popular. Yet if the man who played them both walked down the street, it was doubtful anyone would’ve given him a second glance.
So it seemed natural that NASA wanted Big Bird to go up in space. The possibilities were endless. What an incredibly teaching tool this would be for children! Not only could humans go up to space, birds could go too. Plus there would be different types of people Big Bird would be in space with, which meant they all had to work together as a team to get things done. They would be a bit different than him because well, they’re people who didn’t have feathers. Still, the possibilities were endless. Carroll Spinney agreed. It was almost meant to be: The show started the same year Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. One small step for bird, one giant step for the Street!
But logistics got in the way. Quite simply,Big Bird’s eight foot two inch costume wasn’t able to fit in the shuttle. If something happened to the costume during the trip, it risked ruining the costume, plus if children were watching, scaring them. Not Big Bird! NASA broke the news to Spinney that Big Bird was too big for NASA. He understood and was gracious about not going. He later found out they were doing a country wide search to find someone else to take his place: A teacher.
On January 28, 1986, Spinney was on the Sesame Street set when they started watching the coverage of the shuttle going to space on the monitors.They watched the shuttle go off in the perfect blue sky,hearing things like “Full Throttle” then it exploded in an Y formed cloud. All Spinney could think was oh God, all those children watching this. The woman who took his place was Christa McAuliffe. If they had figured out a way to get the costume on the shuttle, he would’ve been up there, McAuliffe watching it in her high school classroom in New Hampshire. But he was in Brooklyn, wearing his Big Bird outfit. It had one benefit: if he cried, no one would be able to see him do it.
The Challenger news wasn’t revealed until a 2015 documentary I Am Big Bird profiling Spinney came out. After watching it, I went through the next couple of days stunned. It hit me again a couple of months later during the 30th anniversary of the Challenger explosion. How was it that because the Big Bird costume was so heavy, Spinney’s life was saved? And that because of sheer luck, McAuliffe was chosen? Why? Of course, I remembered the most important episode Sesame Street did years before.
One day while all the human grownups are talking, Big Bird gives them portraits he’s drawn of them. But the thing is, he can’t find Mr. Hooper. Where was he? They gently reminded Big Bird that Mr. Hooper died (Will Lee who played Hooper died of cancer the year before) and also told him when someone dies, they aren’t coming back. They’re dead. It’s unfair, boy it’s unfair. Big Bird didn’t understand why it had to be like this. Why did people have to die? Why did Mr. Hooper have to die? It was Gordon who told him this: “Just because.”
It wasn’t a magical solution, not a religious one. Sometimes life simply didn’t make sense, be it Mr. Hooper dying or later on Jim Henson dying as well. But one had to keep going. And again, it was one I understood while thinking about the Challenger: Just because.