John Denver's Deeply Personal 1986 Single Recalls A Tragedy That Was Nearly His Own

Immediately after the space shuttle Challenger disaster in January 1986, John Denver felt a real connection to those on the mission who lost their lives. In the aftermath, he wrote the song, "Flying For Me," saying in an interview that as he watched the coverage of the explosion, "All of a sudden there was this song, and it was certainly my very real experience that they were flying for me ..." He said he hoped that people would hear the song and feel the same way. 

Denver felt a deep connection to the ill-fated shuttle crew, and especially Christa McAulliffe, because he claimed he pitched the idea to NASA for the Space Flight Participant Program, in which private American citizens would go into space with NASA astronauts. In August of 1986, he told Indiana's Chronicle Tribune that in 1983, he called NASA on the phone, as one does, and told them that if they wanted more program funding, "You have to do something that connects people with our space effort. You can do that by sending a private citizen up in space, and I volunteer." 

Denver, the son of an Air Force pilot, had long been a space enthusiast and was ready to go into that final frontier. He even anticipated being the first citizen to go up, it being his idea and all. But he said that President Ronald Reagan had other plans, and in 1984, Reagan announced the Teacher in Space project. Christa McAuliffe was the first educator chosen.

By 1986, Denver's chart-topping success of the '70s had dried up substantially, and "Flying For Me" wasn't a Billboard hit. However, Denver played it at a benefit for the families of the fallen astronauts that raised about $50,000, worth roughly $154,000 in mid-2026, when adjusted for inflation. He did what he could with the song, but he carried guilt over the loss, telling the Chronicle Tribune, "In a sense, I'm responsible for Christa being there. That was my flight ... Obviously, it wasn't my time yet."

The first lines of "Flying For Me" begin with John Denver saying, "Well I guess that you probably know by now / I was one who wanted to fly / I wanted to ride on that arrow of fire right up into heaven." But over the course of the lyrics, the song shifts to focus on the seven who died as a result of the devastating shuttle explosion, and then specifically to Christa McAuliffe: "She was flying for me / She was flying for everyone / She was trying to see a brighter day for each and everyone / She gave us her light / She gave us her spirit and all she can be / She was flying for me."

In a sad twist, while Challenger ended up in the Atlantic Ocean, Denver died on a flight over a different ocean. With Denver's death foreshadowed by his song "Leaving on a Jet Plane," he crashed in the Pacific while piloting his personal aircraft off the coast of California on October 12, 1997.