Thanks to United Space Alliance manager Mary Burgess for sending me the following:

The accident happened just after a major contract transition. Loral, then Ford Aerospace, and IBM lost the STSOC work to the Rockwell/Unisys/Allied Signal team. As a new Unisys employee responsible for systems performance analysis in the Mission Control Center, I was in a major training and transition team meeting all morning. My sister called me to let me know she had just heard that the Space Shuttle had exploded and wanted me to tell her it was a mistake. I told her it had to be.... How horrible to find out that it was true; we really didn't think we were launching that morning due to the cold. To this day, I still get the chills when I think about the crew; the graceful, powerful ship; and the human mistakes that destroyed them... Such a loss.