College GameDay recalls the deadliest sporting tragedy in U. S. history, when the Marshall plane crashed after a game against East Carolina on Nov. 14, 1970. (1:38)
GREENVILLE, N. C. – Dwight Flanagan can still see the faces. He resorted to old game systems and racked his brains to put faces with names.
He just can’t do it.
It’s been nearly 53 years since Flanagan went to the midfield for the draft as one of East Carolina’s captains on this chilly Saturday afternoon. He shook hands with Marshall’s captains, listened to the instructions of the head referee, and returned to the field.
“For 60 minutes, you play against those guys, you hit your head, you do everything you can to beat them and we have a chance to win a very close game,” Flanagan said, his voice solemn but firm.
“And then you hear the terrible news later that night, news that still eats away at you today, all those years later, that those guys got on a plane and never came back. “
Thanks to this tragedy of November 14, 1970, East Carolina and Marshall will be linked. The other 75 people aboard a DC-9 chartered by Southern Airways carrying Marshall players, coaches and enthusiasts died as the plane returned from a 17-14 loss. The ECU crashed into a hill surrounding Tri-State Airport in Kenova, West Virginia. It was the deadliest sports-related air crisis in U. S. history.
“I was 6 years old when the plane crashed, a few miles from my home, and my cousins were the first responders,” Marshall President Brad D said. Smith. ” I the shining mountain and the sky that lit up at night. And then, of course, hearing all the sirens and all that. It’s just amazing how private Marshall’s story is to everyone. “
On Saturday, the enduring bond between the schools sparked deep-seated feelings and some tears as another 38,211 people gathered at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium. After a one-hour, 41-minute weather wait at halftime, Marshall scored 21 unanswered points. in the fourth quarter for a 31-13 victory.
But the end result is almost an afterthought. More than 30 East Carolina players from the 1970 game returned to campus to pay tribute to their war-torn sides more than a century ago. (A similar rite planned for fall 2020, 50 years after the accident, still canceled due to COVID-19. )Some of those players hadn’t returned in decades.
“I’m not recovering yet, I’m not sure I’ll ever get over it,” said George Whitley, senior co-captain and defensive back of the 1970 ECU team. “I think I came back here for a game, another time, but I wasn’t going to miss it. “
On Marshall’s side, it was the first time Red Dawson had returned since the 1970 game. Dawson, the Thundering Herd defensive coordinator, did not board the team plane that night and instead headed to Ferrum College in Virginia for a draft stopover with first-year coach Gail. Parker, who had flown with the team but swapped seats with the assistant coach. “Deke” Brackett, who had traveled to Greenville with Dawson.
As the rain began to fall Saturday, Dawson, 80, conscientiously stepped into the box and called a timeout in the first quarter. The players on the 1970 East Carolina team presented him with a game ball that everyone had signed. Dawson pointed to each of them, nodded, and uttered the words “Thank you. “
Dawson, who still lives in Huntington, West Virginia, is a central figure in the 2006 film “We Are Marshall. “He and his wife, Sharon, flew to Greenville for the game last weekend after visiting the South Carolina coast. Dawson was only 28 when the twist of fate occurred, which is rarely much older than most of the players he coached. For more than 30 years, he said, he couldn’t escape the horror of it all and necessarily ended up in a shell.
“Damn, I didn’t need to see anyone or communicate with anyone, let alone communicate about that game or not forget anything about it. I just couldn’t,” said Dawson, who is still recovering from a stroke. 3 years ago. ” I think I attended 27 funerals. You can’t believe this kind of pain, seeing all those families who have lost the people they enjoyed the most.
“It’s hard to come back here. I didn’t know if I would ever make it. “
Dawson, dressed in his white Marshall sweater, recalled over and over again what it would be like to walk on this box. Some of the anguish he had intentionally locked up returned.
But not everything. He kept his brain alert over the weekend. When told he was much more handsome than actor Matthew Fox, who played him in the film, Dawson smiled wryly and said, “Now I know you’re. . . you’re me off. “
Just before Saturday’s kick-off, Dawson stood by the finish area with Sharon by his side and looked a hundred yards in the other direction towards the visitors’ dressing room. Just outside the stadium, on this side, there is a commemorative plaque installed. in 2006 to honor the Thundering Herd of 1970. La plaque reads in part: “Their flight into eternity replaced the lives of those who deeply enjoyed them. . . They will live in the hearts of their families and friends. “
Marshall’s management invited Red and Sharon Dawson to attend the game last weekend.
“But he doesn’t, not this game or this one,” SharonArray
It turned out that Marshall’s plane had difficulty landing at the Greenville airport the Friday before the game due to storms in the area. The plane turned around the airport and diverted to Richmond, Virginia, to refuel before returning to Greenville.
Dawson stayed at the hotel with the team, and when he and Sharon retired to the room that night, they turned on the TV and “We Are Marshall” played.
“Now we see it every year,” Sharon said. Red gets to the position where the screen goes black [when the plane descends] before he starts crying. “
Due to the long wait due to weather conditions, most of Saturday’s crowd had already left when the second part resumed. Red and Sharon held on as long as they could, and Marshall’s coach, Charles Huff, reminded his players what this game was. Too much.
“We told the team before the game that honor depends on how you do something,” Huff said.
Saturday’s win is Marshall’s first in Greenville in 8 attempts.
KEITH MOREHOUSE, whose father Gene died in the crash, also won a fit ball at the ceremony. Gene, the radio voice of Thundering Herd and the team’s sports news director in 1970. His son followed in his footsteps, as Keith is the veteran sportsman. director of WSAZ-TV, NBC’s Huntington affiliate.
It was only the sixth ECU-Marshall game in Greenville since the 1970 crash, and Morehouse had noticed some of the past matchups. During one of those trips, he was able to climb into the visiting team’s former broadcast booth.
“All the stands were redone with the stadium expansion, but they took me back to where Dad would have been when he announced his last game,” Morehouse said. “The footprint of the stadium is the same as in 1970, so when you enter the field, the mind runs over you. “
A few years ago, some ECU players from the 1970 team sent Morehouse the original movie of the game, and his colleagues at the TV station merged the audio of his father’s radio call with the movie of the game.
Morehouse won the Edward R. Murrow Regional Award for Best News Documentary in 2020 with his feature film “A Change of Seasons: Fifty Novembers Ago. “He interviewed some of the ECU actors for this play and was impressed by the effect it had. in them.
“I guess we all cry in other ways,” said Morehouse, whose wife, Debbie, lost her parents in the crash.
His father, Ray Hagley, team doctor and only 34 years old at the time of his death. Her mother, Shirley, flew with her husband for the first time, without their six children. Many enthusiasts on board the plane were among the highlights. community leaders. Eighteen young men were orphaned after losing either parent in the robbery.
Morehouse, 62, still has a photo of that component of the stands.
“You can make out some members of the family circle and you can see my wife’s father in one of the photos,” he said.
Dawson, who never returned to training after the 1972 preseason, blocked much of what happened 53 years ago. Some memories you don’t need and others you feel relieved that you can’t because of the effects of your stroke.
What he remembers of that game 53 years ago, like the ECU players, are the faces of Marshall’s players as they left the field. He remembers some enthusiasts mingling in the locker room. And yes, remember being irritated by that defeat.
“We’ve won that damn game,” Dawson said with a grimace. “That’s what everyone thought. “
But a football game was the last thing Dawson thought of hours later, when he and Parker returned to the car after visiting a prospect. They were listening to the car radio when they heard the news.
“Shock, general shock,” he said Dawson. No I know where we were or what time it was. I just know that we stopped the car, sat there and looked at the others. None of us can say a word. We just watch. It may not say how long. It seemed like an eternity.
Back in Greenville, ECU coach Mike McGee rushed into the dormitory late at night yelling at everyone to gather at the student center for an impromptu meeting.
“Many of us were downtown looking for a beer, as were most of the students. We were celebrating. We didn’t win a lot of games that season,” said Richard Peeler, the defensive tackle for every conference. “When Coach McGee after all brought us all together that night, we broke down. “
Rusty Scales remembers being summoned through a graduate assistant, and for him, the news hit him hard. Scales, a running back on that ECU team, played football in New Jersey high school against Marshall quarterback Teddy Shoebridge and running back Art Harris. He played at Passaic Valley High, Harris at Passaic High and Shoebridge at Lyndhurst High.
“I stood there with Teddy for a few minutes, talking about the coaches and other people we knew in New Jersey, some of the best school teams,” Scales recalls. “We’ve talked enough that our coaches canceled us. “the box and in the locker room.
“And so, you hear he’s gone, all of them. You just couldn’t do it. “
The ECU team held a memorial service early the next morning in the campus’ Wright Auditorium. The Pirates’ season is over, but Marshall still had a game to play against Ohio University this weekend.
McGee, who died in 2019, in his only season at East Carolina as a coach before moving to Duke. He called Peeler at his workplace Monday morning after the twist of fate to find out what he thought of ECU replacing Marshall on his last scheduled shift. Game in honor of the players and coaches who lost their lives.
“We were going to wear their uniforms and any source of revenue we got would have gone to Marshall, but the NCAA wouldn’t let us,” Peel said. “We were just looking for tactics to do everything we could to help. “
As the SATURDAY GAME approached, the players and coaches who participated in that 1970 game weren’t the only ones with full brains and tight hearts.
Shoebridge’s older brother, Tom Shoebridge, had to avoid several times to recover as he recalled his last verbal phone exchange with his brother. Tom, who now spends most of his time on the shores of New Jersey, couldn’t make Greenville, but he touched some ECU players a few years ago.
“Give those guys a big hug. In Jersey we don’t shake hands. We kissed,” said Shoebridge, who retired in 2019 after more than 40 years of education in athletics, boxing and soccer at the top school at his alma mater, the same school he attended. Falleció. Su brother Teddy played soccer and baseball.
On Sundays, when Teddy was at Marshall’s house, he would call home and meet from home. Tom said he, his younger brother Terry and their parents would pass the phone to reach him.
“It was either that or writing letters. We also couldn’t get through for long, because the calls we were getting were expensive,” Tom said. “But I won’t forget he asked me about one of our biggest wins at top school, ‘I need to know everything about our game and how excited he was for me. It was never about him. “
With a broken voice, Tom added, “I didn’t know this would be the last time I would communicate with him. “
Whenever Tom learns that Marshall is going to play in East Carolina, he says he takes it to November 14, 1970.
“Sometimes it’s a smart position,” Tom said. I think about many, many things. As a coach, I think about the kids on that plane. They just lost a tough game. As a brother, I think about Teddy and what he thought before he died. “
Senior defensive end Owen Porter is Marshall’s defensive leader and one of the most productive players in the Sun Belt Conference. Saturday’s game was his first vacation in Greenville. His grandparents, Don and Joyce Hampton, lived less than a mile from the crash site in Kenova. . Ever since he was a little boy, he had heard stories about that fateful night and how the network had bonded together.
“They were living in a little white brick space at the time,” Porter said. “When the plane hit the mountain, it shook walls, knocked down paintings, shook items on shelves and damaged glass and other items on the ground.
“Marshall is who I am. It’s mine and my family’s. . . always. “
Julia Keller, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, born and raised in Huntington. His father was a math instructor at Marshall and kept statistics on football and basketball games. Keller would still be a child.
“I imagined myself as the queen of the global and I could sit there, in the press gallery and in the press gallery, and, my God, I knew Gene Morehouse,” Keller recalls. “My father and I shared a love of the sport, and I know this twist of fate affected him deeply because he knew a lot of those players and had them in class, and he also knew the other people in the village who were killed.
Shortly after accepting a position at the Chicago Tribune, Keller convinced his editors to allow him to write an article about the 1999 accident. He spent more than a month working there, and one of the things that caught his attention the most was a stopover he did. the mother of Teddy Shoebridge, who is dying of pancreatic cancer.
“I got excited and played a lot when I went. She hadn’t been lifted out of bed in months,” said Keller, who was thirteen when the plane crashed. “He came out into the living room, we sat around the table and communicated. “She essentially left her deathbed to communicate about her beloved son. “
Shoebridge’s mother died a few weeks after Keller’s story was published. When Keller learned Marshall was playing in East Carolina this season, she immediately thought of that rainy, misty night as that of a frightened 13-year-old woman and the indescribable pain feeding off her hometown.
“It’s changing, pain,” Keller said. It starts from a very, very sharp edge, but I say it always decreases. “
Earl Taylor, drummer and member of the band ECU in 1970. Su wife, Pam, who joined the Flag Corps the following year, also participated in the game in the stands. Taylor earned 3 grades from the ECU and, to this day, he has a hard time perceiving the fact that he saw those players leave the field, but they never returned home.
“I think everyone on our campus thinks the same thing: ‘We just played this team and now they’re gone,'” Taylor said. “We won the game, but they lost their lives.
“It’s simply possible. “
When the last of Marshall’s players left the locker room for the team buses Saturday, the rain had almost stopped. Caleb McMillan, a junior receiver from Orlando, Florida, walked out the door with his headphones on his head. to his left and faced the plaque commemorating his Herd footballer brothers from more than 50 years ago. He took a picture with his cell phone and gently put his hand on the plate.
“We may not forget,” he said quietly.
It was McMillan’s 75-yard landing, another tribute to “75,” that turned the game in Marshall’s favor.
But on this rainy night, it’s little more than a footnote.