Unbreakable bond
A tragic past has made the Marshall football program stronger
By Jeff Wilson
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/sport...453827.htm
Thirty-four years disappear in an instant, and the memories of a tragedy return in full detail.
Keith Morehouse was watching The Newlywed Game with his mother and twin sister on Nov. 14, 1970, the day his father died.
Dave Walsh, ineligible to play because he was a freshman, was visiting his roommate at a local hospital that evening, when 37 of his teammates and five of his coaches were killed.
Bob Pruett was a high school coach in northern Virginia when he heard that his friends and former coaches had perished.
Carol Rankin was in nearby Charleston, W.Va., sneaking away from campus with a friend when she heard the news.
The Marshall University football team was returning to Huntington, W.Va., from a game at East Carolina when its plane crashed as it approached Tri-State Airport. All 75 people aboard -- players, coaches, administrators, doctors, boosters and crew -- died in the worst sports-related air tragedy in American history.
The Thundering Herd's program was all but gone.
Marshall eventually rebuilt, becoming a two-time NCAA Division I-AA champion and the winningest college team of the 1990s. Marshall moved up to Division I-A in 1997 and makes it seventh bowl appearance in eight seasons when it plays Thursday against Cincinnati in the PlainsCapital Fort Worth Bowl at Amon G. Carter Stadium.
But the Thundering Herd still carries the memories of the 1970 team and the spirit of a town that hangs on the program's every move.
"All the great things that have happened to us, the inspiration and the momentum, all started after the plane crash," said Pruett, who played at Marshall from 1962-65 and became its coach in 1996. "A huge negative is turning into as much as a positive as it could be. It's given us reason, momentum and impetus to go forward."
At 6-5 this season, Marshall has its fewest victories since 1990.
Before 1984, the first of Marshall's 20 consecutive winning seasons, a six-win season was considered impossible.
The Herd was winless in 1967 and 1968. In 1969, Marshall was expelled from the Mid-American Conference because of multiple recruiting violations. In 1970, the Herd was 3-6 after losing 17-14 at East Carolina on Nov. 14.
The ill-fated flight
The team boarded a Southern Airways DC-9 jet in Greenville, N.C. The charter was heading east through fog and rain as it was cleared to land at Tri-State Airport, which sat atop a plateau near the Ohio River.
The plane never made it, clipping trees and crashing into a hillside less than a mile from the airport at 7:45 p.m.
"A bulletin flashed on television, said a plane was down," said Walsh, a quarterback who didn't travel with the team because freshmen were ineligible in that era. "As soon as they said that, we knew. We knew who it was because we knew when they were due back. After that, you can only hope.
"Then you think, Thursday night you're talking to them, Friday they leave, Saturday you never see them again."
Among the victims was Gene Morehouse, the sports information director and radio play-by-play broadcaster. He was 48.
"You knew so many people that were on the plane, and everybody had relatives or had friends," his son Keith said. "It was a pall over the city."
Morehouse, who graduated from Marshall in 1983 and now serves as sports director and Herd play-by-play man for WSAZ-TV in Huntington, was 9 when his life was altered forever.
Rankin was a 22-year-old Marshall student and said the plane crash had more impact on her and the Huntington community than the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963.
"As the events unfolded, it was the saddest memory I can recall," said Rankin, the principal at Parkwood Hill Intermediate School in the Keller school district. "I think everyone was of equal stature at that time. Whether you were a community member, a president of a corporation or a student at Marshall, you felt the same sense of sadness, grief and loss."
Debate began on whether to maintain the program. All that was left were two coaches, a handful of injured upperclassmen who didn't make the trip and a group of freshmen.
"The feeling around the city was, it's just not meant to be," Morehouse said. "But there were people who believed that it would not do justice to people who died in the plane crash."
Rebuilding
So the "Young Thundering Herd" returned to the field the next season, winning twice. Walsh, who lives in Huntington and is a sports reporter for the Herald-Dispatch, said he never considered leaving Marshall.
"I was going to stick it out and be part of getting them back on track," Walsh said. "The crew that they had that was lost in the crash, they would have never taken that long to do what's going on now. They were on their way."
Instead, Marshall suffered through the '70s as one of the worst programs in the country, winning 22 games in 10 years. But the 1984 team, coached by Stan Parrish, finished 6-5 to start the Herd's streak of winning. That streak would grow to 21 years if Marshall wins Thursday.
"When Marshall started to get really successful in football, it was really instrumental in raising the spirits of people here who thought they could never win in football," Morehouse said. "Once they started to win and things started to look up, it's a city that really takes a lot of pride in its football program."
When a Marshall running back has the ball, the city of 60,000 has the ball. The city also remembers.
The Memorial Fountain, dedicated in 1972, is shut off each Nov. 14 until the spring. In 2000, the 30th anniversary of the crash was remembered with a bronze memorial that symbolizes the program's rise from the tragedy. A documentary, Ashes to Glory, was released in 2000 and can be seen at 10 p.m. Wednesday on KERA/Channel 13.
Morehouse continues to attend the annual remembrance at the fountain, with his two children and wife, Debbie, who lost her father, a team doctor, and mother in the crash. Walsh has been a three-time speaker at the event, and Pruett has also been a speaker.
"To see the way it's evolved and the way it touched your life at the time and the way it's touched our campus and our town, it bonded our community and it bonded our university," Pruett said.
It's a bond that will never break.
IN THE KNOW
Memorial Fountain
The fountain, outside the Marshall Student Union, has 75 strands of steel, shaped like a flower, that represent the 75 passengers and crew killed on Nov. 14, 1970. The fountain was dedicated to the university two years later.
Each fall, the tragedy is remembered in a ceremony in which the water to the fountain is shut off until the spring. Coaches, players, students, faculty and survivors of the victims attend every Nov. 14.
www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/sport...453827.htm
A tragic past has made the Marshall football program stronger
By Jeff Wilson
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/sport...453827.htm
Thirty-four years disappear in an instant, and the memories of a tragedy return in full detail.
Keith Morehouse was watching The Newlywed Game with his mother and twin sister on Nov. 14, 1970, the day his father died.
Dave Walsh, ineligible to play because he was a freshman, was visiting his roommate at a local hospital that evening, when 37 of his teammates and five of his coaches were killed.
Bob Pruett was a high school coach in northern Virginia when he heard that his friends and former coaches had perished.
Carol Rankin was in nearby Charleston, W.Va., sneaking away from campus with a friend when she heard the news.
The Marshall University football team was returning to Huntington, W.Va., from a game at East Carolina when its plane crashed as it approached Tri-State Airport. All 75 people aboard -- players, coaches, administrators, doctors, boosters and crew -- died in the worst sports-related air tragedy in American history.
The Thundering Herd's program was all but gone.
Marshall eventually rebuilt, becoming a two-time NCAA Division I-AA champion and the winningest college team of the 1990s. Marshall moved up to Division I-A in 1997 and makes it seventh bowl appearance in eight seasons when it plays Thursday against Cincinnati in the PlainsCapital Fort Worth Bowl at Amon G. Carter Stadium.
But the Thundering Herd still carries the memories of the 1970 team and the spirit of a town that hangs on the program's every move.
"All the great things that have happened to us, the inspiration and the momentum, all started after the plane crash," said Pruett, who played at Marshall from 1962-65 and became its coach in 1996. "A huge negative is turning into as much as a positive as it could be. It's given us reason, momentum and impetus to go forward."
At 6-5 this season, Marshall has its fewest victories since 1990.
Before 1984, the first of Marshall's 20 consecutive winning seasons, a six-win season was considered impossible.
The Herd was winless in 1967 and 1968. In 1969, Marshall was expelled from the Mid-American Conference because of multiple recruiting violations. In 1970, the Herd was 3-6 after losing 17-14 at East Carolina on Nov. 14.
The ill-fated flight
The team boarded a Southern Airways DC-9 jet in Greenville, N.C. The charter was heading east through fog and rain as it was cleared to land at Tri-State Airport, which sat atop a plateau near the Ohio River.
The plane never made it, clipping trees and crashing into a hillside less than a mile from the airport at 7:45 p.m.
"A bulletin flashed on television, said a plane was down," said Walsh, a quarterback who didn't travel with the team because freshmen were ineligible in that era. "As soon as they said that, we knew. We knew who it was because we knew when they were due back. After that, you can only hope.
"Then you think, Thursday night you're talking to them, Friday they leave, Saturday you never see them again."
Among the victims was Gene Morehouse, the sports information director and radio play-by-play broadcaster. He was 48.
"You knew so many people that were on the plane, and everybody had relatives or had friends," his son Keith said. "It was a pall over the city."
Morehouse, who graduated from Marshall in 1983 and now serves as sports director and Herd play-by-play man for WSAZ-TV in Huntington, was 9 when his life was altered forever.
Rankin was a 22-year-old Marshall student and said the plane crash had more impact on her and the Huntington community than the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963.
"As the events unfolded, it was the saddest memory I can recall," said Rankin, the principal at Parkwood Hill Intermediate School in the Keller school district. "I think everyone was of equal stature at that time. Whether you were a community member, a president of a corporation or a student at Marshall, you felt the same sense of sadness, grief and loss."
Debate began on whether to maintain the program. All that was left were two coaches, a handful of injured upperclassmen who didn't make the trip and a group of freshmen.
"The feeling around the city was, it's just not meant to be," Morehouse said. "But there were people who believed that it would not do justice to people who died in the plane crash."
Rebuilding
So the "Young Thundering Herd" returned to the field the next season, winning twice. Walsh, who lives in Huntington and is a sports reporter for the Herald-Dispatch, said he never considered leaving Marshall.
"I was going to stick it out and be part of getting them back on track," Walsh said. "The crew that they had that was lost in the crash, they would have never taken that long to do what's going on now. They were on their way."
Instead, Marshall suffered through the '70s as one of the worst programs in the country, winning 22 games in 10 years. But the 1984 team, coached by Stan Parrish, finished 6-5 to start the Herd's streak of winning. That streak would grow to 21 years if Marshall wins Thursday.
"When Marshall started to get really successful in football, it was really instrumental in raising the spirits of people here who thought they could never win in football," Morehouse said. "Once they started to win and things started to look up, it's a city that really takes a lot of pride in its football program."
When a Marshall running back has the ball, the city of 60,000 has the ball. The city also remembers.
The Memorial Fountain, dedicated in 1972, is shut off each Nov. 14 until the spring. In 2000, the 30th anniversary of the crash was remembered with a bronze memorial that symbolizes the program's rise from the tragedy. A documentary, Ashes to Glory, was released in 2000 and can be seen at 10 p.m. Wednesday on KERA/Channel 13.
Morehouse continues to attend the annual remembrance at the fountain, with his two children and wife, Debbie, who lost her father, a team doctor, and mother in the crash. Walsh has been a three-time speaker at the event, and Pruett has also been a speaker.
"To see the way it's evolved and the way it touched your life at the time and the way it's touched our campus and our town, it bonded our community and it bonded our university," Pruett said.
It's a bond that will never break.
IN THE KNOW
Memorial Fountain
The fountain, outside the Marshall Student Union, has 75 strands of steel, shaped like a flower, that represent the 75 passengers and crew killed on Nov. 14, 1970. The fountain was dedicated to the university two years later.
Each fall, the tragedy is remembered in a ceremony in which the water to the fountain is shut off until the spring. Coaches, players, students, faculty and survivors of the victims attend every Nov. 14.
www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/sport...453827.htm
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