We Are Marshall…

Bill, I was 15 at the time. The date was November 14, 1970. The night was cold and there was drizzle in the area. I was in my room around 7pm listening to KEE radio (WKEE-FM) on my small stereo and Huntington airport on my tunable aircraft receiver.

I had listened long enough over that last several weeks that I had gotten pretty good at figuring what the flight names and numbers were that came in and out. But I heard one I had never heard before. “Southern 932”. I had no idea why they were coming into Tri-State airport.

Looking back, as time will allow us to do, I now think it odd that the song “Tears of a Clown” (NO JOKE) was playing on the FM as the tower cleared Southern 932 to land. A few minutes later a call went out on the aircraft radio to Southern 932, asking if he was there? Then there was someone, I have no idea who cause I had heard no other planes talking to the tower, say “I think he’s down”.

I remember reading later one of the controller’s went out on the catwak outside the tower and didn’t hear anything or see anything due to the low visibility. Years later after becoming an FAA Air Traffic Controller, I found out Tri-State had NO radar at that time, so no one knew for those few minutes what for sure had happened.

A few minutes later we started hearing sirens. It sounded like all the fire trucks in the world had come to Kenova. I went down to the living room and told my mother that I thought a plane had crashed near the airport. She kinda shrugged it off, but my persistence paid off, and I convinced her to take me and my 8 yr old brother up to the road where the planes fly over low before landing.

We got into the car and as we made the turn near the Novamont Plant, you could see a huge orange glow. We drove the half mile to where the road started going up hill. There were flames up in front of us down over the side of the hill in the gully.

My mother had pulled our car so close to the guard rail that I could not open the passenger side door more than a couple of inches so I climbed out the window and stood on the guard rail. I could not see much better because of it being down in the gully and a couple hundred yards away, but I will never forget the bright glow from the flames against the low hanging clouds.

There were more and more emergency vehicles coming so my mother thought it best to get out of their way and go home. By the time we got home, WSAZ-TV channel 3 was already telling what happened.

We had NO idea what I had heard and we had just seen was the Marshall football team, coaches, radio announcer’s, booster’s, and their companions.