Thundering Herd
I left the ECU football game excited and encouraged on November 14, 1970. The Pirates had finally won another game; 17-14 in a hard-fought battle. ECU took a 1-8 record into Ficklen Memorial Stadium that night in front of 8,711 very frustrated fans. Was Mike McGee, our first-year head coach, really the man for the job? Could he finish the season with a couple of wins to take some momentum into the next season? West Virginia had whipped us the week before 28-14, now we were hosting another West Virginia team, Marshall. Although they too were struggling that season, coming into Greenville, NC with a 3-5 record, it mattered not. A win was a win, and the Pirates certainly needed one.
The mood was festive at The Buccaneer after the game. The Buccaneer was one of the local bar/dance halls that sprinkled the downtown area. The Buc, packed to the gill with college kids, was hopping. Beer flowed, music blared, and elated Pirate fans danced, laughed, and flirted. It was Saturday night in a college town and our team had finally won its second game, even if it took us ten tries to accomplish the feat. Life was good, we had not a care in the world. Then came the news which spread through the Buccaneer like a wildfire on a parched field of dry wheat on a windy day. The plane carrying the Marshall football team home had crashed.
The disappointed team left Kinston, NC, with players, coaches, and some Marshall athletic department supporters on board. A crew of five went down with the others in an enormous ball of fire and smoke. All seventy-five aboard died, thirty-seven were members of the team. Southern Airways Flight #932, a DC 9 aircraft, clipped some trees just west of the runway on approach to the Tri-State Airport in Huntington, WV. The tail went up, its nose down, as it helplessly dove into a muddy hillside down a hollow in the Appalachian Mountains. The pilot apparently did not realize how close he was to the trees in the darkness.
We in The Buccaneer stood silent, in disbelief, stunned. No, this could not have happened. They were just here a few hours ago, competing on a football field, trying to salvage a disappointing season, and now they are gone. We hugged each other, cried, and thought about how these students, no different from us, had just perished while we danced and laughed. No, it can’t be true.
I went home, where my dad, ECU’s Chancellor, was on the phone talking to various people in the know, confirming the events of the night. Suddenly, the game became meaningless. The score, forgettable. The season’s records, insignificant. Seventy-five people died. It dominated the national news. I, for one, and I suspect most folks, could not comprehend how this event would change lives forever.
The Thundering Herd nation: friends, family, supporters, and students gathered in their college gym for an impromptu service. All grieving, seeking solace from one another. Among those in attendance at that service were Mike and Micki Ballard, students at Marshall. They were not associated with the team, simply college students, just like me. But it understandably devastated them.
Last week, fifty-three years after the tragedy, I attended another ECU-Marshall football game in the same stadium as in 1970. The name now is Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium, and over thirty-eight thousand rowdy fans attended, not eight thousand seven hundred as before. Although the Pirates lost its opening game, expectations were high for a successful season. Marshall won their first game and came into Greenville with confidence and a little swagger. After a rain delay of over an hour, the mountain boys put a hurtin’ on the flatlanders, winning 31-13. None of the players were alive on that dreadful night in 1970, nor were many of the coaches, but they all knew about it. It’s a part of their DNA. Members of the 1970 ECU team were recognized on the field and tipped their hats to the Marshall fans. In spite of the rivalry, in spite of the fierce competition, these schools are joined together forever. We are one. Even after the Thundering Herd overcame a thirty-point deficit in the 2001 GMAC Bowl to beat the Pirates 64-61, setting a bowl record for most points scored in any bowl game; we are one.
I sat in the Chancellor’s Suite at the game last week, enjoying the camaraderie of the others in the suite, and pigging out during the rain delay. I met Miss America, a former ECU music major who moved to New York and represented the Empire State in the competition. Her aunt, a new real estate agent in the NC Triangle, pressed me for ideas on how to find a builder to represent. “Jeff, I want a subdivision. How do I get a subdivision? I want my picture in every house”. I reconnected with a long-time Greenville friend and discussed my book, “Easy Street”. The reminiscing boosted my energy and his as well. One of my sisters appointed me to talk to a couple adorned in green Thundering Herd attire and discover their story. Mike and Micki were guests of a former ECU chancellor. They lived through the catastrophe in Huntington. They were there. When my wife asked them how the community gets over such a tragedy, Mike’s answer was “You don’t”. Tears entered his eyes as he thought back to that night, over fifty years ago. I shared with them how my dad tried to organize a bowl game that ECU would host at the season’s end. He planned to donate all of the proceeds to Marshall to help build back their program. We simply shook our heads together when I told them that the NCAA did not approve the plan. Mike did acknowledge that the NCAA made a concession to them allowing freshmen to play the next season. Freshmen were not allowed to play on the varsity at the time.
Time marches on. There are games to be played. We continue to live our lives.
The day after the tragedy, my dad, Dr. Leo Jenkins, addressed a crowd of grieving students, faculty, and fans in Wright Auditorium on the campus. Virtually no one in attendance knew a single soul that was lost, yet they were heartbroken. His remarks are as follows:
On behalf of Governor Scott, the people of North Carolina, and all of us here at East Carolina University, I express our sorrow and grief to the bereaved of the victims of yesterday’s traffic airplane crash.
Yesterday afternoon, we in Greenville, were happy because we had seen an exciting football game on a balmy autumn afternoon. Today the sun rises again, but ironically our hearts do not respond with gaiety, for the joy of yesterday is gone.
Today, instead, our finite and limited minds probe into the infinite, trying to understand the unlimited and the “Why”. The tragedy that silenced the “Thundering Herd” has left us mute, sick at heart, depressed, and is beyond our comprehension.
The loss of a whole segment of friends, the reality of vital and visibly active human beings no longer physically living, the enormous grief which engulfs families and friends, and the members of the student body, leave us numb and inarticulate, at the very time that we feel the need to express reaction to the pain we feel.
During the first crush of sadness, we perhaps need not try to understand the dimensions of such a tragedy. Indeed, outside the verse that says, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” there is little way for us to understand this kind of loss.
Experience teaches us that it seeks out people in every walk of life, just as it has now reached into the streets and coves of West Virginia and the coastal plains of Eastern North Carolina.
We all want to expose in some articulate manner the grief and sense of loss and hurt we feel. And yet, no words are truly adequate to describe what we feel or to provide an avenue of release for the emotions toiling within us.
Yet, in an attempt to recover some ray of yesterday’s sunlight, let us focus our attention positively upon the ideals and goals of those who have lost their lives in such a tragic manner. They were young, alive, vigorous, and excited about life. Their spirit was typical of the best in America. They were disciplined and worked hard and faithfully for their goals. They believed in honesty, integrity and fair play. They stood for friendship and cooperation and knew how to depend upon and to assist their neighbors, their teammates. They were not afraid to play the game of football according to the rules. They worked for victory and knew how to accept it without haughtiness. They also knew how to accept honest defeat and not give up, knowing that true victory in all of life has to do with positivity and uplifting attitudes. Perhaps they have taught us in some measure that what counts most is not how long we live, but how well.
Those who were willing to sacrifice themselves in team effort have now made the extreme sacrifice in the game of life.
Those of us who remain must look beyond our sense of defeat and strive to live by the standards of those who were able to show a vigorous response to life. Following their example, we now must show how to accept loss and not give up.
We can now exemplify their disciplined life imbued with a sense of fair play, we depend upon, and uphold one another.
We who have yet an opportunity to make a vigorous and exciting response to life can now be even more determined to “play the game according to the rules” out of deep respect for those who no longer have a chance to do so.
In seeking solace during the first hours following the news that came concerning the plane crash, I found the words of a hymn I knew as a child, running through my mind, and superseding all the philosophy and ethics I have read and studied. It helped me keep an appropriate perspective, at least to some degree, as I was reminded this is God’s world, and that He who is concerned even with a sparrow is surely with us yet. As M.D. Babcock wrote: “This is my Father’s world, O let me ne’er forget that though the wrong seem opt so strong, God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world the battle is not yet done. Jesus who died shall be satisfied and earth and heaven be one”
May I close with this one thought, that although it has not been revealed to us, there must indeed be a purpose or reason for this tragedy?
I want to again, as I did last night before our football team, express our sorrow to the families of the people on the plane and to their associates back at Marshall.
God bless us all.
Fifty-three years later, I stood with Mike and Micki, two people who I had never met, and wept. We are forever bound together. We are one.
