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"Remembering Marshall" coming on ECU-TV
From staff reports and a news release
©2006 Bonesville.net
During the
week leading up to East Carolina's home game with Marshall on Nov. 11,
ECU-TV will televise a special program delving into poignant memories
surrounding a hard-fought contest between the two teams in Dowdy-Ficklen
Stadium decades ago and the tragedy that unfolded in the hours after that
game.
On
November 14, 1970, 75 Marshall University football players, coaches and fans
died in a plane crash as they returned to Tri-State Airport in Huntington,
WV, after playing the Pirates in Greenville.
ECU-TV,
East Carolina University’s official cable station (cable channel 99 Sudden
Link Communications), will present the program at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov.
8, three days before the Pirates host the Thundering Herd in a Conference
USA game.
According
to a release from the station, “Remembering Marshall” will show rarely-seen
film footage, including 35 minutes of the 1970 ECU-Marshall game from
then-Ficklen Stadium. ECU, coached by Mike McGee, barely prevailed in the
game, 17-14, over a Herd team coached by Rick Tolley, who hours later would
perish with 74 others when a Southern Airways DC-9 went down in a cold rain
on a West Virginia hillside.
The
presentation will also include home movies of the Marshall players and
newsreels from the accident.
“I’d
really like to thank the Marshall Alumni and fans for making this
presentation possible,” ECU-TV Director Bryan Edge said in a press release.
“Many of the people who donated their footage lost someone on that flight,
and when I told them of the interest in this story at ECU they really came
through.”
The
upcoming Nov. 11 game, ECU's final home contest of the season, will mark
Marshall's first visit to Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium since a Thundering Herd
squad — still rebuilding from the disaster of eight years earlier — fell to
the Pirates, 45-0, in 1978.
Material
ECU-TV collected for the "Remembering Marshall" special indicates that the
impact of the plane crash was profound well beyond Marshall's extended
community family.
“During my
research," noted Edge, "I came across a letter from the ECU Physical Education Department
to Marshall University,” noted Edge.
The
contents of the letter, from ECU-TV's news release:
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“The hearts and prayers of
the staff members and students in the East Carolina University
physical education department are with the administration,
faculty, staff, students, and parents at Marshall University as
we share the grief and loss of your fine people. At such a time,
it is difficult to accept such tragedy; yet, we must look beyond
today to ask-for what purpose. Please accept our humble prayers
and sympathy and rest assured that the lives of players,
coaches, staff, and Huntington citizens shall live forever in
our memories. We pray that this bond of grief shared by our
universities shall become a bond of friendship and achievement
as we work to overcome the problems of mankind.
"God bless you, your people
at Marshall, parents and friends of the University and the
citizens of Huntington in this tragic loss.”
East Carolina University
Physical Education Department |
“After
working on this project I’d say the bond of friendship between the two
schools is still strong today,” Edge said.
The ECU-TV
presentation and the game between ECU and Marshall the following Saturday
come only days before
a Nov. 14 advance screening of the
major motion picture "We Are Marshall" at the College Football Hall of Fame
in South Bend, IN.
The movie,
about the 1970 plane crash and its aftermath and the hope for the future
that would subsequently arise in the Marshall community, will be released
nationwide on Dec. 22.
Viewers
who do not receive cable services or who live outside the Greenville area
can watch "Remembering Marshall" online by visiting the ECU-TV Web page at
www.ecu.edu/ecutv.
©2006 All rights rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. A College Football Hall of Fame
press release contributed to this report.
02/23/2007 11:32:54 AM |
