Monday, January 9, 2012
Sunday, January 8, 2012
What they're saying about "November Ever After"
GOODREADS.COM
- “Being that it's the bowl season, I figured now would be a great time to read this. While, yes, it is about a tremendous tragedy that rocked a community, it's also a great look at how they overcame. Mr. Greenlee did a masterful job of sharing the stories not only of the players who were lost, but of their families and fellow students. Tough at times, but in the end, a triumphant look at a great team of players who were lost too soon. Recommended for fans of college football.”
-- Victoria
BARNES & NOBLE
- “You won’t able to put it down!! Mr. Greenlee has captured the essence, atmosphere, and utter devastation caused by this tragedy of the most epic proportions. This book will leave you with an ever-increasing gratitude for the God-given gift we call LIFE.
-- Oswald Roach
AMAZON.COM
- “Many times throughout the story I found myself welled up with grief that those in this account experienced at that time. The author made me feel as though I knew each one of those surviving family members. This was a story about struggle. The university, the team, the families, and the students all shared in a compounded struggle. Who were the winners? You must read the book to find out who and if there were winners.”
-- Keno
- “Good account of this tragic event. My husband is from West Virginia and had the option to play at Marshall in this era. He chose an ACC school instead. He knew some players on this team and still feels the impact of this tragic event. This is a good read.”
-- Weave’s a lot
DIVERSE: Issues in Higher Education
- “I found November Ever After extremely painful to read at times, but also incredibly satisfying because it fills in blanks in my own knowledge, forces me to resurrect long-buried memories, and shares with others the African-American experiences at MU that many of us have long wished would be examined some day.”
-- Angela Dodson
NEWS & RECORD (NC)
- “Some of the most powerful passages in the book involve the moments when Greenlee and his classmates in a campus dormitory heard about the crash, then learned there were no survivors. Some snuck around police barricades to get closer to the wreckage and see for themselves. Others made tearful phone calls to victims’ families. And some, like Greenlee, tried to escape public displays and deal with the shock on their own.”
-- Jay Reddick
Saturday, January 7, 2012
What if Moss had stayed & crash never happened?
I’ve often wondered what would have happened for Marshall’s football program if coach Perry Moss had kept his job and the plane crash had never happened. Moss was hired by Marshall for the express purpose of turning things around as quickly as possible.
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| Perry Moss |
That’s where I come in. I was among the multitude of college hopefuls who responded to Moss’s massive letter-writing campaign which attracted football players from all across the Deep South in 1968. More than 100 freshmen football players descended on Huntington, West Virginia with the sole intent of earning a spot on the team and receiving a scholarship.
It was Moss’s first recruiting class. Marshall’s 1968 freshman team went undefeated and most of the starters from that squad won starting jobs on the varsity for the ’69 season. With such an awesome start, there’s no telling how quickly the Thundering Herd would have ascended among the ranks of the Mid-American Conference. But because of a recruiting scandal, MU was busted for more than 100 NCAA violations. The school was placed on indefinite suspension by the MAC and was under heavy NCAA scrutiny.
As a result, Moss lost his job and he never got the opportunity to actually coach the freshmen who appeared destined to help Marshall become a legitimate football powerhouse.
The ’68 freshman team provided all the necessary proof that Moss had an exceptional eye when it came to spotting talent. To this day, it still boggles my mind as to what the Herd would have achieved if Moss had been able to put together three more recruiting classes and if there had been no tragedy involving the football team. A significant percentage of the players who died in the crash were Perry Moss recruits.
Moss, known as an offensive mastermind, has coached in every major professional football league in America since the All-American Conference disbanded in 1949. Aside from his stints as head coach at Marshall and Florida State, Moss has coached in the Canadian and Continental Leagues and the Arena Football League.
In an Associated Press article that ran in the Los Angeles Times in 1987, Moss commented on some of the lessons he learned during his career.
“I've coached with, under and against all of the big names—Bear Bryant, Don Shula, George Allen. I think I've learned some football during that time. I think I know as much football as anybody. One thing I've always done is stay up with the game. I've not tried to get by on what I was coaching 10 years ago. There's something else I've learned. No matter how much you know, no matter how much you can teach your players, you've got to have the players to win. You can coach all you want, if you don't have the players, you won't win.”Friday, January 6, 2012
Cottrell made the most of his opportunity to play
In 1970, Stuart Cottrell was a back-up safety for Marshall’s Thundering Herd. For most of that season, he didn’t get much playing time.
Late in the season, the sophomore from Eustis, Florida was given an opportunity to play against East Carolina and he didn’t disappoint. Cottrell was inserted into the starting lineup because starting safety Felix Jordan was sidelined with a sprained ankle. Jordan didn’t travel to ECU, but was expected to be ready the following week for the season finale vs. Ohio University.
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| Stuart Cottrell (MU photo) |
This was a momentous occasion. Cottrell scored the first touchdown of his college career. The interception runback was the second-longest in school history at that time. The Herd played valiantly, and had a chance to possibly tie the game. But a questionable ref’s call in the closing seconds of the fourth quarter moved MU out of field goal range and the end result was a 17-14 road loss.
As things turned out, the ECU game would be the last time that Cottrell and most of his teammates would play a football game. A few hours after the game was over, Marshall’s plane crashed as it attempted to land at Tri-State Airport in Huntington, West Virginia. Nobody survived.
Having read the MU-ECU game story in the newspaper, there’s one thought that I couldn’t get out my head. Cottrell delivered his best performance as a collegian, but less than four hours after that performance, he was gone.
As I surfed the Internet for background info about Cottrell, I discovered some interesting insights that appeared on a blog (The Real “We Are Marshall” Story) around the time the movie We Are Marshall was in production. The entry was written by Cottrell’s baby sister, Leigh, who was 12 years old at the time of the crash.
Leigh Cottrell Cordiner recalled how her parents traveled by car from Florida to North Carolina to see their son play a college game for the first time. Cordiner wrote:
"Mom and Dad watched our hero one last time as he intercepted a pass and ran nearly the entire length of the field to score Marshall's first touchdown of the game. My parents, Ruth and Jenkie Cottrell, saw Stuart after the game, talked to him, hugged and kissed him, told him how proud they were, and felt all the love and pride that parents feel for their child. I have always been grateful to God that my parents had that precious, last goodbye.”
NOTE: The Marshall plane crash story is full of ironies. Here’s another example: Jenkie Cottrell passed away on November 14, 1988 – the 18th anniversary of the crash.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Author had no interest in aerial view of crash site
On the night of the Marshall crash, I kept my vow and stayed away from the scene of the disaster at Tri-State Airport. Six days later, though, I had to go to that same airport to catch a flight to Waco, Texas.
The time had come for me to say my farewells to my best friend Scottie Reese, whose funeral was held the Saturday after the crash. Scottie and I arrived at Marshall the same year (1968) and we both were starters on defense for the Thundering Herd’s undefeated freshman team. I played safety; Scottie was a defensive end and outside linebacker.
I took the trip to Texas with blinders on. Sheila Callahan and I were the student representatives from MU who attended the services for Scottie. On the drive from campus, I deliberately kept myself from looking around as we neared the airport. I had no interest in seeing anything that might provide even a hint of a reminder about the tragedy.
After I boarded the plane, I made sure to secure a seat next to the aisle. That’s not what I normally do when traveling by air. Usually, I sit at the window. That’s my preference because once the plane is airborne; I’m able to get an excellent view of different cloud patterns, the lay of the land below, and the sun (if it’s not overcast).
For this particular journey, there would be no sight-seeing from the aircraft for me. Why not? Clean-up of the crash site had not been completed and crews were still working.
I could only imagine what the scene may have looked like from the air. Just to make sure that I would never know for sure, I intentionally turned away from the window and towards the aisle. To keep from seeing anything from the opposite window on the other side of the aisle, I looked at the ceiling and the floor.
At other times, I just closed my eyes. I did this for about 20 minutes after liftoff from Tri-State. I figured that after that much time, the plane would be far away from the Huntington airport. In that situation, I could assure myself that even if I did look out the window, whatever I saw would not be anything I could associate with the plane crash.
Coming back on the return flight from Texas, I repeated that routine as the plane approached Tri-State Airport. I was relieved that I never had any haunting memories about the crash.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
11.14.70 ... A night of disbelief, anguish and denial
Even after it had been confirmed that it was Marshall’s chartered jet that crashed, I never thought it might be fatal. For whatever reason, I kept thinking and hoping that the crash wasn’t all that bad.
I kept thinking …
Maybe the crash happened right before the plane hit the runaway and the jet had to land on its belly. Or, maybe one of the wings was detached, but the plane still reached the runway intact. In both scenarios, the worst I could imagine was a lot of people being injured.
Then it occurred to me that things could be far worse than I originally thought. But even then, I couldn’t force myself to even consider that there might not be any survivors. Kept thinking that some way, somehow, that when the plane crashed, there just had to be some people who were thrown free of the wreckage.
When the word came that nobody survived, I got this sense that yeah, I heard what was said, but I don’t totally buy into what was said.
There were carloads of students who sped from the dorms and rushed to the airport. The unspoken expectation was that some of the passengers would be found alive. The fact that so many people descended so quickly on the crash site indicated that all of us were thinking the same thing. If there were any survivors—as we all hoped—it would help if somebody was there at the scene to render aid to the injured passengers until they could get medical attention.
That scenario never materialized. Folks on the Marshall campus were frantic. At no time was I ever eager to ride out to the airport. How come? I was afraid of what I might see, and I didn’t want to chance it. Quite frankly, I was OK with that. All I wanted was to remember “the fellas” from the last time I saw them when they were alive.
For more information, click on the links below:
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Today's Q&A interview session with the author
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| Book author and former Herd DB Craig T. Greenlee |
A. About 4 ½ years. But there’s a good reason why it took that long. Originally, my recollections about my time at Marshall were going to run as a lengthy feature article in the Winston-Salem Journal (NC) daily newspaper. Once the feature was finished (March 2007), it sat for about a year and never ran. That’s when I withdrew the article for the newspaper’s use and decided that it would be better if I expanded what I had written and turn it into a self-published book. I decided to expand the book to include those people whose voices had never been included in previously released projects about the plane crash. My initial feature article involved the recollections of four people. By the time I finished the final manuscript, I had interviewed 20 people. Expansion worked very well because it provided in-depth insights from a multitude of credible sources.
Q. What aspect of writing the book did you find particularly challenging?
A. My interviews with Macie Lugo, Janice Cooley and Debbie (Bailey) Bowen. Macie and Janice had boyfriends who were on that plane. In this instance, we’re talking about college sweethearts— Macie and defensive back Larry Sanders; Janice and running back Art Harris. Debbie, the first black cheerleader at Marshall, was embraced as a baby sister by Joe Hood, Robert VanHorn and Freddy Wilson. Even though it’s been forty-one years since the tragedy, I was keenly aware that asking them to relive those memories of long ago was not the easiest thing for them to do. I’ll always be appreciative of their willingness to openly discuss a subject that still stirs up memories of agony and sadness. More than anything, I wanted them to feel at ease during their interviews. For me, it was important that I asked questions in such a way that it wouldn’t come off as being intrusive.
Q. What can we look forward to in your next book?
A: Haven’t quite figured out which direction to take. I have a box full of pictures of famous athletes and celebrities that I’d like to publish as a book. This will not be a picture book. I will include some detailed recollections of my observations and interviews with the people that I photographed during the course of my 30-plus years as a journalist. Even so, that’s subject to change. In recent months, I’ve started to entertain thoughts of doing a sequel of sorts to November Ever After. Since the release of this memoir, I’ve had so many conversations and email messages from people telling me about different aspects of the crash that I had never heard about. I’m finding that there are so many intriguing stories out there and that folks don’t mind sharing those memories. For those who are interested his sharing what you know, leave a comment on this blog or the book’s website.
Additional resources:
Book excerpt/Chapter 10
Website for November Ever After
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