Carl Lee: 'I'm trying to fathom what it was like .....'

Editor’s Note: In a recent radio interview about the memoir November Ever After, former Marshall and pro football star Carl Lee shared his perceptions about the 1970 plane crash with book author Craig T. Greenlee. Here's an excerpt from that interview.

During his NFL career, Lee was a three-time Pro Bowl
pick at cornerback.

       "I thought the movie (We Are Marshall) was a great movie. And with me being a Marshall guy, it gave me a completely different perspective (about November 14, 1970). And a lot of the guys I played with, we all talked about this.

       We didn’t get it. We really didn’t get the gist of how big this story was when we were there (at Marshall from ’79 to ’82). We knew about it (plane crash), but we really didn’t get it.

       When I came in as a kid in ’79, there was a lot of stuff that happened that I would have liked to have known about. What about this guy? What was he like? Where did he come from? Learning about all of that would be very interesting.

       I’m trying to fathom what it was like the week, two weeks after this had happened. You’re on campus and you’re trying to go to class. You’re walking around campus, you go to the cafeteria; you go to the gym. I just can’t see what campus could look like or even feel like in those couple of weeks after the crash.
        Is there any way to articulate what that was like?

        We had an athletic dorm (when I was at Marshall) and all the athletes were all in one dorm. What I can’t imagine is empty rooms. We were in Hodges Hall and I can remember how loud Hodges Hall always was. All the time, all hours of the night, there were always people roaming around. I can’t imagine walking down the hallways of Hodges Hall and seeing empty rooms with clothes still in the closets.
       I can’t even imagine what that would have been like."

Carl Lee played cornerback for twelve NFL seasons, mostly with the Minnesota Vikings. He is now a co-host for “The Drive” a sports talk show on ESPN Radio. “The Drive” airs Monday through Friday from 4 to 6 p.m. on WVRC (104.5 FM/1490 AM) in Charleston, West Virginia. In 1995, Lee was inducted into the Marshall University Athletics Hall of Fame (football, track and field).