Wow. Certainly helps explain why Bowden didn’t even think twice about sharing his Veer attack principles with the new Marshall head coach and staff. And had his WVU team wear the green cross helmet sticker to honor the Marshall fallen.
Fate saved Bobby Bowden from dying in Marshall plane crash 50 years ago | Commentary
By MIKE BIANCHI
ORLANDO SENTINEL
NOV 11, 2020 AT 7:24 PM
Running off at the typewriter. …
With the 50th anniversary of the horrific plane crash that killed nearly the entire Marshall football team coming up on Saturday, I’m reminded of some of the sad, surreal stories I heard when the Sentinel sent me to Huntington, W.Va., to do a story on the 30-year anniversary of the tragedy.
Two of the most poignant accounts came from a couple of coaches with Florida State connections — Bobby Bowden and Red Dawson — who might have died 50 years ago if fate had not intervened.
Bowden could have easily been the head coach of that Marshall football team when it went down in a Southern Airways DC-9 on Nov. 14, 1970; killing all 75 aboard in what is still the deadliest tragedy in American sports history.
Two years earlier, as a highly regarded assistant at West Virginia University, Bowden was offered the Marshall job. His good friend, Ed Starling, was assistant athletic director at Marshall and clandestinely drove to Bowden’s house in Morgantown, hid his car in Bowden’s basement and spent all day trying to convince Bowden to move to Huntington. Bowden was intrigued and was about to accept the offer, but something told him not to go, to hold out for something better.
“I’ve thought about that a lot over the years,” Bowden told me once. “That could have easily been me coaching that team, and I’d have been wiped out just like all the others. I’ve been lucky, very lucky. There were a lot of people I knew on that plane. A lot of good people.
Dawson, a former FSU All-American, was a Marshall assistant coach who was not on the team plane flying back after a road loss at East Carolina. It had been decided that he, along with graduate assistant Gale Parker, would make the seven-hour drive back home in a university station wagon Dawson had been using for a Friday recruiting trip prior to Saturday’s game at East Carolina.
Dawson stayed at Marshall for a year after the crash to help rebuild the program, but he quit following the 1971 season. He told me he quit because he felt that he reminded the new team and the new regime of the tragedy. He took a job as a construction worker, digging sewers.
“It was just a bad memory, and I needed to move on,” Dawson told me when I interviewed him in Huntington. “I didn’t want to coach anymore, so I started working construction. I felt the hard labor would help me get my mind off things. … There were years and years where I couldn’t talk about that damn crash. There were times when, all of the sudden, I’d just start crying for no reason. No question, I felt lucky and I felt blessed, but I had these awful guilt feelings, and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. 'Why am I feeling like this? Why am I the coach who’s still alive?’ ”
Aboard the plane on that rainy, foggy November 14 night in 1970 were 36 players; 29 administrators and boosters; five coaches; and five crew members. Coach Rick Tolley and athletic director Charles Kautz were on the plane, as were four doctors, a city councilman, a state legislator, a car dealer and several prominent businessmen. Seventy children lost at least one parent; 18 lost both.
But what really struck me during my trip to Huntington is that many of those who weren’t on the plane still bear the scars of grief and guilt a half-century later.
Fate saved Bobby Bowden from dying in Marshall plane crash 50 years ago | Commentary
By MIKE BIANCHI
ORLANDO SENTINEL
NOV 11, 2020 AT 7:24 PM
Running off at the typewriter. …
With the 50th anniversary of the horrific plane crash that killed nearly the entire Marshall football team coming up on Saturday, I’m reminded of some of the sad, surreal stories I heard when the Sentinel sent me to Huntington, W.Va., to do a story on the 30-year anniversary of the tragedy.
Two of the most poignant accounts came from a couple of coaches with Florida State connections — Bobby Bowden and Red Dawson — who might have died 50 years ago if fate had not intervened.
Bowden could have easily been the head coach of that Marshall football team when it went down in a Southern Airways DC-9 on Nov. 14, 1970; killing all 75 aboard in what is still the deadliest tragedy in American sports history.
Two years earlier, as a highly regarded assistant at West Virginia University, Bowden was offered the Marshall job. His good friend, Ed Starling, was assistant athletic director at Marshall and clandestinely drove to Bowden’s house in Morgantown, hid his car in Bowden’s basement and spent all day trying to convince Bowden to move to Huntington. Bowden was intrigued and was about to accept the offer, but something told him not to go, to hold out for something better.
“I’ve thought about that a lot over the years,” Bowden told me once. “That could have easily been me coaching that team, and I’d have been wiped out just like all the others. I’ve been lucky, very lucky. There were a lot of people I knew on that plane. A lot of good people.
Dawson, a former FSU All-American, was a Marshall assistant coach who was not on the team plane flying back after a road loss at East Carolina. It had been decided that he, along with graduate assistant Gale Parker, would make the seven-hour drive back home in a university station wagon Dawson had been using for a Friday recruiting trip prior to Saturday’s game at East Carolina.
Dawson stayed at Marshall for a year after the crash to help rebuild the program, but he quit following the 1971 season. He told me he quit because he felt that he reminded the new team and the new regime of the tragedy. He took a job as a construction worker, digging sewers.
“It was just a bad memory, and I needed to move on,” Dawson told me when I interviewed him in Huntington. “I didn’t want to coach anymore, so I started working construction. I felt the hard labor would help me get my mind off things. … There were years and years where I couldn’t talk about that damn crash. There were times when, all of the sudden, I’d just start crying for no reason. No question, I felt lucky and I felt blessed, but I had these awful guilt feelings, and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. 'Why am I feeling like this? Why am I the coach who’s still alive?’ ”
Aboard the plane on that rainy, foggy November 14 night in 1970 were 36 players; 29 administrators and boosters; five coaches; and five crew members. Coach Rick Tolley and athletic director Charles Kautz were on the plane, as were four doctors, a city councilman, a state legislator, a car dealer and several prominent businessmen. Seventy children lost at least one parent; 18 lost both.
But what really struck me during my trip to Huntington is that many of those who weren’t on the plane still bear the scars of grief and guilt a half-century later.
