Six Years Later

It’s hard to believe it’s been six years. Six years usually isn’t a big “anniversary,” but for some reason I’ve been thinking about this a lot this year. Maybe it’s because for the first time the days on the calendar have coincided with the way it was in 2001. Maybe it’s because we went to Stillwater just last weekend. Maybe it's because this will be the first time since 2001 that OSU plays a basketball game on January 27. It's probably all of the above.

It’s been six years since we were afraid to answer the phone because each call brought bad news.

The death of a great aunt.

A plane crash carrying former coworkers and friends.

The heart attack and subsequent death of a grandfather.

All within days of each other.

We lost my Aunt Jennie on Friday, January 26, 2001. We weren’t too surprised as she was going downhill and we knew we would lose her soon. It still hit me hard, and I knew we were going to attend her funeral in Kansas.

The next day, we found out my aunt's funeral was going to be Monday, so we made arrangements to be gone for a few days and packed to leave the next day. Of course we followed the OSU basketball game as well (the Cowboys lost at Colorado), but we didn’t pay any attention to the news that evening as we packed because we didn’t think there was anything we would need to know about.

On the way to Pittsburg, Kansas, the next day, my dad called to ask if I had read the paper. We had brought that day's Dallas Morning News with us, and I had flipped though it looking at the coupons, ads, and Sports section but not really reading it. He told me that the news up in Kansas that morning was talking about how one of the planes carrying players and support staff for the OSU basketball team went down over a field in Colorado, and there were no survivors. I immediately pulled the DMN from the back seat and saw that right there on the front page right at the fold was an article talking about the crash.

On that plane was Will Hancock, who was one of my bosses and mentors when I work for the OSU Athletics Media Relations department the three previous years. One of the last emails I received from Will was from the previous November. I was toying around with going to the OSU game at the University of North Texas on November 28, 2000. It didn’t work out since John was out of town that Tuesday and Will wasn’t even sure if he would make it to the game since his wife was due with their first baby around that time. Needless to say, I wouldn’t talk to him again.

Also onboard were Bill Teegins, a sportscaster from OKC, and Kendall Durphey, who was the engineer for the radio broadcasts, and I had spent a lot of time with both of them while I was at OSU. There were 10 people total on that plane, including two players, three trainers/managers, and two pilots. Most of them I had worked with or at least talked to. All of them weren’t coming home from that game January 27, 2001.

Tuesday morning, the day after Aunt Jennie’s funeral, we decided to head out to Stillwater. Plans were still in the works for a memorial service for the plane crash victims, but I knew I wanted to be there no matter what. We hadn’t even been out of Stillwater nine months, and I thought it would be best to just go be with the other people with the Media Relations department. John had talked to his grandfather Monday night to make arrangements to stay with John's grandparents while we were in Stillwater. On our way out of Pittsburg, we received a phone call from John’s mother. His grandfather – the one he had just talked to the night before – had suffered a heart attack that morning and died.

We hadn’t even left Pittsburg yet, and our world was turned upside down again. Now we didn’t even know where we were going to be staying that night.

The rest of the week was a numbing blur of tears, family, friends, and condolences. Wednesday, January 31, we went to the OSU memorial and sat with the Media Relations staff. It was a nice ceremony, and being there helped a lot. All of John's family came to town that week, and we attended John’s grandpa’s funeral Friday, February 2.

Even though Will’s funeral wasn’t until the next Monday, we ended up coming home Saturday because I didn’t think I could take anymore. I was ready to be home.

We still can’t explain it six years later, but for some reason both of us had taken plenty of clothes as well as our birds on what was originally supposed to be a two- or three-day trip that turned into a seven-day one. I guess God was watching over us as we packed.