For 4 Lifelong Friends, Death Was Just Around a Highway’s Curve : Indiana: A drunk driver drifted into their path. At that moment, the Class of ’56 lost one-fifth of its graduates, and a town is left stunned.

The five had been fast friends, teammates on the high school basketball team, true to one another through 40 years, and to a tradition.

Each year the five pals would gather for a trip to Bloomington, 100 miles away, to cheer the Indiana University basketball team. In a state where basketball is akin to religion, the winter ritual had become as much a pilgrimage as a frolic. It lifted their spirits, warmed their friendship.

Their most recent trip became tragedy.

On their return from Bloomington in January, an oncoming sports car drifted across the center line on a broad curve of a two-lane highway. The crash killed four of the friends, as well as the driver of the sports car.

The sole survivor, Donald J. (Donnie) Schueler, 56, was hospitalized in intensive care for more than a week and continues to recover slowly.

In a small town, sudden tragedy is all the more wrenching. This one reached every one of Lanesville’s 512 souls.

“I don’t know how we’re going to react,” said Jerry Reinhardt. “We’re all just in a state of shock now, just stunned. We’re going to have to do a lot of supporting of each other.”

Reinhardt was also a teammate of the four who were killed, a member of the class of 1956 at Lanesville High and now its basketball coach. Indeed, the town’s collective loss was stunning. In a single tragic night, the Class of ’56 lost one-fifth of its 23 graduates.

The four victims: Stephen Keinsley, 56; Russell W. Hussung, 56; Thomas Jeffries, 57, and Donald Litch, 56.

The niche each held in the tiny community was larger than any individual. Hussung, for example, was an elder at St. John Lutheran Church, a descendant of one of its founding families in 1848. Another of the four coached children’s T-ball. Five of the men’s relatives worked in the public school.

“So many at once,” said Lucy Keinsley, who lost her husband. “With these families, it’s just touched the whole community. If they weren’t blood relation, they were friends of the families.”

American towns of this size are commonly described as close-knit, as Lucy Keinsley described. But this one, Lanesville, seemed also to have a special integrity, and pride.

The village lies west of Louisville, Ky., off Interstate 64 near the Ohio River in the so-called Cradle of Indiana. Its county was established in 1808, named for territorial governor William Henry Harrison, America’s ninth President. The county seat, Corydon, was once the state capital.

Jobs are few in Lanesville and residents face long commutes to nearby cities. Victim Donald Litch was typical. He worked for CSX Railroad 100 miles away in Corbin, Ky., stayed there in a trailer and came home on weekends.

“He never missed a weekend,” said Matt Schneider, his nephew. “He never didn’t come home.

“My grandma had a stroke several years ago, and Don was the guy who kind of helped keep the family together.”

Litch was himself a widower of 10 years. “There’s going to be a big void to fill now,” said his nephew.

But it was basketball as much as small-town lore that held the five pals together.

In Indiana, basketball is a way of life. At airports, tourists can buy T-shirts showing an animated Holstein shooting hoops from a cornfield. Basketball and corn are perhaps the state’s most important exports.

At the high school level, games can be the social event of the week. Reinhardt, the Lanesville coach, said families still check with him before planning a wedding to make sure there’s no game that day.

Forty years ago, when Reinhardt and the others were players, the coach was Joe Pezzullo, now a teacher in Richmond, Ind.

“In those days,” Pezzullo recalled, “the gym was full, not a seat left, standing room only.” Even during that year, 1956, when the team went 6-12. “Those small towns,” he said, “took their basketball very, very seriously.”

None more than the five who made that fatal trip. Their unchallenged loyalty was to the University of Indiana and its beloved Hoosiers clad in red and white.

Lucy Keinsley remembers arriving home one night to find her husband painting an old refrigerator bright red.

“I turned around and thought, ‘My heavens, he’s painted that refrigerator red.’ And he was going to paint ‘IU’ on it,” she said. “He didn’t quite get it finished.”

Russell Hussung, who painted a huge red “IU” on his barn visible from the highway, was no less a fan. In fact, he was the St. John parochial school’s basketball coach for 30 years before retiring. One year he and his wife Donna chose to vacation in Hawaii. They picked a time when the Hoosiers played in the Maui Classic.

Thomas Jeffries was such a fan that when reception was good enough in Lanesville to catch an IU game on television, he turned the volume up full blast. “You would think he had a whole house full when he watched it,” said his widow, Dixie Jeffries. “Tom always wore his hat to the game and always wore his Indiana jacket.”

So when another former teammate, Bill Resch, phoned from his home in Bloomington one Thursday it was the call the five had been waiting for. Resch told them he had managed to get tickets for Indiana’s game that Saturday against Ohio.

The plan was set. They would go early Saturday in Schueler’s big Chrysler, stop at Resch’s to pick up the tickets, have lunch, then head to Assembly Hall for the game.

Jeffries was in his red cap and jacket. Litch wore his red sweater. Their seats were at courtside. Perfect. To top it off, Indiana won 90-75.

It was dark when they started back Saturday night. Schueler and Keinsley sat strapped in front, Jeffries, Hussung and Litch in back. According to the sheriff’s department, the roads were slick but not treacherous.

At 10:20 p.m. on Indiana Highway 64 within five miles of home the sports car heading toward them drifted into their lane. The sheriff doesn’t know how fast it was traveling. Neither car left skid marks.

Sheriff’s Lt. Bill Carver said the sports car driver’s blood-alcohol level measured .28%, nearly three times the legal limit. He was identified as James Woodcock, 50, of nearby Georgetown. He was killed instantly.

Jeffries and Keinsley also died immediately. Hussung died in a hospital in New Albany. Litch died Sunday afternoon in a Louisville hospital.

Inside the mangled Chrysler were two red IU hats.