Oklahoma State Community Deals With Tragedy

Oklahoma State coaches and players were secluded Sunday, a day after two reserve players and eight other members of the basketball traveling party died in a plane crash in Colorado.

It was unlikely that Coach Eddie Sutton would meet with the media, sports information director Steve Buzzard said at a briefing in Gallagher-Iba Arena in Stillwater, Okla. Sutton was in meetings with Athletic Director Terry Don Phillips much of the morning.

“This is a day for, uh . . . “ Buzzard said, his voice trailing off. “There’s a lot of pain.”

Sutton stayed in his office until after 1 a.m. Sunday, notifying family members and meeting with his grieving players.

“It was tough on him,” said Tom Dirato, the school’s director of radio and television, who was with Sutton most of Saturday night. “There’s none of us who could imagine what it would be like getting on the phone and calling a father, a mother, an uncle or just people that you know and say, ‘What you heard is correct, he didn’t survive.’

“It took a toll on him.”

Reserve players Dan Lawson and Nate Fleming died when the Beechcraft King Air 200 went down in a field about 40 miles east of Denver. The crash also killed the team’s play-by-play announcer, its sports information director, a radio engineer, two managers, the team’s administrative assistant and the two pilots.

Officials scheduled a memorial service for 3 p.m. Wednesday at Gallagher-Iba Arena as a “special time of prayer and a time of thanks, and an uplifting event,” Buzzard told reporters Sunday afternoon at a news conference.

Buzzard also responded to questions about the aircraft, including who provided them.

“All three aircraft that were used on the trip were private and they were provided to the university by the alumni and businessmen,” Buzzard said. The plane that crashed was provided by Dick Bogart of Oklahoma City, he added.

Harry Birdwell, vice president of business and external relations at Oklahoma State, said college officials continually review the best ways to transport teams.

“I assure you we’re going to leave no stone unturned in terms of review of our policies to be sure that our student-athletes and staff and officials of the university are as safe as they can possibly be,” Birdwell said. “We will do a complete review of our policies and reevaluate the standards of safety that just have to be part of any activity such as this.”

On campus, when students would normally be getting ready to yell at a television during the Super Bowl, the mood was gloomy and subdued. Many awoke to have the tragedy of the night before hit them again.

“Everyone is pretty melancholy,” freshman Chris Shumake said. “They’re just walking around like zombies, sort of. You hear of airplane crashes like in Europe and overseas, but you never think of it hitting home.”

The university made counselors available to the players and staff members.

The Big 12 said Sunday that Oklahoma State’s game Tuesday at Texas Tech had been canceled. Buzzard said he had heard no talk of plans to cancel the rest of the season.

“I know that Coach Sutton, obviously, was concerned about the game Tuesday night,” he said. “I’m not putting words in his mouth, but the impression that I get from that end is that the season will be [continued].”

Witnesses to the crash said the twin-engine plane climbed and banked hard to the right before it crashed during a light snowstorm.

They told investigators the propeller plane’s engines revved and eased back several times before the fiery crash in a field about 40 miles east of Denver.

“It sounded like he was flying full power. Then I heard a thump and saw a low glow,” said Jon Carrick, who lives about two miles southwest of the crash site.

Cesar Ronquillo, another area resident, said the plane’s engines were whining when he heard a loud noise. “I saw the plane turning around, go up again but all of a sudden go straight down,” he said.

As light snow fell, a team of National Transportation Safety Board investigators began looking for clues to the cause of the crash amid twisted wreckage scattered across a quarter mile.

“We have some very detailed and painstaking work ahead of us in what are not the best weather conditions,” said John Hammerschmidt, head of the NTSB crash investigation team.

Police Sgt. Craig Coleman said the field was littered with body parts, seats, planning books, basketball shoes and playing cards, among other items. “It’s a very gruesome and grotesque scene.”

A three-member team from Oklahoma State left for Colorado on Sunday to work with local authorities and assist family members, Buzzard said. The group included university vice president David Bosserman, a member of the Oklahoma State University police department, and Carter Mattson, special assistant to Phillips.

Buzzard said Sunday was in some respects more difficult than Saturday night because more relatives of the victims were arriving in town.

“Now you’re starting to see families and family members come in and you see the hurt in their eyes and on their faces. That’s very difficult,” he said. “This is a great loss.”

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Aircraft Tragedies

Athletes, coaches and sports officials who died in plane or helicopter crashes:

Oct. 18, 1925--Marvin Goodwin, Cincinnati Red pitcher, in Houston.

March 31, 1931--Knute Rockne, Notre Dame football coach, in Kansas.

May 4, 1949--22 members of Torino, the Italian soccer champions, in Turin, Italy.

Oct. 27, 1949--Marcel Cerdan, former world middleweight champion, en route to fight Jake LaMotta in Spain.

July 1, 1954--John McBride, Alabama halfback, killed in ROTC training flight in Texas.

Oct. 30, 1954--Wilbur Shaw, president of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, in Decatur, Ind.

Sept. 20, 1956--Tom Gastall, Baltimore Oriole catcher, in Maryland.

Nov. 27, 1956--Charlie Peete, St. Louis Cardinal outfielder, in Venezuela.

Feb. 6, 1958--Eight members of the English soccer champion Manchester United, in Munich.

Aug. 14, 1958--Six members of the Egyptian fencing team, in the Atlantic Ocean.

Oct. 30, 1958--Philip Scrutton, British Walker Cup golfer.

April 29, 1959--Joaquin Blume, Spain’s European gymnastics champion, in Madrid.

Oct. 10, 1960--16 members of the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo football team, in Toledo, Ohio.

Feb. 16, 1961--18 members of the U.S. figure skating team, in Belgium.

April 3, 1961--Green Cross, a first-division Chilean soccer team, in the Las Lastimas Mountains.

April 12, 1962--Ron Flockhart, Scottish racing driver, in Melbourne, Australia.

Feb. 15, 1964--Ken Hubbs, 22, Chicago Cub second baseman, in Utah.

July 24, 1966--Tony Lema, 1964 British Open champion, in Munster, Ind.

April 28, 1968--Six members of the Lamar Tech track team, in Beaumont, Texas.

Sept. 26, 1969--25 members of a Bolivian soccer team, in the Andes.

Oct. 2, 1970--14 Wichita State football players, in Colorado.

Nov. 14, 1970--37 Marshall University football players, in Huntington, W.Va.

Oct. 11, 1972--30 members of a Uruguayan rugby club, in Chile.

Dec. 31, 1972--Roberto Clemente, Pittsburgh Pirate outfielder, from San Juan, Puerto Rico en route to Nicaragua to aid earthquake victims.

June 24, 1975--Wendell Ladner, New York Net forward, in New York.

Dec. 13, 1977--14 University of Evansville basketball players and Coach Bobby Watson in Evansville, Ind.

Aug. 2, 1979--Thurman Munson, New York Yankee catcher, in Canton, Ohio.

Jan. 11, 1980--Bo Rein, Louisiana State football coach, in the Atlantic Ocean.

March 14, 1980--14 members of the U.S. amateur boxing team in Warsaw.

Dec. 12, 1983--Rex Dockery, Memphis State football coach, with offensive coordinator Chris Faros and defensive back Charles Greenhill, in Lawrenceburg, Tenn.

Nov. 25, 1985--Six members of the Iowa State women’s cross-country team in Des Moines.

Aug. 16, 1987--Nick Vanos, Phoenix Sun center, in Romulus, Mich.

Dec. 8, 1987--17 players of the Alianza Peruvian first-division soccer team in Lima, Peru.

Sept. 30, 1988--Al Holbert, auto racing driver who won six IMSA championships, near Columbus, Ohio.

July 19, 1989--Jay Ramsdell, CBA commissioner, in Sioux City, Iowa.

April 1, 1993--Alan Kulwicki, NASCAR’s 1992 champion, in Blountville, Tenn.

April 28, 1993--18 players and five team officials of Zambia’s national soccer team in Libreville, Gabon.

July 13, 1993--Davey Allison, NASCAR driver, the day after a helicopter he was piloting crashed on the infield at Talladega Superspeedway in Birmingham, Ala.

April 18, 1996--Brook Berringer, Nebraska quarterback, two days before the NFL draft, when the small plane he was piloting crashed in Raymond, Neb.

May 11, 1996--Rodney Culver, San Diego Charger running back, in Florida Everglades.

Oct. 25, 1999--Payne Stewart, winner of the 1989 PGA Championship and a two-time U.S. Open winner, two miles west of Mina, S.D.

Jan. 27, 2001--Oklahoma State basketball players Dan Lawson and Nate Fleming, and six team staffers and broadcasters, in Byers, Colo.