A time to remember
STRASBURG, Colo. – With a bitterly cold wind blowing off the mountains on the horizon, Oklahoma State University officials laid a wreath Friday near a pasture where 10 people were killed in the crash of a university plane five years ago.
“This is our chance to recall what happened that cold evening. It’s still sad, the 10 men and the lives they touched,” said Lee Bird, OSU student affairs vice president.
The Jan. 27, 2001, crash killed two OSU basketball players, six team staffers and the two-person crew. The plane had taken off from the Jefferson County Airport outside Boulder after the Cowboys had played Colorado. It crashed in a snowstorm a short time later about 40 miles east of Denver.
Bird placed a wreath on a memorial constructed by the university about 1,000 feet from the crash site. About 20 people attended the brief service, including sheriff’s deputies and firefighters who rushed to the scene after the crash.
“I can remember it like it was just yesterday,” said Jeff Thaine, then fire chief in this prairie town. Like others, he had heard the engine cutting out, and rescuers got to the scene in a few minutes.
“We knew right away that it was a recovery operation,” a search for bodies and not survivors, he recalled.
Dozens of people gathered at Gallagher-Iba Arena in Stillwater, Okla., where former school president James Halligan honored the dead.
“We will remember. I promise you that,” he said. The same three words – “We Will Remember” – are emblazoned on a memorial there.
Killed that day were players Daniel Lawson and Nate Fleming, director of basketball operations Pat Noyes, publicist Will Hancock, trainer Brian Luinstra, manager Jared Weiberg, play-by-play announcer Bill Teegins, radio engineer Kendall Durfey and pilots Denver Mills and Bjorn Fahlstrom.
“There are many things in life which I don’t understand, but I put this at the top of the list,” said Halligan, who retired in 2002. “I just have to trust in God that he has a plan that’s much greater than any that I can imagine and that he felt it was appropriate for this event to occur. That’s the only way that I can rationally embrace it and somehow, somehow, try to accept it, which I think will never be true.”
Three large wreaths hung on easels in front of the memorial, which features a statue of a kneeling cowboy and pictures of the 10 men. Flowers were placed on the floor below the pictures, and caps, teddy bears, an orange pom-pom, and bundles of roses encircled where the cowboy holds his hat to the ground.
In their remarks, Halligan and associate athletics director Steve Buzzard each reaffirmed the pledge. Buzzard, an athletics spokesman, was one of the first to learn of the crash.
“The images, the emotions of that night will live with us as long as we have breath,” he said. “The sadness of that night is still almost incomprehensible, but each new sunrise and each new season has brought even sharper and more beautiful memories of the 10 incredible men that we lost that night.
“Today is about them – how they touched us with their lives, and how they continue to touch us even in their physical absence.”