Movie rekindles memories of tragedy

1970 crash of Marshall team plane still touches lives in the Triangle

On Nov. 14, 1970, a chartered DC-9 carrying the Marshall University football team, school officials and boosters home from a game against East Carolina in Greenville crashed as it approached the Tri-State Airport near Huntington, W.Va.

All on board Southern Airlines Flight 932 died: 37 players, eight coaches and staff, the flight crew and 25 prominent Huntington citizens.

The disaster, the subject of "We Are Marshall," which opened Friday in area movie theaters, still touches the lives of people in the Triangle and across the state.

Here are some of their stories.

Julie Loria Squirewell is the daughter of Frank Loria, the Marshall defensive coordinator who lost his life in the crash. Before becoming a coach, Loria had been a two-time All-America defensive back at Virginia Tech and was considered one of the best football players ever to play in Blacksburg.

Squirewell was 18 months old when her father died.

"I think of my mother, 22 years old with two little girls and pregnant," she said.

"I never heard her complain or get emotional."

Every year on the anniversary of the plane crash, a memorial service is held in Huntington, W.Va. Squirewell, who graduated from Ravenscroft in 1987, attended her first in 2000.

There she met three people depicted in the movie -- Nate Ruffin, a defensive back on the 1970 team who had missed the ECU game because of an injury; Reggie Oliver, the 1971 team's quarterback; and Red Dawson, a Marshall assistant coach who went on a recruiting trip rather than take the return flight.

"Thirty years later, Red still has some guilt about surviving," she said.

Anthony Rogers is Squirewell's son and Frank Loria's grandson.

At 5 feet 9 and 171 pounds, the junior at Knightdale High School is about the same height and weight as his grandfather.

"I have been told about my grandfather since I was a baby," he said. "I know he was a great athlete and a great person, but the thing I know about best is that he never gave up."

That same determination has helped Rogers build a 20-0 wrestling record this season.

He has told several friends to go see "We Are Marshall," not because of his family link, but because he thinks it's a good movie.

Sharon Ward Glenn's father, Parker Ward, had been an All-America swimmer at the University of North Carolina, but Ward, who operated Hez Ward Buick in Huntington, adopted the Thundering Herd as his own.

"It was the first time the team had gone for a plane ride and the school asked a group of supporters to go with them to help pay for the flight," said Glenn, who lives in Raleigh.

Her mother, Mary Plyde Ward, grew up in Wadesboro and met Ward while he was at UNC. She might have been on the plane had not Sharon's sister, Elizabeth, been born weeks premature, 10 days before the flight.

"Mother probably would have gone because her baby doctor was on the flight," Glenn said. "We've always thought that Elizabeth coming early not only saved her life, but it saved Mom's, too."

Today Elizabeth Ward Bode lives in Pinehurst.

Glenn said growing up in Huntington after the tragedy had seemed normal until she moved away years later.

"Lots of kids had lost a parent and some had lost both their parents," she said. "It was just the way it was."

Blake Smith has lived in Southern Pines for 31 years and teaches physical education at Highland Elementary School in Harnett County.

A native of Downsville, N.Y., he enrolled at Marshall in the fall of 1970 and decided in the summer of 1971 to try out for the football team. Unaware that tryouts started weeks before classes, he missed the preseason workouts. But when the team's kicker quit after the first game, he joined the team.