Remembering 1-27-01
Published: 1/27/2008 6:39 PM
Last Modified: 1/27/2008 6:39 PM
The drive over to Stillwater on this late Sunday morning was absolutely perfect. Beautiful day outside complete with warm weather, and high anticipation for big contests involving the OSU women's basketball and wrestling teams that I would be covering.
It was a stark contrast to the late Sunday morning drive I made to Stillwater exactly seven years ago. The weather was gray, cold and a constant mist hovered the area. There was no anticipation for what awaited me upon arrival in Stillwater that day. There was just a lot of high anxiety. No one in my profession wanted to be on the OSU campus that Sunday.
Reporting on the horrific tragedy – the plane crash that killed 10 members of the OSU men's basketball family – had an affect on me. One of the 10 killed was walk-on basketball player Nate Fleming. I got to know Nate and his parents, Zane and Ann, when he was a middle-school student athlete in Edmond and I was working at the Edmond Sun newspaper. Nate was a superb young man who had everything ahead of him. He was way too young to die. All 10 men – Fleming, basketball player Daniel Lawson, broadcaster Bill Teegins, radio engineer Kendall Durfey, basketball manager Jared Weiberg, basketball operations director Pat Noyes, trainer Brian Luinstra, media relations director Will Hancock and pilots Denver Mills and Bjorn Fahlstrom – were too young to die.
Today, I took considerable time between the basketball and wrestling events to quietly reflect about that terrible day seven years ago. I looked at the memorial remembering the 10 men inside Gallagher-Iba Arena. It still seems so hard to believe.
Three nights before that tragedy, I came over to Stillwater with World colleagues Jimmie Tramel and John Klein for OSU's basketball game against Texas A&M. OSU won easily that night and Fleming got in the game late. I vividly remember talking with him and his parents after the game. I remember Klein stating he was going to say goodbye to Teegins after submitting his column. I remember Hancock coming into the GIA media work room about an hour after the game saying he would be working courtside if anybody needed him.
Who knew 72 hours Fleming, Teegins, Hancock and seven others would be gone? Who knew seven years later the pain from Jan. 27, 2001 still remains and will likely never go away?
--- Matt Doyle
Written by
Bill Haisten
Sports Writer
