WICHITA, Kan. (AP) Wichita State University is commemorating the 45th anniversary of a crash that killed 31 people aboard a plane carrying the school’s football team.
KAKE-TV reports that the ceremony gets started Friday morning. The crash of the plane carrying the team’s starters happened on Oct. 2, 1970, in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Among the dead were 14 players, coach Ben Wilson and his wife, boosters, administrators and three crew members. Nine survived, eight of them players.
Another charter plane, carrying reserve players and other coaches took a different route and landed safely in Logan, Utah, where the Shockers were scheduled to play Utah State the next day.
The survivors resumed the season two weeks later in Arkansas, receiving permission to use freshman to field a team. They finished 0-9.
