Memoir of Tragedy and Triumph After Historic Football Plane Crash

November Ever After: Marshall's Triumph Over Tragedy by Craig T. Greenlee

Craig T. Greenlee was a versatile college football player who, in 1969 after his sophomore year at Marshall University in West Virginia, lost his desire for the game and quit the team.

That decision saved his life.

On Nov. 14, 1970, the plane carrying the Marshall football team back from a game against East Carolina crashed and killed all 75 people aboard.

The crash has been well documented and even inspired a 2006 movie featuring Matthew McConaughey. Yet there are only a few people still alive so close to the situation as it unfolded and with deep connections to many of the victims. One such person is Greenlee himself, who wrote November Ever After: Marshall’s Triumph Over Tragedy a half-century later to examine the impact of the crash on the school, its football program and those people affected.

Firsthand Account of Turbulent Times

Greenlee, through interviews with others and his own observations, provides new insights on the crash and its aftermath, not only recounting the horrors and agony of the times but describing the uplifting and spiritual aspects that come forth to help balance the scales in any great tragedy.

November Ever After is more than the story of a sports team. It is a look at a difficult, turbulent time in our history, a time of despair marked by the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the Vietnam War, racial divides and protests on college campuses across America.

Greenlee saw it firsthand. He lived it. And now he offers his recollections, initially of a football program that had been a laughingstock for years until a strong freshman class of recruits — including himself — changed the narrative and started turning fortunes around. That recruiting class coincided with increased Black enrollment at Marshall, leading to the types of racial tensions that were prevalent throughout our society at the time.

“It was not a time to sit down and keep quiet,” writes Greenlee. While football was important, and the associated scholarships kept players in school with access to an education, the players, as students, felt Black students were being deprived of the same resources and opportunities as others.

Personal Accounts of the Catastrophic Event

Greenlee offers incredible anecdotes from the night of the crash. While the news had traveled to the dormitories, not everyone was aware at first. So when Chuck Landon, a sophomore, answered the dorm phone with the sister of one of the players calling to ask whether her brother was alive or not, Chuck knew there were no survivors but felt awkward being the one to communicate that news. “Well, nobody’s really sure right now,” he said, although he was sure.

Or the wife and three children of a local sportscaster who was on the plane, at the airport awaiting a landing that never came.

As for the author himself, “I was uncomfortable about any ability I might have to comfort anybody. What was I supposed to say? How could I possibly be of any use to anyone when, mentally, I was in a daze?”

It was like a movie that you wished was a make-believe story. But this was only too real. Many reactions to the catastrophic event seemed like a blur.

Heart-Wrenching Story of Mourning and Rising Together

But as Greenlee describes, it was an outpouring of emotion and people helping people. There was a closeness, a togetherness, “everybody was holding up everybody else.”

Southern Airways Flight 932, ironically, was the only plane trip the Marshall football team took all season. But it will be remembered as the worst aviation disaster in the history of American sports. While many of Greenlee’s contacts not surprisingly had buried their memories and found it difficult to expose that raw nerve, some were willing to share their stories. One way or another, they never forget. And they also understand it’s never too late to heal.

In this intelligent, heart-wrenching narrative, Craig Greenlee breaks down a community in mourning and a community rising together. In a strange way, it is a love story, fraught with adversity and extending far beyond any playing field.

“The legacy of the team that perished goes way beyond wins and losses. This group had a divine calling to fulfill a greater destiny … Racial and cultural differences really didn’t matter anymore … This wasn’t a Black thing. This wasn’t a white thing. This was a death thing, and death does not discriminate.”