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Ferrum Eight among those lost in plane crash

By KEVIN CASTLE

Published December 24th, 2006 | 0 Comments

Dan Danko holds a scrapbook on the 1968 junior college championship. Photo by David Grace.

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Imagine one of the most traumatic events in your life being played out on the silver screen.

Dan Danko doesn't have to wait for the movie to premiere. He relives Nov. 14, 1970, in his mind just about every day.

His connection to one of the worst sports disasters in U.S. history - the crash of a jet carrying the Marshall University football team, coaching staff, radio broadcasters and other personnel - is a story he wants to tell despite the sorrow he feels.

The Warner Brothers film "We Are Marshall," starring Matthew McConaughey, opened in theaters nationwide this weekend.

Danko, a Kingsport resident who is executive director of the Scott County Public Service Authority, has a connection to that football team dating back to his playing days as a fullback at Ferrum College in upstate Virginia.

"These were some of the toughest men I've ever known, and we not only became teammates, we've become a family,'' said Danko, who was part of the 1968 Junior College National Championship Team.

Part of that hard-nosed edge came from assistant coach Rick Tolley, who later became head coach at Marshall.

"Those practices were brutal. I've heard my head coach (Hank Norton) say they would probably arrest him in this day and age with practices we had at Ferrum," said Danko.

Tolley decided to recruit some players from Ferrum to help with rebuilding the Marshall University Thundering Herd, which had been going through a few winless seasons.

Seven of Danko's teammates, including one of his best friends - Jerry Dodson Stainback Jr. - departed the college nestled among the Blue Ridge Mountains for the shores of the Big Sandy River in Huntington, W.Va.

Danko chose to stay a little closer to his Tazewell County home in Pocahontas following his stay at Ferrum, and he enrolled at East Tennessee State in Johnson City.

He was home for a weekend visit in 1970 when a friend in town called to tell him of the plane crash - Southern Airlines Flight 932 en route from Kingston, N.C. to Huntington - that took the lives of his seven friends and coach.

"I remember just dropping to my knees and saying �Oh, my God.' I guess what people need to know is that not only did the Marshall family suffer a loss, we lost family at Ferrum when the plane went down," said Danko, who has chaired the Ferrum College Alumni Sports Hall of Fame and inducted those eight men, forever known as "The Ferrum Eight" into the hall in 1994.

Those men were:

� Thomas Wayne Brown

� Patrick Jay Norrell

� Arthur Kirk Shannon

� Thomas Jonathan Zborill

� David Dearing Griffith

� James Robert Patterson

� Jerry Dodson Stainback Jr.

� Coach Rick D. Tolley

"Some parts of that time are just so blurry, maybe because of things being shut out, but I didn't have a vehicle at that time, so it felt like an eternity trying to get out of town to go to Huntington," Danko said.

"I guess one of the most eerie times was when I had to fly into Huntington to attend one of the mass funerals they had up there. It was about the same path those guys took, so it was a little scary coming in.

"It changed all of our lives. These were our teammates, and some of our guys still cannot even talk about it. Those guys enter my mind just about every day. I guess you could say I'm on that plane about every day."

According to a National Transportation Safety Board report posted by Marshall University, poor weather conditions contributed to the plane crashing after clipping some trees approximately one mile from the approaching runway at Huntington Airport.

Zborill, Brown and Griffith were among the seven players placed in a mass grave near the crash site in Huntington because family members and friends found it too difficult to identify the remains.

"(Officials with the university) even contacted our old coach, Coach Norton, to see if he could identify them, and he told them he couldn't do it," said Danko.

"(Our team at Ferrum) was already close, but you could say that the crash brought us from being a team to a family. We have gotten together at least once a year with our families to celebrate our team and their memories.

"If those eight men remind us of something, it is to take care of what you have right now, because it can be taken away just as quickly. These voids cannot be replaced, these friendships. I may not have been with these guys for a lifetime, but they have been with me."

One story that continues to stick with Danko involves one of his Ferrum teammates, whose parents had followed him to watch the game at East Carolina University - the final game he would play.

"He asked his parents if he could just ride to their house and then go back up to Huntington over the weekend. His dad told him, �Son, you flew down with your teammates, and you're going to travel back with your teammates.' Of course, he never made it," said Danko.

"I think the father died two years later. I guess he just could not deal with the loss. I know life had to be hard from that point forward."

Danko says the entire experience has brought issues of death and life a little closer, and a special award brought his connection to the fallen eight full circle. He was inducted into Ferrum's Hall of Fame earlier this summer.

"That has given me pleasure and closure. I've completed my circle, and those eight guys that went down on that night, now, I am there in the hall with them," he said.

Some of his fellow teammates have already viewed "We Are Marshall" in premiere screenings held in Huntington and Richmond earlier this month.

"I just spoke with one of my (Ferrum) teammates who saw it, and he says he'll see it 10 more times. He says he feels closer to that team now that he has seen the movie," he said.

As for Danko, ever since he heard about the movie being made, he has been anxious to see it.

"The way I look at it is those guys made a sacrifice. They didn't plan it, but they did," he said.

"They made it. It's not about where we are going, but how we got there. They went in saying we are going to do good, and they represented themselves.

"My wife has asked me if I am going to be able to handle this, and I told her, �Linda, I've survived this. I've seen the pictures. I've been to Huntington. Why wouldn't I go?' I'm looking forward to it."

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