0102010104
DETROIT FREE PRESS
010201
Thursday, February 01, 2001
STATE EDITION
1D
MITCH ALBOM
SHORTER VERSION RAN IN METRO FINAL EDITION, PAGE 1D
Copyright (c) 2001, Detroit Free Press
OSU PLANE CRASH DIDN'T HAVE TO HAPPEN
They read off the names of the dead. There were prayers and tears and
scribbled notes for "10 special angels." The governor called them all
"champions." Heads shook in disbelief. Trembling lips were bitten.
It was a memorial service Wednesday for the 10 members of the Oklahoma State
basketball program who died last weekend when their small plane crashed in a
snowy Colorado field.
All involved were too young. The victims, the families, the crying students
who packed the Stillwater gym Wednesday.
They wept. They mourned. But beneath the surface, itching like a bug in a
shoe, was one haunting question: Did it have to happen?
The OSU team used three planes to make that trip last Saturday. Two jets. One
prop. The two jets were bigger and faster. The prop was smaller and slower.
No one can say -- or should say -- that the prop was less safe. Only that it
was different.
It is in this difference that the questions arise.
"Danny hated flying on those small planes," says Phyllis Lawson, mother of
Daniel Lawson Jr., the 21-year-old from Detroit who was one of two players
switched to the ill-fated prop just before takeoff.
"That wasn't the first time. He called them barn-hoppers. Every time he had to
go on one of those he would call home and we would pray together.
"And when the game was finished and he was getting ready to leave, he would
call me again and we'd pray again."
This time, he didn't call before he boarded.
He never got the chance to call later.
Everyone should stick together
Now, no one doubts the grief and sorrow of the OSU coaches and athletic
department. Sympathy should be extended. They never knew this would happen.
But the question must be asked: If you are running a team, an all-for-one
entity, how do you disturb that balance with seat assignments? How do you tell
players, "You are all part of a unit that stays together no matter what," then
tell two of them, "You guys ride in the back"?
It is a small stick in this sea of grief. But it pokes just the same.
Particularly to the families of the victims who died when something went wrong
with that King Air 200, just 17 minutes after takeoff. And particularly to the
parents of the players.
After all, college coaches come to their homes, sit in their living rooms, eat
their pies, rub their dogs' heads, and promise Mom and Pop they will watch
over their son "as if he were my own."
Well. Those cannot just be words. It seems fair to ask a university to use the
largest, safest planes available. It seems more than fair to ask a school to
keep the team together.
Most schools do this. Most schools have it easier than the Big 12 conference.
East Coast universities are usually close enough to major airports to fly
commercial, or at least land decent-sized charter jets. Smaller schools get by
with buses.
Schools such as OSU and Texas Tech are burdened by location. Small-town
airports can't always accommodate big planes. Commercial flights are limited.
Even so, only a few Big 12 basketball programs use prop planes to travel. The
rest manage to find chartered jets with at least 30 seats, enough to keep the
team and its critical personnel together.
It should be a priority for all of them.
Especially now.
Safety more important than game
"I always assumed the planes must be good," Phyllis Lawson says, "because
coaches tell mothers all the time, 'Your kids are in good hands.'
"I never asked where the planes came from."
Here, reportedly, is where they came from: friends of the program. Rich people
who wanted to help. In a best-case scenario, that's a generous act that can be
accounted for with the right paperwork.
In a worst-case scenario, it's giving enormous leverage to boosters.
Now, I don't know the case at OSU. But any such arrangement should raise an
eyebrow -- especially in a sport where the NCAA suspends a player if the wrong
guy buys him a hamburger.
The larger point is this: Safety must be priority No. 1. The reason schools
like OSU have to make charter plane trips is that they have midweek games all
over the place. That's how college hoops became the big-money monster that it
is. Games used to be played on or near weekends.
Now, teams start games at 9 p.m. to accommodate TV, then are forced to
hightail it back to campus for academics. Something's got to give. Last
weekend, something did. An airplane.
As a result, at least one university announced it was switching from charter
planes to commercial for the rest of the basketball season. With all the money
in college sports, "switch" should be used in the past tense.
Meanwhile, we mourn two players, two pilots, two media members and four
members of the OSU basketball staff.
At the memorial, mourners lay flowers under the OSU school statue, which is a
rider on horseback, a symbol of a slower time, when you didn't think about
dying while coming home from a basketball game.
Contact MITCH ALBOM at 313-223-4581 or albom@freepress.com.
THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION MAY DIFFER SLIGHTLY FROM THE PRINTED ARTICLE.
COLUMN;CRASH;AIRPLANE;DEATH