by Steve Beaven
Late that morning, Bobby Watson had sat in his Carson Center office with Anne Harter, a young reporter for the Evansville Press. Watson was in an expansive mood, unguarded and frustrated, returning again to the theme that had occupied his mind in recent days. Succeeding in Division I required guts, grit, and perseverance, summoned from the depths of a man’s character. He talked about the dire challenges he faced in Vietnam, where he carried the burden of other men’s lives while risking his own in those few perilous moments when his helicopter descended under enemy fire. Those experiences had shaped his coaching philosophy, and he wanted to pass on the lessons he learned to his struggling young team.
Watson had expected more from the Aces in the first weeks of the season. He’d hoped that his team would be 2–2 by this time, with victories over Western Kentucky and Pittsburgh and losses to DePaul and ISU. Instead, UE had lost three games by an average margin of nearly twenty points and several key players were clearly in over their heads. John Ed Washington, the leading scorer during the previous season, had regressed, shooting less than 30 percent from the floor and scoring fewer than eight points per game. The four guards averaged twice as many fouls as field goals. Tony Winburn found himself banished to the end of the bench. And now Bryan Taylor was hobbling around on an ankle he’d sprained in Terre Haute, leaving his status in doubt for the next game. Watson had told Stafford Stephenson and Ernie Simpson, his assistant coaches, that by Christmas they’d have a better idea of who was up to the challenge of Division I ball and who wasn’t. Christmas was less than two weeks away and an air of uncertainty hovered over the Aces like the dark cumulus clouding the airport runway.
But there was hope. UE had emerged from the most difficult stretch of the schedule and headed into the second half of December with a chance to turn their season around. Their next four opponents—Middle Tennessee State, Austin Peay, Ball State, and Morehead State—had a combined record of 4–9. The rest of the season included matchups with the likes of DePauw and Indiana Central, small schools with lesser programs. Steve Miller was much improved, and Warren Alston had shown great promise, scoring seventeen against Indiana State. Mike Duff had played exceptionally well, averaging twenty points and nearly ten rebounds per game. The season was less than two weeks old. All was not lost.
That afternoon, Watson made some calls from the airport to kill time. About 4:30 p.m. he called Tom Collins, the Aces beat writer at the Evansville Courier. They had made plans to talk once the Aces arrived at their hotel. But it was clear by late afternoon that the Aces wouldn’t arrive in Murfreesboro until later that night.
“We’re still out here at the airport, fogged in,” Watson told Collins. “Everything has been moved back. You wouldn’t have been able to reach me so I figured I’d call you now.”
Collins rolled paper into his typewriter, the keys clacking as Watson told him about Taylor’s ankle, Miller’s development, and Duff’s first four games. Collins planned to use the interview for a story in the next morning’s paper, previewing the Middle Tennessee State game.
Watson also called Al Dauble, a local florist and influential supporter of the basketball team, and asked him to deliver a dozen red roses to Deidra the next day. It would be their fourth wedding anniversary. Dauble promised he would.
Arad McCutchan’s teams had mostly traveled by bus. The drive to Nashville was only 150 miles. But Watson wanted to compete with the top schools for the best recruits, and the top schools flew on chartered jets. So the Aces would, too. The UE travel party that day included twenty-four people: Watson and his fourteen players, three university officials, three student managers, and radio play-by-play man Marv Bates. Two devoted boosters—Maury King and Charles Goad—had snagged the final empty seats on the flight.
Marv Bates had achieved a rare celebrity in Evansville: he was a local icon with a national reputation. Bates had mastered the art of re-creating live Minor League Baseball games—played anywhere from Denver to New Orleans—from the WGBF radio studio in Evansville. As the voice of the Evansville Triplets, the top farm team for the Detroit Tigers, Bates called the action for home games perched in the press box above Bosse Field. But when the Triplets went out of town, he stayed behind and did the broadcast from the studio, using more than seventy-five individual sound effects to simulate live baseball. And not just organ music or the murmur of the crowd. Bates traveled with the team early in the season to capture unique sounds from each ballpark. For games in Denver, he recorded trucks zooming along the nearby interstate. In Tulsa, he captured the sound of local stock car races. He used siren sound effects, crowd laughter, the muffled voice of a public address announcer, and the clack of bat on ball. For play-by-play details, he relied on a sportswriter at the game who provided a summary of each pitch.
“Hello again, sports friends,” Bates said at the top of each game. He always acknowledged that he was reconstructing the games from the studio, but otherwise tried to make the broadcasts as authentic as possible. He demonstrated his skills on The Tomorrow Show, with Tom Snyder, and on The Baseball World of Joe Garagiola.
Tall and bespectacled and balding, even as a young man, Bates grew up in Evansville and met his wife, Edie, when they were students at Evansville College. Marv was a decent athlete, a two-way lineman on the Aces football team, and later a legendary softball pitcher known for his underhanded windmill windup. His friends called him “the Bomber.” He practiced obsessively, grabbing his glove after dinner in the summer so he could spend a few hours at a nearby elementary school diamond. Neighborhood kids would knock on the back door and ask Edie whether Marv could come out and play and then argue with each other over who would be his catcher.
Marv had initially wanted to be a football coach, but changed his mind after taking a broadcasting class in college. When Marv started out in radio, Edie taught elementary school. But Marv asked her to quit and soon she sat next to him at the broadcast table, knitting, keeping him company, and sometimes keeping stats. Marv and Edie didn’t have children. But the local sports community was their extended family. Like Mike Blake and Arad McCutchan, Marv somehow seemed to be at every game, event, and banquet in town. He called Aces football, horse racing, high school football, and high school basketball. He was a busy master of ceremonies, acted in local theater, and served as a deacon at his church, a position he voluntarily resigned when his radio show added a brewery as a sponsor. Broadcasting didn’t pay the bills, so Marv worked day jobs. He might spend eight hours selling advertising for the radio station or teaching social studies to high school kids, and then spend another eight that night doing play-by-play at an Aces game. Broadcasting was not a career for Marv. It was a calling. And he had big-city ambitions.
Marv wanted more than anything to broadcast Major League Baseball games. He nearly got a job with a big-league club in the early 1960s. But then his father passed away and Marv stayed in Evansville to look after his mom. He caught a break in 1976, when Harry Caray invited him up to Chicago to help out on White Sox broadcasts as the team looked to expand its broadcast crew. It looked as though Marv’s time had finally come. But the White Sox passed him over in favor of a former player, and Marv gave up on his hopes for a big-league job.
But he still had Aces basketball. Marv narrated the biggest moments in Aces history with a clipped and friendly formality that embodied both his hometown allegiance and his professionalism. His finest moment came at the end of the 1965 championship game against Southern Illinois University at Roberts Stadium. When Jerry Sloan calmly sank two free throws at the end of overtime to complete Evansville’s perfect season, Bates responded with a call that would define his career.
“There it is, one second,” Bates said, his voice rising. “Aces! National champions! National champions! Undefeated! Aces! Aces! The Aces!”
Only later, as the postgame ceremonies unfolded in front of him, did Bates allow himself a moment to express all that Evansville College meant to his hometown.
“This is something you probably see on
ce in a lifetime,” he told his listeners. “So enjoy it and have a good time and be proud of our community.”
Jeff Bohnert watched the gray afternoon sky darken as he waited at the airport for the chartered jet, nervously anticipating his first ride on an airplane. Jeff was a student manager, a quiet kid with thick glasses and a soft, round face. He didn’t want to go to Tennessee, not on an airplane, not in December, and not with finals looming. A biology major considering medical school, he much preferred studying or working in the lab. But Bobby Watson wanted film of the Middle Tennessee State game and, after shooting football games that fall, Jeff knew how to use the camera. Jeff had been a student manager with his friend Mark “Sneezy” Kniese at Harrison High School in Evansville and then joined Mark at UE, schlepping laundry at all hours and rolling out of bed before sunrise to prepare for practices and games. He earned a scholarship for his work and enjoyed the camaraderie he shared with Kniese and Mark Kirkpatrick, another student manager. That evening, the three of them sat in the lounge at the airport, loaded down with uniforms, gear, and other game-day necessities.
Jeff had enjoyed a sheltered childhood, growing up as the oldest child in a close family. He lived with his parents—Don and Dolores—even after he enrolled at UE. The Bohnerts were a deeply religious family and Jeff took his faith seriously, studying the Bible and worshipping each weekend at Holy Rosary Catholic Church. Jeff was especially close with his brother Craig, a year younger. They shared a bedroom and dressed like twins when they were little boys because their mom bought them the same outfits at the same time. When Jeff was in high school, he ran with a big group of kids, girls and boys, who’d meet up at McDonald’s or go to the movies, driving back and forth past the malls and fast-food joints along Green River Road, where teens liked to cruise on the weekends. Jeff wasn’t like a lot of boys his age, goofing off and making noise to draw the attention of the girls in their orbit. Just the opposite. He exuded calm. Sometimes, while his friends were cracking jokes and horsing around, he seemed to be observing it all from a distance, even as he sat with them in the same car. That’s what Debbie Lankford liked about him. Debbie ran with the same pack of kids at Harrison. Jeff took Debbie to the junior prom and harbored a secret crush on her, even after he graduated high school and went to college. He carried their prom picture in his wallet, but they didn’t date. In fact, Jeff told Debbie he had a girlfriend in Florida. “Oh really?” she’d say. “What’s her name? What’s she like?” Jeff never said, but it sounded like pure fiction.
Debbie went to UE, too. She played in the pep band and sometimes saw Jeff at basketball games. But they didn’t reconnect until the fall of 1977, when they found themselves in the same class. One day in December, they lingered in the hallway outside the classroom, chatting about their plans for Christmas break. Maybe, Jeff suggested, he could give her a call after the Aces’ annual holiday tournament. Like, for a date. Debbie told him that would be great. Jeff tried to play it cool. But as he turned to walk away, his face lit up with a broad smile, bashful and excited at the same time.
Finally, at 7:00 p.m., a Douglas DC-3 descended from the clouds and rolled down the runway, past the main terminal, and stopped in front of Tri-State Aero. Both engines were shut down. The UE traveling party emerged from the lounge and walked into the misty evening with their luggage, equipment, and dinner: hamburgers, fries, and shakes. Eager to make up for lost time, the flight crew worked quickly to load the baggage and restart the engines. There were twenty-nine people aboard, including three crew members and the president and general manager of National Jet Service, the plane’s owner. Once the passengers buckled themselves in, the crew closed the doors and the pilots readied for takeoff. The plane, operating as Air Indiana Flight 216, had been on the ground for twelve minutes.
The jet taxied to runway 18 and asked the control tower for permission to take off. An air traffic controller warned the pilots about turbulence in the wake of a recently departed Delta flight and cleared Air Indiana Flight 216 for takeoff. Slowly, the jet rolled down the runway, dragging its tail and swerving back and forth in the moments before liftoff. From the moment the plane finally went airborne, it was clear that something was horribly wrong. With its nose pointing skyward, the plane made a steep left turn, struggling to gain altitude as it crossed over airport property and a single line of railroad tracks. At first, the roar of the engines led air traffic controllers to think the jet was heading straight toward the tower. A controller who asked the pilot to clarify the jet’s status received a two-word reply muffled by engine noise: “Stand by.” With that, the tower lost contact with the cockpit. The jet flew so low over a subdivision called Melody Hills that it clipped trees, leaving branches in a yard below. With engines roaring and the aircraft wobbling from side to side, the jet reversed course and headed back toward the airport. Air Indiana Flight 216 had been airborne for less than ninety seconds when it dropped, nose down, and landed with a thud along the railroad tracks. Two explosions followed, and the plane burst into flames.
In the tower, a panicked air traffic controller sounded the alarm and screamed to his colleagues: “Oh he crashed! It crashed! Crash! Crash!”
At first, Stephen Troyer thought the plane was headed for his house. He heard the engines rev and then the explosion. Suddenly flames filled the entire picture window in the family dining room. Troyer, a thirty-four-year-old oral surgeon, leaped out of his seat at the dinner table and bolted outside to make sure the house wasn’t damaged. Lois, his wife, called the fire department. Troyer changed shoes, grabbed a ski jacket, and ran to his next-door neighbor’s house. He pounded on their patio door, asking John and Mary Jo Schymik for help, and then raced through the woods west of his house, toward the flames. After about two hundred yards, Troyer came to a ravine and saw, through the fog, the tail of the plane in flames, sheared from the cabin.
“Is anyone here?” he shouted, hoping to find passengers who were still alive. He was met with an eerie silence. Troyer scrambled down the embankment and stumbled into a surreal and ghastly scene: mud-spattered bodies were strewn across the railroad tracks, some piled on top of each other, limbs askew, with many still strapped into their seats. He heard labored breathing and came upon an unconscious young man with a massive skull fracture. To clear his blocked airway and aid his breathing, Troyer turned him to the side. He found a second survivor lying on top of another passenger, struggling to breathe. Troyer removed the seat belt and the seat and turned him on his side as well. Then he aided the breathing of a third surviving passenger nearby. About halfway up the other side of the ravine, closer to the tail of the plane, he found another group of bodies in a pile, parts of their clothing torn away. He couldn’t hear any breathing, so he climbed to the top of the embankment, where he found a fourth survivor, on top of another passenger. Because he was closer to the plane and the light was better, Troyer raised the young man’s eyelids and found his eyeballs caked with dirt. He moved the young man to his side and hurried to the tail of the plane, searching for other living passengers. When he couldn’t find any, Troyer returned to the railroad tracks. Soon, John and Mary Jo Schymik arrived. Troyer asked them to clear the airways of two survivors by elevating their chins and pulling their tongues out. He directed a young man who’d shown up a few moments later to do the same for a third passenger. Troyer cared for the fourth.
When Lois Troyer scrambled down the embankment, John Schymik, a dentist, shouted that they needed flashlights and a helicopter ambulance. So she turned around, climbed back up the steep, muddy embankment, and ran back through the underbrush in the woods. When she got home, she called Deaconess Hospital. Lois, a registered nurse, relayed details of the crash, requested a helicopter, and warned the hospital to prepare.
“Get your emergency room ready,” she said. “We do have survivors.”
Sirens sounded in the distance as a caravan of firefighters, police officers, civil defense volunteers, sheriff’s deputies, and state police troopers rushed to the airport. Stephen
Troyer heard the sirens and looked toward the control tower, hoping to see fire trucks or ambulances heading his way. But there was nothing. Eventually, it dawned on Troyer just how far out the plane had crashed, how alone they were on the edge of the ravine.
There was no direct access to the crash site from roads around the airport. One rescue truck was blocked by traffic and then got lost. An airport vehicle slid off the road and got stuck in the mud. None of the Evansville Fire Department engines made it to the site because their drivers didn’t know how to get there. Sheriff James DeGroote got stuck in traffic, ditched his car in somebody’s front yard, and flagged down one of his deputies in a four-wheel-drive truck. But the four-wheeler couldn’t travel in the mud either, so the deputy hit the gas and barreled down the railroad tracks toward the wreckage.
Finally, about twenty minutes after the plane went down, the first firefighters pulled up. They sprayed foam and water to extinguish fires near an engine and a wing. More firefighters and police officers arrived. Troyer shouted for stretchers. But the firefighters had left them on their trucks. When he saw a fire engine racing down the railroad tracks, he figured it could transport survivors to the hospital. But then the truck’s battery died.
Two of the survivors had stopped breathing. The third was placed on a makeshift stretcher that John Schymik had fashioned out of a luggage rack and a purple UE banner. But that survivor stopped breathing as he was carried to the railroad tracks and didn’t respond after several minutes of CPR. That left a single young man, out of twenty-nine people on the plane. When a rescue worker returned from his ambulance with a stretcher, a half dozen people carefully lifted this final, unidentified passenger, supporting his broken neck and turning him to his side. It required nearly twelve people to carry him up the embankment and through the woods, Lois Troyer leading the way with a flashlight.
