Today’s Unassuming Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
The University of Evansville is a small, Methodist-affiliated school with about 3000 students. The quiet, unassuming little school in southern Indiana has a reputation for straightness; even as the storms of the ‘60s washed over campuses from Cal to Columbia, Evansville reportedly retained a disturbingly traditional all-American collegiate atmosphere, complete with a viable, popular fraternity and sorority system. And much of this campus spirit revolved around the pride of Evansville: the Purple Aces basketball team.
The Aces weren’t just an obscure team of an obscure institution; they were a small-college powerhouse. They rampaged through the little world of NCAA Division II much like perennial powers like UCLA and Kentucky did in Division I. For years, the purple juggernaut routinely crushed its fellow small colleges. And when the end of the year rolled around, more often than not, they were in the Division II tournament. This Valhalla of two-bit college basketball weas held at Evansville’s home court from its founding in 1957 through 1976. The trophy frequently didn’t leave the building. The Purple Aces had (most ungraciously for a host!) won the title five times. They were the only team to win twice in a row—a feat they’d pulled off twice!
1958-1959 National Champion Purple Aces
The year was 1977. The Division II tournament had been relocated to the basketball fountainhead of Springfield, Massachusetts. And so was Evansville; they’d made the jump to the big-time world of Division I, visions of a trip to the big Tournament dancing before the athletic department’s eyes. Sweet 16? Final Four? Ah, the glory that could be theirs!
But this inaugural campaign in the world of semi-professional basketball was not going well for the Aces. On the night of December 13, they were 1-3, hardly the start of a tournament year. The team mood was grim as they shivered in the rain and the fog at Dress Regional Airport, awaiting their charter to fly them down to Nashville for a game with Middle Tennessee State. Further compounding the gloomy atmosphere was the fact that their chartered DC-3 was late. It was a somber moment in a somber season that would be over far, far sooner than anyone expected.
When their plane finally arrived three hours late, the team and its entourage hastily piled on—according to one account, the plane didn’t even spend 10 minutes on the ground. The pilot quickly taxied onto the runway, wheeled about, and began to take off. All seemed well as the plane hurtled down the tarmac and gathered speed. But as it left the ground, the plane’s nose pitched up at a steep angle. The pilot frantically struggled to regain control of the craft and gain altitude, but in vain. The plane smashed into a wooded ridge two miles from the runway and burst into flames.
Rescuers arriving on the scene found a sea of mud. The impact had broken the plane into three sections, crowning the ridge with the largely-intact tail section and strewing “equipment, duffel bags, and college letter jackets” and, no doubt, deflated basketballs and pieces of players all over the hillside. Only two people survived the initial impact, and they wouldn’t live to see the hospital. In all, 29 people died. Heading the list was the Purple Aces’ entire 14-man roster, the first American team ever to be wiped out en toto. Also killed were the plane’s three-man crew, two officials of the charter company, and the team’s coach and trainer. The balance of the list was a nice cross section of the pond scum that always beefs up SMTDs: two student managers, the assistant athletic director, a sportscaster, two fans (no doubt major benefactors of the athletic department!) and the college comptroller. Presumably the team planned to get their full share of the gate.
Even as workers dug pieces of Purple Aces out of the mud and loaded them onto a rail flat car, rumors flew around the campus. Students descended upon the campus chapel. And as the rumors gradually coalesced into cold, hard facts, a palpable sense of grief washed over the campus. The basketball season was over.
Within a week, parents of the victims had filed a pair of $7 million lawsuits. One charged the plane was “negligently maintained, serviced, and operated and overloaded at take-off.” The preliminary investigation revealed that, while it wasn’t overloaded, they cut it pretty close. The plane had been only 148 pounds under its 29,900 pounds limit at takeoff. The NTSB concluded that the overloaded rear luggage compartment contributed to the crash. But the real cause was the control locks on the plane’s rudder and right aileron—some idiot had forgotten to take them out!!
But the true endnote to the Purple Ace crash came less than two weeks later. Freshman basketball player David Furr had been sitting out the season with an ankle injury. He’d earned his keep by keeping statistics at home games, but didn’t go on the road, no doubt to free up a seat for a well-heeled booster club member. Over Christmas break, while returning with his brother from watching his high school alma mater win a holiday basketball tournament, he lost control of his car on an icy patch of pavement and skidded into a truck. Both boys were killed. The Purple Aces rebuilding program truly had to start from scratch.
Culled from: Murder Can Be Fun #18 by John Marr
This You Tube video has some interesting footage from the crash site, though the sound is trashed.
Lynching Photo Du Jour
Lynching circa 1910 – location unknown.
Culled from: Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America
Garretdom!
The Boys Who Bathed Too Much.
Dr. Leffman reported to the Board of Health on Saturday that he had examined the bath-house at Twenty-seventh and Master streets [Philadelphia] and found that the lads who were taken ill after visiting the bath had been taken sick by remaining in the water too long or bathing too frequently. He recommended that the supply-pipe be removed from its present location near the outlet-pipe to the southern end of the tank. The recommendation was ordered to be carried out. the boys are said to be improving, but two are still in a critical condition.
Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook