Appalachian History Series – Southern Airways Flight 932: Huntington’s Night of Loss and Resolve
On the night of November 14, 1970, rain and mist hung over the hills near Tri-State Airport outside Huntington, West Virginia. A chartered Southern Airways DC-9 was coming home from North Carolina, carrying Marshall University football players, coaches, staff, fans, and flight crew. The plane had left Kinston after Marshall’s game against East Carolina University and was making its final approach to Runway 11.
A few minutes later, the lights in the sky vanished into the wooded hills west of the runway. The aircraft struck trees, crashed, and burned. All 75 people aboard Southern Airways Flight 932 were killed.
For Marshall University, Huntington, and the wider Appalachian region, the crash became more than an aviation disaster. It became a dividing line in memory. People remembered where they were when the news reached them. Families waited for names. Students gathered in shock. A football team, a university, and a city were forced to face a loss that reached into nearly every part of local life.
The Last Game at East Carolina
The Marshall Thundering Herd traveled to Greenville, North Carolina, to play East Carolina University on November 14, 1970. It was the ninth game of Marshall’s season. The team had already played Morehead State, Toledo, Xavier, Miami of Ohio, Louisville, Western Michigan, Bowling Green, and Kent State. The final scheduled game against Ohio University would never be played.
At Ficklen Stadium, East Carolina defeated Marshall 17 to 14. The game was close and frustrating. East Carolina’s Tony Gurso kicked a 24-yard field goal in the fourth quarter that proved to be the difference. Marshall had a late chance to tie or continue the drive, but a controversial intentional grounding call against quarterback Ted Shoebridge damaged the final possession.
It was an ordinary football disappointment until that night gave it a terrible permanence. The program, the film footage, and the game accounts survive as records of the last afternoon that many members of the Marshall community spent together.
The bond between Marshall and East Carolina later grew from that painful history. ECU remembered the visitors who had played on its field that afternoon and never made it home. In later years, memorial plaques, archival exhibits, and commemorative games kept the connection alive between the two schools.
Flight 932 Leaves Kinston
Southern Airways Charter Flight 932 had been arranged to return Marshall’s traveling party from Kinston, North Carolina, to Huntington, West Virginia. According to the official accident report, the flight crew first ferried the aircraft from Atlanta to Kinston. The plane was refueled there, and passengers boarded for the trip home.
The official National Transportation Safety Board report counted 71 passengers and four crewmembers aboard the aircraft. Among those lost were 37 Marshall football players, head coach Rick Tolley, members of his coaching staff, athletic director Charles E. Kautz, team supporters, Huntington citizens, and the Southern Airways crew. The passengers were not only athletes and university employees. They were doctors, civic leaders, spouses, friends, and people whose lives were woven through Huntington.
The flight departed Kinston at 6:38 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Its route took it toward Huntington by way of Raleigh-Durham and Pulaski, Virginia. The trip itself was uneventful until the aircraft reached the final stage of its approach.
At 7:23 p.m., Flight 932 contacted Huntington Approach Control. The crew was cleared for a localizer approach to Runway 11 at Tri-State Airport. The weather was poor. The NTSB recorded scattered clouds at 300 feet, a variable broken ceiling around 500 feet, an overcast layer at 1,100 feet, five miles visibility, light rain, fog, smoke, and a ragged ceiling that varied between 400 and 600 feet.
The approach into Tri-State Airport was not a simple glide path down to the runway. The airport had a localizer for Runway 11, but no glide slope at the time. That meant the crew was conducting a nonprecision instrument approach, one that required careful control of altitude while descending toward the airport.
The Descent Below Minimum Altitude
The NTSB report placed the minimum descent altitude for the approach at 1,240 feet above mean sea level. A crew was not supposed to descend below that altitude unless the runway environment was visible.
Flight 932 descended below that minimum descent altitude without visual contact with the runway environment. The aircraft struck trees on a hill approximately one mile west of the runway threshold. The initial tree impact occurred at an elevation of about 922 feet above mean sea level.
At approximately 7:36 p.m., tower personnel saw a red glow west of the airport. After repeated radio calls went unanswered, emergency procedures began.
Witnesses near the approach path later described the aircraft as low, but otherwise normal. Some remembered mist, rain, and poor visibility. One witness saw the plane pass above him and disappear beyond a hill. Another described the aircraft rolling to the right before crashing at a steep angle.
The NTSB found no evidence that the aircraft structure, primary flight controls, or powerplants had failed before impact. The runway was considered long enough for the aircraft to land under the conditions then existing at Huntington. The crew was properly certificated and qualified for the flight.
The central question became why the plane had continued below the minimum descent altitude. The Board concluded that the probable cause was the descent below minimum descent altitude during a nonprecision approach under adverse operating conditions, without visual contact with the runway environment. The report said the a nonprecision approach under adverse operating conditions, without visual contact with the runway environment. The report said the reason for that descent could not be determined with certainty. The two most likely explanations were improper use of cockpit instrumentation data or an altimetry system error.
That technical finding did not lessen the human loss. It did, however, place the tragedy within a larger aviation story. Flight 932 became part of the history of controlled flight into terrain, nonprecision approaches, altitude awareness, cockpit coordination, and the later push for better warning systems and vertical guidance.
The First Hours in Huntington
Local newspaper accounts from the morning after the crash show how quickly the disaster overwhelmed the region. The Huntington Herald-Advertiser reported that a chartered jet carrying the Marshall football team, coaches, and prominent Huntington residents had crashed in flames on approach to Tri-State Airport. Early reports described no survivors.
The crash site was chaotic and difficult to reach. Rain had turned narrow roads and hillsides muddy. Fire, wreckage, darkness, and thick underbrush complicated the work of responders. State police, National Guardsmen, ambulance crews, airport personnel, firefighters, reporters, and local officials converged near the scene.
At the airport, families waited for word. A temporary morgue was established at the National Guard Armory. Marshall students helped prepare temporary quarters for relatives in Gullickson Hall, carrying mattresses, pillows, sheets, and blankets. Local restaurants sent food and coffee.
The disaster was not distant from the community. Huntington Mayor Robert Hinerman declared a period of mourning and asked that flags be flown at half-staff. Governor Arch A. Moore Jr. came to the scene. Marshall’s acting president, Donald N. Dedmon, also went to the airport area as the scale of the loss became clear.
One of the most haunting local images from the night was the waiting bus at Tri-State Airport. It had been there to take the team home. When it became clear that there would be no survivors, the bus pulled away empty.
A University in Mourning
The next day, Sunday, November 15, 1970, Marshall held a memorial service at Memorial Field House. The university was still in shock. The names were still sinking in. The full weight of the disaster had only begun to settle over the campus.
On Saturday, November 21, another memorial service was held at Fairfield Stadium. That date had originally belonged to the next football game. Instead, the stadium became a place of mourning. The season was over. The Ohio University game was canceled. Marshall’s football future was uncertain, but the grief of the present left little room for distant questions.
The dead included nearly an entire football team, most of its coaches, and many supporters who had traveled because they loved the university. In a smaller place, the loss would have been devastating. In Huntington, where Marshall and the city were deeply connected, it was almost impossible to separate campus grief from civic grief.
This is what made Flight 932 such a powerful Appalachian story. It was not only a story of a plane crash. It was a story of a mountain city where school, sport, family, church, work, and local pride overlapped. The disaster reached through neighborhoods, offices, hospital rooms, classrooms, and pews. People were not only mourning public figures or athletes. They were mourning people they knew.
The Question of Continuing
After the crash, Marshall faced questions that no university should have to answer. Could the football program continue? Should it continue? How could a school rebuild after losing players, coaches, staff, leaders, and supporters all at once?
The answer did not come in one moment. It came through grief, argument, work, and remembrance. Continuing did not mean forgetting. It meant carrying the dead forward in the life of the university. Marshall football did return, but the meaning of the team had changed. From then on, the Thundering Herd was never only a football program. It was also a vessel of memory.
The phrase “We Are Marshall” became more than a chant. It became a statement of identity. It joined the living and the dead, the campus and the city, the past and the future.
The Memorial Fountain
One of the most enduring symbols of that memory stands outside Marshall’s Memorial Student Center. The Memorial Fountain was dedicated on November 12, 1972, by President John G. Barker. Created by sculptor Harry Bertoia, the fountain rises more than 13 feet high and weighs about 6,500 pounds.
Bertoia hoped the fountain would commemorate life rather than death. Its water rises, falls, and moves in a continuing pattern, suggesting growth, remembrance, and endurance. A bronze plaque records the loss to the university and the community.
Each year on November 14, Marshall holds a memorial service at the fountain. A wreath is laid, and the water is turned off. It remains silent until spring. That annual silencing has become one of the university’s most meaningful traditions. The absence of sound is part of the memorial. The still water says what words cannot.
In 2024, the Memorial Fountain was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The recognition placed the fountain within a national preservation framework, but its deepest meaning remains local. To visitors it is a memorial. To Marshall, it is part of the campus heart.
Remembering the 75
The number 75 has become sacred in Marshall memory. It stands for the people lost on Flight 932, but it also stands for the families and community left behind. Their names are read, printed, carved, and remembered not as a statistic but as individual lives.
The victims included young men whose college years were not finished, coaches building a program, staff members serving the team, fans who made the trip out of loyalty, and crew members doing their work. Some had deep Huntington roots. Others had come to Marshall from other states. Together, they became part of one shared story.
The tragedy also reshaped the relationship between Marshall and East Carolina. The Pirates had been Marshall’s opponent that day, but afterward they became witnesses to the loss. ECU lowered its flag, held memorial observances, preserved game material, and later installed a plaque to honor the dead. The last game, once a contest on a November afternoon, became a permanent bond.
Why Flight 932 Still Matters
Southern Airways Flight 932 remains one of the worst sports-related air disasters in American history. The NTSB report explains the aviation facts. The archival photographs and newspapers show the shock of the first days. The memorial services show a university trying to speak through grief. The fountain shows how remembrance can become part of daily life.
But the deeper lesson is found in Huntington’s response. The city did not move on in the easy sense of the phrase. It carried the loss. It built rituals around it. It taught new students what happened. It kept the names alive. It made November 14 a date of silence, memory, and resolve.
In Appalachia, history often lives close to the ground. It is held in cemeteries, church services, school traditions, road names, old newspaper clippings, and stories passed from one generation to the next. The Marshall plane crash belongs to that kind of history. It is a public tragedy, but it is also a family story, a campus story, and a community story.
On that rainy night in 1970, Huntington lost 75 people in the hills near home. In the years that followed, Marshall and the city answered with remembrance. The fountain stil rises. The water still falls. And each November, when it is turned off, the silence speaks for the lives that never returned.
Sources & Further Reading
National Transportation Safety Board. Aircraft Accident Report: Southern Airways, Inc., DC-9, N97S, Tri-State Airport, Huntington, West Virginia, November 14, 1970. AAR-72-11. Washington, DC: National Transportation Safety Board, 1972. https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR7211.pdf
Marshall University Special Collections. “Plane Crash Memorial.” Marshall University. Accessed June 19, 2026. https://www.marshall.edu/special-collections/memorial/
Marshall University Special Collections. “Plane Crash Memorial: Accident Report.” Marshall University. Accessed June 19, 2026. https://www.marshall.edu/special-collections/memorial/accident-report/
Marshall University Special Collections. “Plane Crash Memorial: 1970 Season.” Marshall University. Accessed June 19, 2026. https://www.marshall.edu/special-collections/memorial/1970-season/
Marshall University Special Collections. “Plane Crash Memorial: Memorial Service.” Marshall University. Accessed June 19, 2026. https://www.marshall.edu/special-collections/memorial/memorial-service/
Marshall University Special Collections. “Plane Crash Memorial: Fountain.” Marshall University. Accessed June 19, 2026. https://www.marshall.edu/special-collections/memorial/fountain/
Marshall University Special Collections. “Plane Crash Memorial: Flight Crew.” Marshall University. Accessed June 19, 2026. https://www.marshall.edu/special-collections/memorial/flight-crew/
Marshall University Special Collections. “Plane Crash Memorial: Marshall U, 1970.” Marshall University. Accessed June 19, 2026. https://www.marshall.edu/special-collections/memorial/marshall-university-1970/
Marshall University Special Collections. “Marshall 14, East Carolina 17.” Marshall University. Accessed June 19, 2026. https://www.marshall.edu/special-collections/memorial/season-east_carolina/
Marshall University Special Collections. “Marshall vs. Ohio.” Marshall University. Accessed June 19, 2026. https://www.marshall.edu/special-collections/memorial/season-ohio/
Marshall University. “Marshall University Memorial Fountain Officially Added to National Register of Historic Places.” July 24, 2024. https://www.marshall.edu/news/2024/07/marshall-university-memorial-fountain-officially-added-to-national-registry-of-historic-places/
Straley, Steven Cody. National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Marshall University Memorial Fountain. West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History, March 19, 2024. https://wvculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/WV_CabellCo_MarshallUniversityMemorialFountain_form.pdf
West Virginia Archives and History. “Newspaper Articles: Marshall Plane Crash, 1970.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Accessed June 19, 2026. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/documents/335
Miller, Tom D. “Marshall Plane Crash.” e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Last revised February 13, 2025. https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/1528
Hardin, Jack. “Marshall Team, Coaches, Fans Die in Plane Crash.” Huntington Herald-Advertiser, November 15, 1970. Reproduced by Marshall University. https://www.marshall.edu/neverforget/files/2024/11/H-A-11-15-1970.pdf
East Carolina University. “East Carolina vs. Marshall.” ECU Digital Collections. November 14, 1970. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/27644
East Carolina University. “East Carolina University vs. Marshall Football Game.” ECU Digital Collections. November 14, 1970. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/61834
East Carolina University Joyner Library. “Library Role in ECU-Marshall Series.” September 6, 2023. https://library.ecu.edu/2023/09/06/library-role-in-ecu-marshall-series/
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Daily Summaries.” National Centers for Environmental Information. Accessed June 19, 2026. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/maps/daily-summaries/
National Weather Service. “Huntington, Tri-State Airport Observations.” Accessed June 19, 2026. https://forecast.weather.gov/data/obhistory/KHTS.html
National Weather Service. “Huntington, Tri-State Airport Time Series.” Accessed June 19, 2026. https://www.weather.gov/wrh/timeseries?hourly=true&site=KHTS
West Virginia Public Broadcasting. “November 14, 1970: Marshall University Plane Crash.” Accessed June 19, 2026. https://wvpublic.org/story/radio/november-14-1970-marshall-university-plane-crash-2/
History.com Editors. “Plane Crash Devastates Marshall University Football Team.” History. November 16, 2009. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/november-14/plane-crash-devastates-marshall-university
Aviation Safety Network. “Accident McDonnell Douglas DC-9-31 N97S, Saturday 14 November 1970.” Flight Safety Foundation. Updated October 14, 2024. https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/330951
Code7700. “Southern Airways 932.” Accessed June 19, 2026. https://code7700.com/case_study_southern_airways_932.htm
Fear of Landing. “The Crash of Southern Airways Flight 932.” March 20, 2020. https://fearoflanding.com/accidents/accident-reports/the-crash-of-southern-airways-flight-932/
Hazards Center, University of Colorado Boulder. “Thundering Forward: Remembering Community Tragedy in Huntington, West Virginia.” Accessed June 19, 2026. https://hazards.colorado.edu/quick-response-report/thundering-forward-remembering-community-tragedy-in-huntington-west-virginia
Author Note: This article is written with care for the 75 lives lost, their families, Marshall University, and the Huntington community. Aviation details are drawn first from the official accident record, while the human story is grounded in Marshall’s archives, contemporary newspapers, and memorial records.