December 13, 1977

Originally written in 2021, updated this morning — The University of Evansville Aces air tragedy

It is hard to believe it’s been 47 years.

I was 13 and listening in my hometown that night to the U of E college radio station, WUEV, when the DJ broke in to report a plane crash at the Evansville airport. There were no details, just that there was an aviation accident and it sounded pretty big with fire and EMS being called to the scene.

When we woke up the next day, the terrible news was real. The University of Evansville Purple Aces basketball team’s charter plane crashed 90 seconds after takeoff, killing all 29 on board, including the team, head coach Bobby Watson, three student managers, team / sports staff and popular radio play-by-play man, Marv Bates.

On the day after, I can vividly recall my seventh grade homeroom teacher, Mrs Sater, inconsolable. It’s odd, but I have no other strong memories of initial reactions by my parents or by individual friends. Everyone was in shock.

Of course we all talked about it. The team doctor, who died, left a daughter behind who was my classmate. (Two weeks to the day later, the only Purple Aces player who was not on the flight, freshman David Furr, was killed in a car accident on Dec 27, 1977. To this day Furr’s death still freaks me out.)

The team were on their way to Murfreesboro, Tennessee to play Middle Tennessee State. They were to be traveling in rain and fog aboard a shitty, older DC-3 that they really had no business at all being on.

The Evansville hoops program was in process of having moved from its traditional place in NCAA Division II, with great success at the lower level, to a D1 program. Just before that season, UE had made a head-coaching offer to its most famous Aces alumnus, Jerry Sloan, the former Bulls / NBA Star Guard who later became perhaps best known as the head coach of the Utah Jazz in the 1990s.

When Sloan decided not to take the job after all, the program hired the Oral Roberts young assistant, Bobby Watson, who was originally from Pittsburgh.

I remember that John Ed Washington (from Indy, I think) and Tony Winburn (Jeffersonville) were the main returning players on that team.

[A quick aside: Roberts Stadium was located very near our house. Built in the mid-1950s it was home to Aces basketball but also every major local event — Friends, family and I saw many concerts, the circus there, as well as postseason sectionals, regionals and semi-state arena for the single-class Indiana high school basketball tournament. Each winter, a variety of Evansville high schools, including the school my brother and sister attended, Bosse, played home games on the basketball floor of the spacious 12,500-seat arena. I had the run of the place as a kid. With my sister cheerleading (1976-1978), I remember spending many evenings in there just turned loose, wandering the concession stands or circling the concourse in sight of Mom and Dad.]

Evansville basketball had been superb during the Sixties. During his legendary tenure there coach Arad MacCutchan put up five NCAA Division II national championship banners (1959, 1960, 1964, 1965, 1971). I remember attending his summer basketball camps.

This was to have been game number five of the Aces’ young season. They had lost their home opener to Western Kentucky before a crowd of 8,708 at Roberts. They next traveled to DePaul in Chicago and lost that road game. The Aces got a big home victory over Pitt, and took an L on the road to Indiana State — Yes, that Indiana State, featuring pre-legendary, underclassman Larry Bird.

At first, rain and fog were blamed, but later it turned out that workers that night had never removed an aileron lock in pouring rain. The plane never gained proper altitude.

In the aftermath, UE president Wally Graves (a friend of our dad’s) did an amazing job with a horrible tragedy.

There was a memorial service held at Roberts Stadium that my dad attended. In El Dorado, Illinois, with two Aces team members —the caskets of players Kevin Kingston, and freshman Mike Duff, who had scored 20 points against Indiana State, was projected to be a big deal — lay side-by-side on the high school basketball floor there.

Marv Bates was the team broadcaster and had been a fixture in for decades, calling both Aces’ basketball and also (AAA) Evansville Triplets baseball.

He was perhaps best-known as one of the last radiocasters who, in a money-saving move by minor league teams, did not travel to away games but would instead re-enact road games live on-air, complete with “bat hitting ball” and crowd sound effects.

There were legal proceedings and the air charter company paid the families settlements.

The next year President Graves hired the next head coach, a young Illinois State assistant named Dick Walters. He won 200 games, coached through 1985, and led the program to its first appearance in NCAA postseason play.

What I remember most about the post-crash era was how the entire city rallied around the Evansville Purple Aces team.

Just a couple years later the Aces were really, really good. During my senior year of high school in 1982, the Aces — led by Brad Leaf and Theron “Snow” Bullock — went 22-6, and reached the NCAA tournament.

The average attendance for Evansville that year was 10,001. Along with Mac, Ed, Billy, Foz, Jimmy and others, I was there for many of those games.

“In memory of those gallant and devoted men who gave everything they had. Even life itself. To the sport and the University they loved.” – UE Memorial inscription