For the 50th anniversary of Memorial '70, Wichita State Athletics will be republishing two stories from our archives by former SID Conrad Downing. Downing was on the Black plane and experienced the aftermath first-hand. He lost friends and colleagues, and these two stories reflect the events and the feelings of personal grief he felt. 

After eight years of looking at the assorted ailments of the Wichita State University Shockers, Tom Reeves had become somewhat of a fixture at Wichita State. His knowledgeable approach to each problem and the level-headed manner in which he dealt with the problem instilled confidence in each athlete that WSU had the best repair shop in the nation… and few disagreed with that fact.
 
A slender 31-year-old native of Concordia, Kan., Reeves graduated from Wichita State in 1962 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He worked as an assistant trainer under three other head trainers at WSU and served as a trainer for the Wichita Vickers entry of the National Industrial Basketball League for three years. He and his wife Diane had two sons, Scott and Brad.

  All this background made Tom Reeves one of the nation's best young trainers, as evidenced by the fact he was secretary of the National Athletic Trainers Association this past year and was on his way to even more prominence nationally. As it turned out, fate stopped Tom Reeves from becoming even more than he had already achieved.
 
October 2, 1970, will long be a date to remember. It was the date of the tragic air crash in the Colorado mountains that claimed the lives of 31 passengers of a special football charter flight. Tom Reeves was one of the survivors only to become one of the victims a few days later.
 
The week before the flight, quarterback Bob Renner was nursing a bad left leg. As he sat on one of the training tables after a Wednesday practice, Reeves examined the leg with a typical trainer's eye.
 
"Does that hurt," Reeves asked Renner as he felt the knotted muscle. "Yeah, it does when you do that," Renner responded to the prodding fingers of the Shocker trainer. "I think I can play on it this weekend."
 
Reeves, with a stump of a cigar in his mouth, smiled at Renner and then at the Sports Information Director nosing about for information on the injury. "I'll bet you do," Reeves smiled and walked off to tend to several others with minor injuries.
 
"Tom doesn't think I'll play," Renner said. "If I didn't have to, I wouldn't, but Tom'll have me ready to go if it's at all possible, I'll guarantee you that."
 
It was typical of the faith each and every player had in Tom Reeves.
 
Friday morning was like many other mornings, except the Shockers were boarding two planes for Logan, Utah, for a Saturday afternoon football game. The air was chilled as the planes, two Martins, landed at Denver for refueling and the final bit of conversation for many with comrades they wouldn't see again.
 
After the refueling, both planes took off. One, the Black plane, landed in Logan, where Coach Bob Seaman informed the players and coaches and media personnel a few minutes later that the Gold plane went down just outside of Denver.
 
Everyone was stunned in disbelief and even until the wee hours of the morning, hope still held that many of the comrades on the Gold plane were safe. As it turned out, few were alive, and sorrow replaced hope, followed by despair.
 
But what about Tom Reeves? Tom, the happy, cigar-chewing trainer who had so much to give and so much life to live. As it turned out, Tom Reeves was a hero still watching over the boys.
 
Immediately following the crash, quarterback Bob Renner gathered himself, slightly but painfully injured, and tried to help the others trapped in the buried bit of airplane that had managed to stay together. He couldn't. As a matter of fact, Bob had trouble getting out of the crash area himself and relied on 6-4, 220-pound John Hoheisel for an assist out of the wreckage.
 
After getting free of the debris, Renner met Tom Reeves, badly burned. "Let's get away from the plane boys," Reeves managed to say, obviously concerned about another explosion. Reeves guided the survivors away from the crash site and down the mountain, talking all the while.
 
One of the survivors said Reeves was talking all the way down. At one point, he recited his telephone number, talked of his new son, and made the statement he'd give anything for a drink. At that, several players smiled faintly.
 
Tom Reeves talked to the players and kept them from thinking about the nightmare they had just experienced. Safety and concentration on escape kept the group from going into shock. Tom Reeves was a hero.

  It's many weeks after the tragedy and the football team has pulled the battered pieces of a once-promising season into a "Second Season" with many players missing from the locker room. Sometimes a quiet grasps the cavernous hollow where the players dressed and shouted encouragement to one another, quiet that seems to explain the spirit that exists in the Shocker football program and the fellowship that once and still is.
 

In the trainer's room, a picture of Tom Reeves and his assistants hangs in the wall. A new picture of the 1970 staff was never taken, as one of the members wasn't available for picture day, and Reeves wanted all his staff in the shot.
 
Probably the one word that best sums up what Tom Reeves meant to Wichita State University was what it meant to him… he LOVED it, and he loved his job. Wichita State University's athletes have all been a little bit richer for having had Tom Reeves as their trainer. Several football players who took that fateful flight in the Gold Plane will remember Tom Reeves. They'll remember Tom as something of a hero. As for Tom, he'd laugh at that, and maybe somewhere he is laughing because he was that kind of guy… a modest man who loved life, his family, his job, the athletes he cared for.