It was the winter of the Great Blizzard, the year Elvis left the building and the University of Evansville basketball team perished (Dec. 13, 1977) when a chartered DC-3 crashed 90 seconds after takeoff at the Evansville airport.

Into a foggy, misty field near a subdivision called Melody Hills … at 7:29 p.m. …. 29 dead, including 14 players, the young head coach, a trainer, two team managers, the sports information director, a beloved radio sportscaster, among others.

Investigators blamed improperly loaded baggage (making the plane tail heavy) and the co-pilot’s failure to remove some gust locks, or sleeves, that go over flaps and rudders.
The Aces -- duffel bags and passenger seats tossed into the mud and brush of airport land overlooking a small railroad ravine -- were so young and full of enthusiasm. A veil of sadness descended over a city that adored its basketball team.

From churches that opened their doors to corner taverns to dorm rooms and living rooms, we prayed or watched nonstop local TV coverage. No CNN or cell phones back then.

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A headline writer christened it "The Night It Rained Tears." Actually, it was "The Week It Rained Tears." So many funerals, so many questions of why. Why did this have to happen?

Years later a cub reporter asked if they ever made a movie about that night. I said no, at least nothing on the scale of “We Are Marshall” about a college football team wiped out in 1970.

However, there is “From the Ashes,” a locally-produced documentary premiering tonight at Showplace East Cinema.

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Even though a movie wasn’t in the cards for the Aces, 40 years later all the ingredients are still there:

  • A charismatic new coach, Bobby Watson, who drummed up enthusiasm for going Division I by speaking to nearly every club in town.
  • A sportswriter, Tom Collins, invited to fly with the team but held back by the newspaper sports editor because Tuesday was a busy night for high school games.
  • The young reporter (me) guided by a 10-year-old kid who said, “Mister, I can lead you in there,” and who found himself haunted by whether the passengers realized what was happening as the pilot struggled to return to the airport.
  • The police reporter, Pat Wathen, who accompanied the sheriff as they drove down railroad tracks to the isolated crash area.
  • The eeriness of a slow-moving train brought in to take victims to a makeshift morgue Downtown, its headlamp piercing the mist, its whistle so forlorn.
  • A rescuer, once a medic in Vietnam, who described the scattered passenger seats as resembling tombstones.
  • The legendary previous coach, Arad McCutchan, who led the Aces to five small-college crowns between 1959 and 1971, facing the difficult task of identifying people he knew.
  • The lone player, freshman Greg Smith of West Frankfort, Illinois, surviving the initial impact only to die at midnight, minutes before his parents arrived at Deaconess Hospital.Edie Bates, wife of broadcaster Marv Bates, who was home alone when she learned of the tragedy from a United Press International reporter in Indianapolis. She helped him gather more information. Ten years later, at 65, she became the nation’s oldest heart transplant recipient. The surgeon was former Evansville College basketball player Harold Halbrook.
  • Calls from all over coming into the For-Get-Me-Not-Inn (alias Flower Shop) because media outlets and ex-residents knew the bar near campus was a hangout for students, Aces fans and media. It was days before anyone played the jukebox again.
  • Ann Knox whose 18-year-old son, David Furr, had injured his ankle trying out as a walk-on for the Aces. He was still hoping to make the team but wasn’t on board. Two weeks later, almost to the hour,  he and his 16-year-old brother died in a car wreck coming home from a Southern Illinois holiday basketball tournament. 

You’d think Hollywood would find a movie in there, somewhere.

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