OSU reacts to plane crash
Flowers, candles and Virgin Mary statue sit at the base of the Kneeling Cowboy statue in Gallagher-Iba Arena on Nov. 18, 2011. The statue memorializes the 10 people associated with the OSU men's basketball team who died in a 2011 plane crash. A Nov. 17, 2011 crash killed two OSU women's basketball coaches and two others.
I barely understood the phone call, which woke me out of bed Friday at about 9 a.m.
Editor: “Did you hear about the OSU plane crash, I need you to go to Stillwater now.”
Me: “Huh? That was 10 years ago.”
Editor: “No. There was another. You’re doing video.”
I got up pretty quick and turned on my computer to see the news that indeed there was another crash, a plane carrying OSU women’s basketball coach Kurt Budke, assistant Miranda Serna and two others had crashed in Arkansas the night before. Not being from the area, I didn’t know much about the accident 10 years ago in Colorado. But even to me, a total outsider, it was hard to believe the coincidence that something so similar could happen again.
I got to Stillwater and met with two other reporters and a photographer who were already there. I spent the next few hours walking around OSU, a campus I had never been to except for brief trips to Boone Pickens Stadium and Gallagher-Iba Arena. I desperately tried to get student reactions and comments for my video piece, but it was very difficult to do that. I talked to dozens of people, was turned my most. The vast majority had nothing to say, no reaction to give. I could tell there was quiet uneasiness all over campus. Even if students did feel something, I can understand that feeling would have been hard to portray or describe. All in all, a tragic day that should never have happened once…certainly not twice.