The cold, dry air crept from under the attic closet door, over the footboard of the bed and somehow found its way into my sheets, assaulting my toes with its frigid malevolence. The temperature in Owasso had dropped into the 20s.
I had gone to bed in a foul mood. The “friendly confines” of the Coors Events Center in Boulder, Colorado had been less than accommodating to my Oklahoma State Cowboys. In fact, the Pokes were handed an old-fashioned Big 12 beatdown.
Ricardo Patton, just 42 years old, had out-coached a legend of the game. He tactically sliced and diced Eddie Sutton's patented man-to-man defense for 81 points to earn one of Colorado’s five conference wins that season.
Andre Williams was a bright spot for the Pokes on a night where moral victories were few and far between, finishing with 15 points and 16 rebounds. Coach Sutton searched for energy from nearly his entire bench. Even Daniel Lawson and Antoine Broxsie played a few minutes for the desperate coach.
It was a night that we all wanted to forget. Match-ups with conference powers Missouri and Oklahoma loomed on the horizon. Coach Sutton wanted to get out of that dreary tundra as quickly as possible to focus on the next game. I, twelve years old at the time, wanted to fall asleep. Sunday school wasn’t going to be fun with my group of fellow grumpy Cowboy fans and the few crimson-hearted hecklers.
Attempting to ignore the impending frostbite on my toes, I forced myself to think tropical thoughts. As I’m wasting away on a warm, sandy beach, my paradise was interrupted by my father opening my door and sitting on the bedside.
“Jared, there was an accident in Colorado.”
I knew about Evansville and Marshall. I had no inkling that it would ever happen to us, the Oklahoma State family.
The morning of January 28, 2001 wasn’t filled with trash talk from fellow sunday school members or frustration over the poor performance from the day prior. The chill I felt on my toes from the night before had enveloped the state of Oklahoma. The sunshine never managed to poke through the gray clouds and fall on the rolling plains of the countryside. It was as if Mother Nature sensed that our home was veiled with the dark, sorrowful mourning that can only come from tragedy.
We had lost ten brothers.
N81PF, a Beechcraft Super King Air 200 prop plane and one of three that the Cowboys basketball program flew (often), had gone down.
Kendall Durfey, Bjorn Fahlstrom, Nathan Fleming, Will Hancock III, Daniel Lawson, Brian Luinstra, Denver Mills, Pat Noyes, Bill Teegins and Jared Weiberg.
Ten sons, brothers and fathers. Ten Cowboys fallen in a snowy pasture outside Strasburg, Colorado.
I’ve made the pilgrimage to the small memorial placed at the scene of the crash, 44 miles outside of Denver.
I’ve played pickup games on the same white maple floor that Daniel Lawson and Nate Fleming dripped sweat on every day, working their tails off for one of the most legendary coaches in the game.
I’ve sat at the scorer's where Bill Teegins used to make his iconic call, “He shoots, He scores, Heeeee’s fouled!”.
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There are moments surrounding this tragic event that will always bring us closer as an OSU family.
January 26, 2011 - The day I wept at halftime of an Oklahoma State basketball game while I sat on the team bench and listened to Andre Williams, Desmond Mason, Doug Gottleib and Eddie Sutton recall that fateful day ten years prior.
Eddie was the courageous man that led the OSU family out of those tumultuous times, even though it may have cost him more sacrifice than ever thinkable. Public address announcer Larry Reece said it best on that afternoon..
“Coach, you were our John Wayne back in those days."
November 17, 2011 - “God forbid this happen again.” Eleven months after the tenth anniversary of the accident, the unthinkable had happened. Once again I was awoken by my dad; this time was a phone call early in the morning.
I threw on a sweater and jacket and drove a half a mile to Gallagher-Iba Arena. The news trucks were already there. I remember having to choke back tears as I stood just off camera in the team film room as it was announced that there had been another crash.
Behind the same podium where Mike Gundy once expressed “I’m a man; I’m 40!”, Oklahoma State University President Burns Hargis was telling the world that we had just lost four more members of our family.
Kurt Budke, Miranda Serna and Olin and Paula Branstetter had fallen in the Arkansas backwoods.
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Those tragedies, however unthinkably distressing they may have been, have knit the Oklahoma State University family together into an unbreakable bond. We know what it’s like to lose. We know what it’s like to win. But most importantly, we know what it’s like to rise above adversity with courage and valor.
No matter where you are, in Stillwater or Dallas or Dubai or Orlando, when you see someone donning the orange and black, you know they’re a part of your family. You may never know their name or their life story, but they are with you in the part of the heart that pumps your orange blood.
Just smile and give them the Pistol’s Firing.
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