'A town in mourning and disbelief'

My 12 year old mind was trying to grasp what my mother had just told my nephew and me. With tears in her eyes she said there had been a plane crash over the hill on route 75, just a mile or so from the runway. She said it was Marshall's football team. I remember the raw emotion that I felt as a pre-teen. What I remember most is the hurt in my mother's eyes, and as the days passed, a town in mourning and disbelief. The tragedy we all faced that night 35 years ago will never leave our hearts and minds. What it has done is to bring a town together in a marvelous way. WE ARE MARSHALL, and will always be.
-Jimmy Bloss