"Thank you for the kind and touching words about my father"

Pat,

Thank you for the kind and touching words about my father. I'm very happy to hear you have good memories of knowing him and watching him play. While it is very true, life was never the same for the people and community affected by the tragedy. The individual and collective strength of pure love, compassion, and fortitude allow us to move forward.

Daniel Dodson Stainback

"My heart, too, goes out the everyone who lost a loved one that night"

My name is Pat (Grey) Burton. For the first time, I watched We Are Marshall last night on TV... then I watched it again. What a horrible, tragic loss for so many. I graduated high school with John Stainback, the brother of Jerry Dotson (J.D.) Stainback who died in that crash. J.D. was a couple of years older than Johnny and I, and I remember watching J.D. play football while at Warwick. He has a terrific person, fun loving, good looking, down to earth nice guy and great ball player. After seeing the movie, I logged into Goggle and began reading all the stories and seeing all the pictures. It was as though time had stood still, so many years ago. J.D's. MU picture looked just like he did in high school. Just read a story written in a Roanoke newspaper, entitled 35 Years of Pain where it discussed the 7 Ferrum players who transferred over to MU, one of them J.D. Thought I remembered he'd married and sure enough the article mentioned his wife and child at the time. My heart, too, goes out the everyone who lost a loved one that night. I know for the Stainback family, life surely was never the same.

-Pat Burton

"My heart goes out to all the families and their tremendous losses."

My best friend, Shirley Mealey and Ray Hagley, were my friends in Huntington schools many years ago.

I later lived in CA and heard of the crash and phoned quickly..finally reaching a distraught lady who answered Dr. Hagley's office phone and told me they were both in the plane. I felt so helpless!

Shirley and I had often talked and written of getting our families together while they were all young.

My heart goes out to all the families and their tremendous losses.

Barbara (Riggs) Taylor
taylor.barbara@gmail.com