University of Virginia Library

Former Assistant Baseball Coach Dies
In Tragic West Virginia Airplane Crash

By Mark Pirrung
Cavalier Daily Staff Writer

Former assistant baseball coach at the
University and head football coach of
Marshall University, Rick Tolley, died
Saturday in the tragic airplane accident
outside Huntington, West Virginia.

Mr. Tolley was one of 75 victims of an
assumed faulty altimeter reading which
brought down a Southern Airways DC9
chartered to carry the Marshall University
football team, coaches, and supporters.

Mr. Tolley is survived by his wife Mary
Jane (ne Edmundson), daughter of the
retired Professor Edmundson of the Geology
Department at the University.

Memorial services are scheduled at Marshall
University at 2 p.m. today. The services will be
attended by five members of the University's
athletic staff who were close to Mr. Tolley
while he served here.

Mr. Tolley graduated from VPI in 1961
where he played center and linebacker on the
football team. He then coached at John Battle
High School in Bristol until 1964 when he came
to the University.

While working for his masters, Mr. Tolley
was assistant to Jim West, the head coach of
baseball.

Mr. Tolley received his degree in 1965 from
the University and moved on the coach for
Ferrum Junior College and Wake Forest before
becoming the head coach at Marshall
University.

The football team was returning from a
17-14 defeat at East Carolina in Greenville
when their plane made a low final approach
into the Tri-state Airport which serves the
Huntington area.

Hit Treetops

The plane skimmed the treetops of a ridge
two miles west of the runway and plowed into
a second ridge cart wheeling wing for wing
before it exploded killing all aboard.

The accident has been called "the worst
domestic air crash this year" by a Federal
Aviation Agency spokesman in Washington.

It is the second air accident involving a
football charter within two months. A plane
chartered from Jack Richards Corp. to carry
players from Wichita State crashed in the
mountains of Colorado on October 2.

It was also the second time that a former
coach of the University had been killed. Head
coach Ben Wilson, a former offensive
coordinator for the University, died with his
players in Colorado.

The battered altimeters of the jetliner may
hold a clue to the cause of the accident,
government sources in Washington said
yesterday.

Check Altimeter

Sources said the crash investigators were
checking the altimeters for mechanical or
human error.

The Tri-state airport in Kenova, West
Virginia is perched atop a hill and has long been
the target of criticism by the airline pilot
association for its lack of radar to assist pilots
in making an instrument approach.

Burial for Rick Tolley and others has been
delayed due to the inability of rescue workers
to identify bodies. A nearby National Guard
Armory has been converted into a temporary
morgue until experts can identify the bodies by
fingerprints.