On the evening of November 14, 1970, a Southern Airlines flight chartered to carry the Marshall University Thundering Herd football team to and from Greenville, North Carolina, for a game against East Carolina University crashed into a hillside during the descent of the return flight. The crash took the lives of all 75 passengers, including the bulk of the football team, much of the coaching staff, the athletic director and team trainers, and more than 20 boosters. In an instant, it devastated not only the friends and families of the deceased but the entire town of Huntington, West Virginia, home of Marshall University.