It was a normal January day. I was in my 3rd year of college and living in a house on Cantwell with David Irons, Brian Hake and Greg Bloyd. OkState was playing Colorado in Boulder that night. The game wasn’t televised, but it was on the radio. I loved listening to Bill Teegins do the play-by-play. We lost the game that night by 10, but that wasn’t all we lost.
The local news was reporting that one of the planes had not returned to Stillwater yet. My roommates and I were glued to the television. Just waiting to hear something. After about an hour had gone by they had told us that the plane that didn’t return had crashed. There was no report on survivors or dead and no report of names of the people. It wasn’t until a lot later that night that they reported who had died in the crash.
I knew the names of all of them, but 2 of them I knew better than the others. Nate Fleming was an Edmond boy like me. He was a walk-on and well liked. Anytime we were up by a lot we would start chanting “Nate, Nate, Nate”, we wanted him to get in the game so bad. I sat next to Nate in a History class the semester before. He was well liked and really funny. I would think back to days in class and remember sitting next to him.
The other name that really affected me was Jared Weiberg. I had met Jared the summer before at basketball camp at Oklahoma Christian University. Jared was a former walk-on who this school year was a trainer. He wanted to be a head coach like his dad. He was smart and he knew the game very well. The semester before and leading up to the plane crash I would be on my way to class at the same time T-TH and would run into Jared getting out of his car heading to the bball offices. We would talk for about 3-5 minutes and then I would head on to class. I never thought those conversations would end like they did. He loved talking bball and would talk to anybody. I went to his memorial service in Tonkawa at NOC. It was in the gym. It was only fitting for Jared. The place was standing room only. He touched so many lives, including mine. I will always remember Jared and the little time I spent with him. He would have made a great coach.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years. It seems like yesterday in so many ways. I will always remember, and I have never been more proud to be a Cowboy. We will always remember the 10.
