Marshall University Athletics
Shoebridge Says Memorial Captures `Family, Feelings'
11/13/2014 12:00:00 AM | Football
"In the middle of Huntington, West Virginia, there is a river. Next to this river, there is a steel mill. And next to the steel mill, there is a school. In the middle of this school, there is a fountain. Each year, on the exact same day, at the exact same hour ... the water to this fountain is turned off. And in this moment, once every year ... throughout the town, throughout the school ... time stands still."
– Opening monologue from "We Are Marshall"
By CHRIS DICKERSON
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. -- Tom Shoebridge never attended Marshall University. He never wore the green and white uniform of the Thundering Herd.
Yet, the lifelong Lyndhurst, N.J., resident is as much a part of the Marshall University family as anyone you’ll ever meet. His entire family is, for that matter.
Shoebridge’s brother, Ted, was the star quarterback of the 1970 Marshall football team – the team that always will be remembered as the one that endured the most devastating tragedy in American sports history.
On Friday, Tom Shoebridge will be the featured speaker at the annual Memorial Fountain Service to honor the 75 victims of that Nov. 14, 1970 plane crash.
Before his speech, Shoebridge said he was thrilled to be able to bring several family members to Huntington. Some of them never had been before.
"I’m so excited about it," he said. "We are only going to be in town a couple of days. But just the fact that they’ll be at the ceremony, that’s great to me. They’ll get something of a sense of what those who lost their lives mean to Huntington and to Marshall.
"I am going to try to get them to other places, such as the cemetery and the crash site. But at least they’ll get a sense of how important it still is to everyone there."
After his college playing days at Kansas Wesleyan, Shoebridge returned to his hometown and became a teacher and coach at Lyndhurst High School. He retired from teaching a few years ago, but he’s still a volunteer football coach and is the LHS boys’ track coach.
That has meant trips to Huntington were rare.
"I hadn’t been down there since I was a sophomore in high school when Teddy played, but I was able to make it down for the (Mid-American Conference) championship game during Chad’s (Pennington) senior year (1999)," Shoebridge said. "I could not believe the tremendous respect and honor that everyone gave to those lost in the crash."
He recalled something his mother said shortly after the crash.
"She told me that people were going to say stuff to you about Teddy," he said. "In our hometown, Teddy was all that and more. She told me that she didn’t want me to shun away from talking about him.
"‘I want you to celebrate your brother,’ she told me. ‘And let people talk to you about him. Keep him alive that way.
"Well, when I got to Huntington, it was the same way … maybe on a bigger scale."
Since that first visit 15 years ago, Shoebridge has made several trips to Huntington. And he said each one is special.
He remembered once visiting Glenn’s Sporting Goods in downtown Huntington. When he pulled out his credit card to make a purchase, the employee noted the name on the card.
"Shoebridge?" the man said. "Are you related to Teddy Shoebridge?"
He recalled another visit when he went to his brother’s Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity house, where a memorial sits in the front yard for Ted Shoebridge and three other fraternity members who died in the crash.
"Some of these college kids, they have pictures of Teddy on their cell phones," Shoebridge said. "It still means something to them."
In fact, Shoebridge said he just recently made a 10-day visit to Marshall. It’s safe to say he now bleeds green.
"Unless you go there and have that feeling, you don’t really know what it means," he said. "One of Teddy’s best friends was the athletic director at my high school for 35 years. He finally was able to make the trip down last September.
"He told me it was everything he expected and more. You just can’t understand it unless you’re part of the Marshall family and get to experience it yourself."
Shoebridge said the 2006 film "We Are Marshall" is a great movie that tells the story of how the community, the school and the football program overcame the tragedy. And while he acknowledges it would be difficult to do, he said the story of the families of the crash victims is one that still hasn’t been completely told.
"But how do you do that in a movie?" Shoebridge said. "I don’t know if you can. But I think we tell that story every day by how we live our lives, and how the people at Marshall and in Huntington live their lives and honor those who died in the crash.
"And yet, those people we lost live on every day. The movie has inspired people around the country. It shows that we are who we are because of the sacrifices those people made."
He said Huntington has something special.
"You guys should be very proud of what you’ve done to honor those people," Shoebridge said. "It’s something that the movie doesn’t explain. The regular population of Huntington is just amazing … amazing.
"It’s a family. It’s our story. It’s our feelings. It’s our family. It transcends bloodlines."
His mother and father both have passed on, but Shoebridge said he knows they would be proud of Ted’s legacy that lives on. And he said they’d be proud of the growth Marshall has experienced.
"They’d be very proud of everything – the academic side and athletics – going on there," he said. "My dad was a mechanic. He worked on cars in a garage by our house. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. They suffered (after the crash). They grieved.
"But they had two more boys to raise. They had the strength to let their second boy go away to Kansas and play football. They are the toughest people I ever met."
"So, when I speak at the ceremony, I’d like to honor them by saying they’re just like the people in Huntington and at Marshall. We all have triumphed over tragedy, and we celebrate my brother’s life and the lives of all of those who died in that crash."
Shoebridge said his brother would be just as proud of what Marshall has become.
"Are you kidding me?" Shoebridge said with a chuckle. "He’d want to play in that stadium.
"He would be so proud of where the program has come as well as everything going on academically, too, and just the beautiful campus. He’d be proud he was part of that."
Chris Dickerson, a Herd Insider columnist, is a Marshall alumnus, an adjunct journalism professor at MU and editor of the West Virginia Record.
