Rick McCrabb: Player who avoided Marshall plane tragedy inducted into Middletown Athletic Hall of Fame
Jan. 22—MIDDLETOWN — It was the fall of 1970, and Danny Slusher, who graduated a few months earlier from Marshall University, was waiting for his girlfriend to get out of class.
He had some free time so he stopped by the football dorms — where he spent the previous four years — to talk to some former teammates about that weekend's road game against East Carolina.
Slusher, a 1966 Middletown High School graduate and outstanding running back and punter who earned a football scholarship at Marshall, told the players how "lucky" they were to fly to North Carolina in a jet plane. When he played, the team traveled in two prop planes, he told the players.
A few days later, on Nov. 14, 1970, after the Thundering Herd lost to East Carolina, 17-14, at Ficklen Stadium in Greenville, N.C., the team boarded the chartered jet and headed back to campus.
It never arrived.
The plane was carrying 37 members of the Marshall University football team, eight members of the coaching staff, 25 boosters, two pilots, two flight attendants, and a charter coordinator. The jet clipped a stand of trees and crashed into a hillside two miles from the Tri-State Airport in Kenova, W. Va.
The crash that killed 75 people was recognized as "the worst sports-related air tragedy in U.S. history."
Slusher, now 74, often thinks about that dark day, and how if he had been red-shirted, he would have been a senior running back, and killed on that plane.
"It still gets me," he said quietly.
There was a long pause on the phone.
"Things could have been much different for me," he said. "Man, we lost a lot of great kids that day. Every time I talk about it, I cry. It's so intense, so deep. It just hurts to think about."
He returned to Middletown last weekend for the MHS Athletic Hall of Fame induction at Wildwood Golf Club. While playing for the Middies, then coached by Jack Gordon, Slusher earned three varsity letters in football and track and field and played one season of basketball.
He was co-captain of the football team that finished 9-1 his senior year and was named all-Greater Ohio League after running for 721 yards and 10 touchdowns.
Every time Middletown announced its newest hall of fame inductees and Slusher's name wasn't on the list, he "lost hope," he said.
Now he's a hall of famer, a member of the 18th class.
"Very honored and proud" is how he described the award.
After he graduated from Marshall, Slusher enlisted in the U.S. Army and played on its football team in Korea. He then earned his pharmacy degree from Butler University in 1976.
He opened Professional Pharmacy in 1978 in Somerset, Ky., and sold the business in 2008. He spends the summer months in Somerset, the other half of the year in St. Petersburg, Fla.
Slusher eventually married that girl at Marshall he was dating in 1970. Danny and Linda were married for 41 years until her death in 2013. They have two children, Kara, 46, and Cort, 43.
While Slusher avoided tragedy in 1970, he wasn't so fortunate in 1989. He was involved in a serious car crash and broke his back, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.
The man once known for his speed and agility now depends on his wheelchair.
Don't feel sorry for Danny L. Slusher.
"I don't let it stop me," he said of his disability. "My life has been good no matter what."
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MIDDLETOWN HIGH SCHOOL ATHLETIC HALL OF FAME CLASS 2023
The 18th class was inducted Jan. 14 at Wildwood Golf Club. Here are the inductees:
John Calhoun, football, baseball, class of 1986; Larry Carter, football, basketball, track and field, class of 2007; Darrell Hunter, football basketball, track and field, class of 2002; Mark Andrew, swimming, class of 2015; Larry Emrick, basketball, class of 1958; and Danny Slusher, football, basketball, track and field, class of 1966.
