Robert Allen - Pokes Report publisher
Remembering the Ten Goes on All Year and All the Time
STILLWATER -- The stream of flower vans, SUVs, and trucks parking outside the southeast door to Gallagher-Iba Arena was steady. The lobby that is known as the Memorial lobby had been open since eight a.m. so that fans, mourners, family, and the combination of all of the previous could step in and spend a little time meditating and thinking about those 10 men that were lost on that snowy tundra east of Boulder and Denver, Colorado on the night of Jan. 27, 2001.
The Big Monday game now to be televised on ESPN2 instead of ESPN will include plenty of memories and references to that airplane crash and the men that passed away that late afternoon/early evening. The Edmon Low Library bells will ring in honor of the 10 men at 6:37 p.m.
We will never forget those men that were representing Oklahoma State in various capacities that trip for a Big 12 road basketball game at Colorado. They are Kendall Durfey (radio engineer), Bjorn Fahlstrom (co-pilot), Nate Fleming (Cowboys player), Will Hancock (athletic media relations for basketball), Daniel Lawson (Cowboys player), Brian Luinstra (athletic trainer), Denver Mills (pilot), Pat Noyes (basketball operations director), Bill Teegins (play-by-play radio announcer) and Jared Weiberg (basketball manager).
You know, they say that funerals and memorial services are not for the deceased, but for the living. Remembering the Ten is the same. We do it every year and sometimes it falls on the exact date like this year and the Big Monday game with Kansas. Other years, the school designates the home game closest to Jan. 27.
Oklahoma State has done a tremendous job of this with the game, the Memorial sites, both in Gallagher-Iba Arena and at the crash site in Colorado. The Remember the Ten run each year also serves as a great reminder of these men and the devastating losses to their families and friends.
I consider myself in that friends category. Bill Teegins was my competitor at Channel 9 in Oklahoma City when I was working at Channel 4 (KFOR). I could be a jerk at time, I was really competitive. With Bill Teegins, I could not. If I didn’t work alongside Bob Barry Sr. and Bob Barry Jr. at KFOR, I would have loved to work for Teegins. He was a great guy that took pride in what he did and made friends everywhere he went. Bill, along with Larry Reece, who was then the general manager of the Cowboy Network, both worked on getting me on the broadcast for football as the sidelines reporter. A regret that I have is that I never shared a broadcast with Bill. His wife Janis and his daughter, Amanda, were the most important people in his life and he loved talking about them.
I think of Janis and Amanda often, I think about Dave Hunziker, who I have worked with now for 19-years. I remember Dave in the broadcast booth in Hattiesburg, Miss at M.M. Roberts Stadium before his first broadcast as the "Voice of the Cowboys" and he called Janis Teegins to tell her how he wanted her to know how he felt and that he hoped he could do her husband honor with his broadcast that day.
Hunziker has done honor in that he has brought the same class, caring, and desire to be good that Bill Teegins did when he was calling the games in Stillwater.
I think about Bill Hancock, who I had known well before I knew his talented son, Will. Bill Hancock is one of the most influential men in all of sports. I first met him when he was an associate commissioner of the Big Eight and head of the service bureau for the conference. Bill is salt of the Earth and as good a person as you will ever meet. His son was the chip off the old block, who did not fall far from the tree.
I see Bill and I think of the pain and the grief he went through as he rode his competitive bicycle cross country and turned it into an award winning book, Riding with the Blue Moth.
This is a man that has been the executive director of the Final Four and now the College Football Playoff. He becomes a friend to anyone he meets. To me, I will always think of him as an inspirational dad, granddad, and father-in-law. He and his wife, Nikki are so great to see with Karen and Andrea.
Will's wife, Karen, has been head coach, assistant coach for Oklahoma State soccer and is currently the athletic department's senior women's administrator. Their daughter Andrea is now all grown-up and is an inspiration.
I remember Steve Buzzard. A long-time friend and at the time of the plane crash the director of media relations for Oklahoma State athletics. Buzzard had to feel like he lost a little brother on that plane in Will Hancock and I know he lost a dear friend in Bill Teegins. It was Steve that handled all the media and information that night at Stillwater Municipal Airport and back at Gallagher-Iba Arena. Steve is working for the Oklahoma State University Foundation now. I don't see him nearly as much as I should, but it is this day that I think of how he was the most professional I had ever seen somebody in a situation that had to be tearing them apart. Steve Buzzard remembers and I know it is with the heaviest of hearts.
I think about Oklahoma State's deputy athletic director Chad Weiberg. Jared was his younger brother and the two were close. Oklahoma State and the love of the Cowboys was something they shared. I will see Chad at an event or in Gallagher-Iba Arena and I will wonder how hard it is to work in that building everyday or just maybe, it is a workplace that keeps him closer to a brother that he can no longer physically touch and hug face-to-face.
I think of so many people. I knew some on that plane really well, I knew some just to say hello to, and the two pilots I don't think I had ever met. I know all had people that loved them so much and have missed them everyday since.
Remember the Ten, but more importantly remember the living they left behind. They need us to remember and remember and love them, not just on Jan. 27, but every opportunity we can.
