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The movie also reveals one of the most poignant anecdotes from that 1971 season, a scene where Lengyel - one week before the opening game - takes Marshall's players to the Spring Hill cemetery not far from the school's campus where those who came before them were buried. "It was a personal, private thing, nobody in the administration or the town knew about it," said Lengyel. "I did it at 6 a.m. and never told anybody about it until I mentioned it to people doing the film." Naturally, the movie's producers embraced that story and put it on the big screen. That scene, perhaps more so than anything in the crash's aftermath, reflects the Marshall story to anyone who has ever put on the Thundering Herd uniform. In the three-plus decades since the tragedy, the football program Lengyel rebuilt has reached levels that few expected. It went on to win two I-AA national championships with coach Bob Pruett, made the transition to a I-A program, and won more games in the 1990s than any Division I school. Marshall has produced several NFL standouts, most notably wide receiver Randy Moss, followed by quarterbacks Chad Pennington and Byron Leftwich, all of whom received Heisman Trophy consideration. For Leftwich, now on injured reserve with the Jacksonville Jaguars, the movie is a grim reminder of the ultimate sacrifice paid by those who came before him. "My recruiting visit to Marshall was the first time I had ever flown," said Leftwich, a native of Washington, D.C. "I flew there with one of my friends, Tyrone Stewart, and we were telling a lady in front of us as we boarded the plane where we were going. She said, 'Oh, that is where the team plane crashed.' It was my first time on a plane and the first time I heard that story [about the Marshall tragedy]. "It's hard to even fathom being a part of something like that. What we were doing at Marshall at that time was living out the dreams that all those guys wanted. You know those guys who went down in that plane crash were proud of that. Coach Pruett used to always say that those guys were always looking out for us." For Lengyel, his players and everyone in Huntington or affiliated with Marshall, the memories of the day that forever changed so many lives will never subside. On campus, there's a Fountain of Life in front of the student center, a memorial with 75 steel rods welded together in the shape of a flower, with water coming up out of the center into a big pool. Each November 14th at 7:58 p.m., the time of the crash, the fountain is turned off until springtime and a service is held to honor all the victims. Lengyel went back for the 20th and 30th anniversary ceremonies. Though he coached football at five different colleges, served 14 years as athletic director at the U.S. Naval Academy, and worked in various capacities for nine other schools, his time at Marshall resonates with him the most. "I consider it the most memorable experience I had in college," said Lengyel. But few can relate more to the scope of the tragedy than people who lived through it and remain connected to the school or the town in different ways. Deborah Novak, a Huntington native, made the documentary "Ashes To Glory" several years ago that was put out on DVD and helped the filmmakers put the tragedy in accurate historical context. "For the people of Huntington, it's like the Kennedy assassination," Novak said in a Chicago Tribune magazine article in 1999. "Everybody knows where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news." Lengyel remembers so many details of how lives were impacted by the crash, but his best story of life coming full circle involves two of the players who never got on that plane - Nate Ruffin and Eddie Carter. Ruffin had an elbow injury and didn't make the trip to East Carolina. Carter had to go to Texas to attend his father's funeral and was scheduled to return to Huntington in time to play in the East Carolina game. But his mother begged Carter not to go because, according to Lengyel, she had a vision that the team plane would crash.
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