HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — A “true legend” and “a great Son of Marshall” were some of the ways Reggie Oliver, 66, the former Marshall University quarterback who helped rebuild the Herd program after the 1970 plane crash, was being remembered following his death this week.
“We’re going to miss him greatly,” Marshall President Jerome Gilbert told MetroNews Wednesday. “It won’t be the same at football season not to him around and talk to us. I saw him at almost every game. It’s going to be a big void there that’s hard to fill.”
Oliver died Tuesday.
Last week, Oliver was hospitalized in Huntsville, Alabama for what was described as a serious head injury following a fall at his home.
Oliver was a freshman in Fall 1970 and did not travel with the varsity team to East Carolina on Nov. 14 of that year. En route back to Huntington after a loss, Southern Airways Flight 932 crashed near Tri-State Airport.
All of the 75 Herd team members, coaching staff, supporters and flight crew aboard were killed.
When Gilbert arrived at Marshall a few years ago it was Oliver who sought him out. Gilbert said he’ll be forever grateful to Oliver for helping connect him with the past.
“I became a very good friend of his. Every time he was on campus he sought me out and came and said hello. He always made me smile when I was around him. He always had something positive to say,” Gilbert remembered.
Gilbert believes it was Oliver’s faith that got him through the tragedy and transition that occurred in Huntington and on campus after the 1970 crash.
“It was not an easy thing to get through to lose so many people that were close to you and have so much resting on his shoulders,” Gilbert said. “I think that speaks to the strength of his character and to who he was as a person. He is someone that we should all look up to as a role model in overcoming adversity.”
This past April, Oliver delivered the keynote address at the Marshall Memorial Fountain in Huntington prior to the Green-White Spring Scrimmage. He talked about his life path’s that took him from Druid High School in Tuscaloosa, Alabama to Huntington, West Virginia.
“He came (to Marshall) with four other guys, all four of those young people died in the plane crash,” said Mike Hamrick, Marshall athletic director, during the spring ceremony.
“Reggie could have transferred and went a lot of places because he was a highly recruited player, but Reggie chose to stay with us and to be a part of building this program back.”
On Sept. 25, 1971, Oliver completed a pass to Terry Gardner, a freshman fullback, to upset Xavier at Huntington’s Fairfield Stadium, 15-13, in the first home game since the plane crash.
“Everybody was chasing me, which they had been doing all day,” remembered Oliver of the play, called as a 213 bootleg screen.
“Of all people, Terry Gardner leaps out into the flat on the left side and I turn and look and he’s wide open. I dump the ball off to him and I’m praying, ‘Lord, let him catch it,’ because he wasn’t a real good receiver.”
Oliver said he considered himself a spokesperson for the 1970 Marshall freshman football team and the 1971 Marshall Young Thundering Herd football team.
“Just don’t forget us. Don’t ever think that we went from Nov. 14 to winning bowl games and getting rings and, you know, living large. Remember those people who helped put the first bricks in the foundation,” Oliver said in April.
“I love Marshall. I keep coming back and I always will because We Are Marshall.”
Gilbert said knowing what he knows now he’s glad Oliver was invited to give the keynote address.
“It seems kind of eerie now but also very thankful that he was here. I thought he had a very powerful speech,” Gilbert said.
A few weeks after the ceremony Oliver sent three photos to Gilbert which the president was looking at again Wednesday. One was a photo of Oliver as that young quarterback. Gilbert said Oliver wrote a note on it.
“It says, ‘To Jerry, welcome to the team. Reggie Oliver, No. 12, quarterback,'” Gilbert said. “So that’s a very treasured picture to me. To have that relationship with Reggie has been very, very meaningful.”
Jeff Jenkins contributed to this story.