Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Great stories just keep popping up


"Hey, Mike. How the heck is the book going?"

I'm here to report to you that "When I'm 64" keeps getting bigger and bigger. I have been working on the book for more than a year now, and I just got word of a wonderful possibility for a chapter in the last two weeks.

Remember Tony Barile? He was one of the finest athletes in our class, a star running back on the football team and a standout point guard in the basketball team that went to the state tournament our junior year.

Well, I hadn't realized that Tony got an athletic scholarship to Marshall University. In fact, he was a senior running back on the team that was all but wiped out on Nov. 14, 1970 in the plane crash that was the worst sports tragedy in U.S. history.

Tony wasn't on the plane; he missed that trip with a lacerated kidney.

His story is going to be one of the most fascinating in the book -- if I ever get it done.

There are some of you who have promised me stories, either about yourself or about friends. I still need them. And if you have any great memories of Tony from high school, I could use those too.

Thanks.

1 comment:

Diane Dunkley said...

I didn't realize that Tony was on the Marshall team. I was at East Carolina, and the Marshall game was the first home game we'd won that year. There were celebrations all over town, and a lot of noise and excitement. As word came in and spread about what had happened, everything got very quiet, and the evening's celebrations ended.

I so glad to know that Tony wasn't on that plane.