RE: How did you become a fan?
I don't ever not remember being a Cleveland Browns fan. They were always on our CBS station growing up in Charleston, W.Va. (WCHS-TV 8), and I watched every game.
Also growing up in Charleston, there was a huge WVU fan base, and in the late 1960s the Peach Bowl win for the Mountaineers was a big deal. My neighbor on one side was Miss West Virginia while at WVU (Nola Jean Moore) and Tim Wheeler across the street also went to WVU (but died young in Vietnam). Nola Jean even brought me a WVU 68 shirt from college, and we drove to the Elkins Forest Festival to see her in parade.
Marshall was covered in the local papers, the Gazette and Daily Mail, but needless to say, became a great deal more on the radar after the crash, and as I looked at colleges in high school.
I went with my dad to Stonewall Jackson HS games when I hit my teens at old Laidley Field (with crowds of 10-15,000 for the Charleston HS game), and also tried my very short body for one of junior high football at Woodrow Wilson, then one year at Winfield JHS (seriously, I was like 4-6 at 12, 13 years old, only 5-foot as senior in HS) before the coach at Winfield asked me if I would like to be a manager instead.
I did, and all three of my younger brothers followed me there at Winfield as football managers, and in the Marshall equipment room as well. Marshall Coach Jack Lengyel also came to Winfield to marvel at our weight room (MU had none for about another decade, no strength coach until 1990). He invited us to the Ohio game in 1973, and I ended up at Marshall as a student in Jan. 1975.
The rest is history, coming up on 40th Anniversary of coming to Marshall in 2015! Family has a number of Marshall grads, I married Liz who attended Marshall and Tre' will most likely come to Marshall (I think-Army or National Guard also on his nearly 17-year old radar). Lot of games, lots of cheers and tears in that time, but I would not have traded it for the world, and only 1982 (Head Equipment Manager for the American Football Association's Oklahoma Thunder, 8-3 and Western Division Co-Champs) and 1987 (Head Equipment Manager for Western Michigan Broncos, 5-6 that year and Raisin Bowl the following year for first MAC title - left to be MU's head equipment manager) are seasons I was not with Marshall, although I made games for both years, including busing 44-hours to Idaho to see Herd in I-AA Championship vs. Louisiana Monroe, a 43-42 game that went down to the wire (and Darby didn't fumble, either!).
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