This past week, I was talking with a graduate of Marshall University in Huntington, W.V., telling him about my interview with Ed Carter, who was the only football team member who wasn’t on the plane that crashed on Nov. 4, 1970, killing all 75 people onboard, including 37 members of the Marshall University Thundering Herd football team.
“How did it feel to read your own obituary?” I asked the young athlete and seminary hopeful.
Nell Mohney“It was an eerie feeling,” he answered soberly. “I feel that my not being on that plane was a miracle from God.”
“How did you happen to miss that flight?” I asked.
Carter recounted a series of events beginning with his father’s funeral and concluding with his mother’s concern that the chartered Southern Airways flight 932 would crash. Then she added, “I don’t want you on that plane with the team. It’s going to crash.”
“Oh Mom, don’t be silly,” he said. “I’ll see you on Sunday.”
Yet Sarah Carter was so sure the plane would crash, she concocted another ruse to have her son miss the game against East Carolina University team, a game played in Greenville, N.C. Her plan worked. The coach gave Ed five days to stay with his mom; he would miss the East Carolina game.
Ed was on the telephone with a friend from Ohio when a radio bulletin interrupted their call to report the crash. It is a terrible shadow that still hangs over the beautiful campus of Marshall University and Huntington.
Obviously, the plane crash that killed his fellow team members was a defining moment in the life of Ed Carter. It was the experience that catapulted him into the Christian faith and ultimately into the Christian ministry. Carter’s “Death Unto Life” ministry allows him to plant churches and help established churches improve their evangelism and mission programs.
He is still an enthusiastic and faithful follower of Jesus Christ and feels that the Bible verse that most describes his life is Luke 15:24: “For this my son was dead, but is alive again; he was lost and is found.”
Contact Nell Mohney at nellwmohney@comcast.net.