here you go. sorry.
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- Of the many things that have changed in West Knoxville in the last 50 years, the intersection remains largely unchanged.
It is a two-lane road, leading out of a neighborhood, where it meets a larger two-lane road, just across a set of railroad tracks. It is where Cessna Rd. meets Westland Dr. in Knoxville, the scene 50 years ago of one of the greatest tragedies in the history of Tennessee Athletics.
October 18, 1965 became a red-letter day at UT with the car-train collision at the intersection that took the lives of assistant football coaches Bill Majors, Bob Jones and Charlie Rash.
A Celebration
Three days earlier, a roster of 50 Volunteers, accompanied by the usual travel party of coaches and administrators had boarded a charter flight to Birmingham to face and Alabama program that Tennessee had not beaten since 1960.
Rash, the UT offensive line coach, was not among them. He had been rushed to UT Hospital from practice on Thursday with kidney stones. Rash told the
Knoxville News-Sentinel, then the evening newspaper, on Friday that he was feeling better and planned to make the team flight, but ended up flying down after the team.
"I had to get well quick," Rash told the
News-Sentinel after the Alabama game. "I was afraid they would find out they could get along without me."
Tennessee had not had a winning season since 1961 and had finished 4-5-1, 1-5-1 in Southeastern Conference play in
Doug Dickey's initial season in Knoxville in 1964.
Still, confidence was high going into the Third Saturday in October on the strength of a 2-0-1 record. After a season-opening victory over Army, the Volunteers had tied Auburn in the teams' SEC opener a week later. A 24-3 win over ACC foe South Carolina set the stage for the battle at Legion Field.
The teams engaged in a defensive struggle all afternoon, a 7-7 deadlock as the final seconds ticked away thanks to 1-yard scoring runs in the second quarter by each team. Alabama, who had scored its touchdown in the final moments of the first half, drove down the field late in the game, ending up inside the Tennessee 10-yard line with 36 seconds to play.
But Tide quarterback Kenny Stabler, believing his team had picked up a first down on the prior play, threw the ball out of bounds to stop the clock with six seconds left. The down was actually fourth, and the Volunteers held on for a tie of an unranked Alabama.
"We were lucky as can be that we weren't beaten in the final seconds," Dickey said. "I don't know exactly what happened out there that caused it, but we were lucky."
UA was unranked at the time, but the defending National Champion outscored its opponents 127-31 over its next five games to vault to its second-consecutive Associated Press title, the third under Bear Bryant.
Tennessee returned home feeling as if it had won, optimism for the season and the future of the program under Dickey at an all-time high.
A Moment
The accident occurred at 6:53 a.m., a fact only known because it was the moment that Bob Jones' prized 1957 Baylor Sugar Bowl watch found at the scene had stopped.
Jones earned the watch as the quarterback and team captain for a Bears team that defeated the 1956 SEC Champion Tennessee Volunteers in that Jan. 1 Sugar Bowl game. After his playing career, he served as a football coach at the Air Force Academy while on active duty. He returned to Baylor to earn a law degree while coaching defensive backs for the Bears.
Jones had left football in 1962 to open a law practice in Waco, but the game drew him back to a place on Dickey's staff in 1965.
Charlie Rash established himself as an outstanding offensive lineman at Missouri, a career that saw him named all-conference in the Big Eight in 1957 and 1958. He also set a Big Eight record in another area -- as a kicker. Rash hit 29 straight extra points, a Big Eight record at the time.
After coaching stops at Missouri right out of college and the Air Force Academy, Rash joined
Doug Dickey's staff at Tennessee in 1964.
Bill Majors came to Tennessee in 1957 and never left, another member of the Majors family that meant so much to UT. Majors had a three-year run as the starting tailback for the Volunteers and was hired as the freshman team coach in 1962. He was promoted to varsity defensive backfield coach upon Dickey's arrival in 1964.
The three coaches lived less than a mile from one another, all in the area behind what is now West Town Mall. As was their usual custom, Rash left from his Forest Oak Drive home in his Volkswagen Beetle and picked up Jones, who he had worked with at Air Force and recommended for the UT receivers' coach job, from the Deane Hill apartment that Jones shared with his wife and three young sons. From there, the coaches headed to Cessna Rd. to pick up Majors from his home.
They would typically cross the tracks at Cessna and make a left on Westland Dr., which they would take all the way to Kingston Pike and on to campus. But on this morning, in an accident that has never been fully explained, a Southern Railway passenger train that was running 15 minutes behind schedule collided with the passenger side of Rash's Beatle, radically changing the lives of three families and the Tennessee football family forever.
The car was flung nearly 100 feet by the impact, the rear-mounted engine even further. Jones and Majors were killed on impact. Rash was transported to Presbyterian Hospital in the Fort Sanders area, where he underwent surgery for much of the day Monday for head and internal injuries.
Dickey and UT President Andy Holt delivered news to the families locally. Assistant coach
George Cafego took on the task of informing members of the Majors family, with whom he had a close relationship. Majors' older brother, John, was on the staff of Frank Broyles at Arkansas. In one moment, he received news that his team was the nation's new No. 1 team in the polls. In the next, his former coach informed him of the tragedy that had occurred in Knoxville.
A Mourning
So many responsibilities fell on Dickey, the second-year head coach, in the aftermath of the crash. Away from the field, he had to pull his team together to mourn the loss of their coaches, while holding vigil for a third. On the field, Dickey was without three members of his coaching staff with a game against Houston that many doubted would be played just four days away.
Practice was canceled on Monday, as were practices for all teams on campus. The school and the community were in shock, with events all over town postponed.
Players crowded the lobby of Presbyterian Hospital in support of Rash. Team captain Hal Wantland told the
News Sentinel's Marvin West that being there was all they could do.
"You don't just play for football coaches," Wantland said. "You learn to love them and respect them."
Rash's quote about rushing back from his illness was quickly recalled. Indeed, then team had missed him before the Alabama game, they would miss him even more now.
"There was an empty spot Friday in Birmingham because Coach Rash didn't go with us on the plane," kicker David Leake said. "You could feel the pickup when he arrived later. He was sick one day and we all felt the loss. This is just a thousand times worse."
More than 1,000 players, coaches and members of the community poured into Church Street United Methodist Church for a memorial service on Tuesday morning. Numerous colleges sent representatives to the service to formally express their sympathies. The Dallas Cowboys, who employed former UT head coach Harvey Robinson and blocking back Billy Meek, offered to send a member of their coaching staff to Tennessee if needed.
The Volunteers returned to the practice field after the service to prepare for the Houston game that had been announced as "on" earlier in the day. Assistant AD Jim McDonald, Dickey's predecessor, returned to the coaching staff as other staff members took on additional duties.
The coaching staff supervised practices around heading to Texas for Jones' burial and to Huntland, Tennessee for Majors'.
Attention in the community turned to the seven young children of the three coaches.
The Knoxville Journal, the daily morning newspaper, started a scholarship fund for the seven children, all boys under the age of 10. By Saturday, the paper had raised over $13,000, a figured that increased even more thanks to a collection at the gates of Neyland Stadium prior to the Houston game.
Rash succumbed to his injuries in the early morning hours of Friday, Oct. 22, casting a further pall over the preparations for Houston. A funeral mass was held at Sacred Heart Cathedral later on Friday.
A Gameday Unlike Any Other
A crowd of 34,504 came together the following Saturday, many of them unsure what they would see. A memorial service and moments of silence were held at Neyland Stadium before the Volunteers hosted Houston. The Pride of the Southland Band performed hymns rather than the usual pregame program.
Tennessee's helmets added a black cross over the orange "T" in memory of the coaches, a detail that would remain for the rest of the season.
The toll of the week was apparent on the field as neither team scored in the first half. The Volunteers scored first as Leake connected on a 23-yard field goal early in the third quarter. Moments later, UT extended the lead to 10-0 on a Doug Archibald interception return. The teams traded fourth quarter scores for a 17-8 Tennessee victory that most regarded as a relief, rather than a celebration.
The Vols had the following Saturday off, allowing the team time to decompress from an experience unlike any they had ever faced. UT would knock off No. 7 Georgia Tech, 21-7, a week later.
The 1965 Volunteers would lose just once, a 14-13 decision to Ole Miss in Memphis that cost UT its first SEC Title in a decade. The Vols finished the year 8-1-2 with a victory over Tulsa in the Bluebonnet Bowl in Houston, the first bowl appearance for Tennessee since 1957. A year after finishing 10th in the SEC, UT ended the season ranked No. 10 in the country.
It is a turnaround that is remarkable under any circumstances. With what the Volunteers faced, it was nothing short of miraculous. Dickey was an easy choice for his first SEC Coach of the Year Award.
A Time To Remember
50 years later, the only changes to notice in the area of the crash are an additional house overlooking the railroad crossing and the addition of warning lights atop the crossing sign. There is still no crossing gate, as there are at the other two crossings along Westland. The track is still elevated, a deep gulch of overgrown grass on each side.
Put side-by-side, it is difficult to tell differences between the scene on the day of the crash and how it appears today. There are no markers to remember what happened there, but there are occasional flowers and Tennessee orange mementos placed around the crossing sign.
The three coaches will be memorialized with a plaque in the new
Doug Dickey Hall of Champions in the Neyland-Thompson Sports Complex at UT. The plaque design was unveiled earlier this month during a ceremony unveiling the Hall and a reunion weekend for the 1965 team.
Their memories live on, a reminder of how precious life is and that the Volunteer Spirit will always
