Brightest Day, Darkest Night

Tom Kroeschell worked for the Iowa State Athletics Department for 36 years in the Athletics Communications office and Cyclones.tv. Forty years ago, tragedy struck Iowa State Athletics when three members of the ISU cross country team, two coaches, a student trainer and pilot perished in a plane crash returning home from the 1985 NCAA Championships in Madison, Wis. He remembers the 1985 ISU cross country team in this story written in 2015.

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I have always been hesitant to write or recount my experience around the Iowa State cross country tragedy in which seven members of the Iowa State community perished in the crash of a plane in Des Moines returning from the NCAA Championships on Nov. 25, 1985. I had only been at Iowa State as assistant sports information director three months when the tragedy occurred. With the exception of Iowa State head coach Ron Renko, I did not personally know the Cyclones who boarded that ill-fated plane after an unexpected second place Iowa State finish at the NCAA Division I Women's Cross Country Championships in Milwaukee, Wis. Renko, assistant coach Pat Moynihan, student-athletes Sue Baxter, Julie Rose and Sheryl Maahs, student-athletic trainer Stephanie Streit and pilot Burt Watkins were killed.

I have always known that those who lost family members and teammates knew a grief deeper than mine. Thus, I have mostly kept my memories of that brightest day that turned into the darkest night to myself.

Over time, because of my job working with the Iowa State track and field the program for the last three decades, I have learned from testimony of friends and family how those who didn't make it all the way home that night impacted so many others in a positive way that has lasted a lifetime.

I did not travel with the team to the 1985 NCAA Championships. But a couple days before the team left for Milwaukee, I sat in Iowa State head coach Ron Renko's office, a small alcove in the antiquated State Gym. He was easy to like and totally devoted to the members of his team.

We were talking about this team's chances for a strong showing at the national meet. He told me that his best case scenario was a sixth-place finish. The team won their NCAA Regional race and seemed well positioned for a strong performance.

The weather that Nov. 25 morning was Iowa nasty. I remember having to pull over in my car at Cy Stephens Auditorium on the way to lunch because my defroster could not keep pace with the ice building on my windshield.

Early in the afternoon, we got word by phone in our sports information office in the Olsen Building that the men had placed sixth and the women had finished second. Second! Wow! With the help of my student assistant Mary Howard we got to work calling newspapers, wire services and TV stations. You had to be proactive with the media when talking about cross country. Still, with a second-place NCAA finish, I was confident it would get a mention on the local TV sports broadcasts and maybe more than a short mention in the paper. (No internet, cell phones, etc.).

Today, we can at least put up video reports of the meet along with stories about our Olympic sport athletes on Cyclones.com and Cyclones.tv. Despite all the technological advances that have occurred in the last 30 years, our cross country student-athletes still toil in relative anonymity. The bottom line is that there would be no crowd of thousands welcoming home this second-place NCAA team on Nov. 25, 1985.

Late in that afternoon, I got a call from Karen Bergan, the wife of men's coach Bill Bergan, wondering when the team would get back. She mentioned the poor weather. I remember telling her not to worry.

I had flown in our twin-engine Aero Commanders many times and not just to athletics events. I would occasionally make trips on behalf of the ISU Alumni Association to smaller gatherings across the Midwest. Just 26 years old, I loved the opportunity to sit up front with the pilots and experience the thrill of flying with that view.

At some point on the Nov. 25, we learned the cross country planes were being diverted to Des Moines. Not a big deal, it happened occasionally.

Because the team would not be landing in Ames, I thought I had time to head home to dinner quick as Ron wouldn't be back until a little later. I was living at 827 Yuma with my boss Dave Starr. When I walked in the door to our house at 6 p.m., Dave had the television on and news was breaking about a plane crash in Des Moines. In no way did I even consider that this could be one of our planes. My feeling was reinforced by initial reports that it was a single engine plane.

About halfway through the newscast, a student who was working in our office called to say that he had received an inquiry from a media person about whether the crashed plane was one of the cross country team aircraft. I told him no, "the reports I saw said it was a single engine plane." I went back to finishing dinner. Five minutes passed. The same student called back to say he had received another call asking if that was our plane. To be honest, this did not produce extreme anxiety from within because we had not received any calls from anyone in the University. I was still thinking "single engine" plane.

I picked up the phone and tried to reach KCCI-TV sports director Pete Taylor. The "voice" of the Cyclones might know more details. The Jim Criner (our head football coach) Call-in Show had started on KRNT so Pete was in the process of opening the program. 'He's too busy to take my call' I thought. The engineer told me he wanted to take my call, but we got disconnected. The fact that he was going to take my call however, made me shudder. If he was willing to talk to me at that moment, it might be…

Dave then called and got confirmation. The worst thing possible had happened. The burned out aircraft on TV was the wreckage of one of three Iowa State planes carrying part of our cross country contingent. A terrible feeling of shock and disbelief overcame me as Dave and I left the house and drove to the Olsen Building. I was not thinking about what we were going to do when we got to the office during that ride. I was still trying to comprehend that this was no bad dream.

We fielded media calls in our small Olsen Building office while athletics director Max Urick and selected athletics and University staff worked from a hangar at the Ames Airport. Dave and I were not told who was on the plane that crashed. At some point during the evening, we found out who was on the plane. I don't remember when we learned exactly who was on that third Aero Commander. The awful reality of the tragedy was accentuated when I fielded a call from a relative of a cross country traveling party member who had not received an "I'm alright" call. I was 26 and had led a very sheltered life. I had never talked with anyone in this situation. I did what I was told to do and forwarded the call to the hanger. Max had to tell one individual that he called not to hang up, this was not a joke. I always thought that our senior staff, Max, Elaine Hieber, the late Tom Litchenberg (who would speak about Julie Rose at the University Memorial Service) and Dave Cox had their best hours during the ensuing days when circumstances demanded it.

There is a curious thing about my former job in athletics communications in that type of situation. You become so busy working with media and the job at hand that it kind of takes you away from the immediate grief of the moment. On Sept. 11, 2001, I spent all of my day with media who had gathered in the Jacobson Building mostly concerned with when we were going to play the upcoming Iowa State – Iowa game which had been scheduled for the upcoming Saturday. I also talked to players who might be interviewed about the tragedy. I didn't fully understand the full personal emotional magnitude of what had happened until I came home late that Sept. 11 night and sat down to watch CNN. Watching the coverage, really for the first time, made all the football talk of earlier in the day seem ridiculously unimportant. But that busy work was the reality of my job.

In the days that followed the 1985 plane crash, there was a great deal of work to keep one busy. My responsibilities centered on the Memorial Service. In the interim, the games went on and I was at the Drake Fieldhouse the next night for our women's basketball game against the Bulldogs.

Soon after the crash I was sent to a house on Northwestern Ave., just north of Sixth Street in Ames. It was the campus address of student trainer Stephanie Streit. Stephanie had flown to Milwaukee on a commercial ticket after the team because she was taking the MCAT exam for medical school. Her remarkable personal story is affirmed in a memory penned by Margaret Schiefen, her hometown and lifelong friend that will be a part of the Celebration and Memory Page. I was sent to that house to find a picture that we could use for the Dec. 4 Hilton Coliseum Memorial Service.

When I got to the house, her roommates had a number of pictures laid out on a table. These girls were understandably devastated. I was an intruder in the midst of their grief. I looked through the pictures of this beautiful girl enjoying college life. It drove home the finality of what had occurred.

This wonderful girl was gone. When I got back in my car, I wept for the loss of those who lived and loved them. I myself was beginning a 30-year process of getting to know each of those who would no longer walk the campus of Iowa State University. At each anniversary and for other occasions, I would dig a little deeper and learn a little more.

In 1995, a small service was held on the new Iowa State cross country course near the stone upon which there is a marker bearing the names of those on the plane. In 2005, the living members of the team presented their second-place NCAA trophy to Iowa State athletics director Jamie Pollard at halftime of a basketball game. Before the 2010 NCAA Championships, on the 25th anniversary of the tragedy, the Maahs family sent a rose to each member of Iowa State's team that was set to compete for the national title.

Many Cyclones will remember Nov. 18, 2011 as the night of Iowa State's biggest football victory, the 37-31 overtime thriller over No. 2 Oklahoma State. But late in the afternoon of that Friday, I was with an ESPN crew shooting our cross country course and the stone memorial dedicated to the 1985 plane crash victims. Oklahoma State, a school that well knows tragedy, had lost its head basketball coach and an assistant in the crash of a private plane the previous day, making Iowa State's tragedy again relevant to ESPN.

At the 2014 NCAA Cross Country Championships in Terre Haute, Ind., our women's cross country team, which ran a lineup that had not been used all season because of various injuries, put together a performance that stunned nearly everyone, claiming the second-place trophy for the first time since that cold and snowy day in 1985. The Cyclones had finally climbed the mountain back to where those 1985 Iowa Staters stood with joy on that fateful Nov. 25 in Milwaukee. A wave of emotion overcame me and I wished everyone who had a personal investment in the 1985 team was there to celebrate and remember. Again, I then turned my focus to the great achievement of the present.

Events like this are how over time I have learned about how much Julie Rose loved being in America. How Sue Baxter had a boyfriend back in England that wrote her almost every day. Sheryl Maahs, the high school valedictorian, was considering following her father into a law career. I got a feel for head coach Ron Renko, who lived for his team and his faith and assistant coach Pat Moynihan, who had helped Olympic Gold Medalist Nawal El Moutawakel transition from Morocco to Ames, Iowa. I had flown in those same planes with pilot Burt Watkins, a promoter of aviation.

We interviewed surviving team member Tami Colby-Prescott Tuesday at her Iowa home as part of a future Cyclones.tv documentary. She related how the pilot of the second plane needed one more person to board his Aero Commander so that aircraft return home (The planes were slated to take the Iowa State men's basketball team to Normal, Ill. for a game at Illinois State.) as soon as possible. Though her belongings were on the third plane, she hopped in and flew home in the second plane.

Sometime after the crash, Tami had to go to the airport to identify her belongings, which were on the accident aircraft. Her father went with her. There, in her bag was her Bible, a small part of which was burnt. Tami's father asked if she could have it. They allowed her to take her Bible home. It is a poignant moment because her faith would be a sustaining force as she and her teammates would marshal onward with their lives.

The memorial service at Hilton Coliseum Dec. 4 was beautiful and I had great respect and empathy for each speaker who somehow managed their emotions in front of more than 6,000 people while articulating the memories of someone they loved.

That morning in Hilton Coliseum, head athletic trainer Alice McLaine, spoke eloquently and movingly on behalf of Stephanie Streit. In closing her eulogy about her beloved student, Alice recited a reading that Stephanie had authored for her sister's wedding.

"I want to say something to all of you that have become part of the fabric of my life. The color and texture which you have brought into my being have become a song and I want to sing it forever. There is an energy in us which makes things happen when the paths of other persons touch ours and we have to be there and let it happen. When the time of our particular sunset comes, our thing, our accomplishment won't really matter a great deal. But the clarity and care with which we have loved others will speak with vitality of the great gift of life we have been for each other."

I remember thinking at the time I had just heard all I needed to know about Stephanie Streit. I now know, there was so much more to celebrate.

Iowa State University Athletics

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