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Movie Depicts Plane Crash That Claimed Local Sisters' Dad

Two local women reflect on lessons taken from a plane crash that killed their father 36 years ago. The death of the Marshall University football team

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RALEIGH, N.C. — The tragedy that happened to the Marshall University football team 36 ago remains painful today.

The movie “We Are Marshall,” which opened Friday across the country, is about the plane crash that killed the team as it flew home on Nov. 14, 1970, from a game against East Carolina University.

One of the victims was a team booster named Parker Ward. His daughters, Elizabeth Bode and Sharon Glenn, live in the Triangle now. They have taken some lessons from their father’s sudden death.

“Every day is a gift,” said Sharon Glenn.

Their father was flying home with the Marshall football. He lived near the Marshall campus in Huntington, W.Va. The sisters went to the movie’s premiere recently back in Huntington, where their mother still lives.

“It’s a movie about life. It’s a movie about never forgetting, but moving on,” Glenn said.

“They were about a mile from the airport when it happened,” said Elizabeth Bode.

“Everybody was affected in one way or another, whether it was a relative or a friend,” Glenn said.

“Everybody knew somebody,” Bode said.

Glenn was 9 when the plane went down. Bode was 10 days old.

The women’s mother was also supposed to be on the plane. Bode had been born prematurely, however, so her mother had stayed home with the baby. Except for that turn of fate, all three may have died that day.

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