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COVER
JANUARY 29, 2014 | 15

ken his hip.

“A few minutes earlier I’d been carry-
ing people, and all of a sudden I couldn’t
stand up,” he said.
Always the leader, Spurlock re-
mained calm and in charge, calling the
school to explain what had happened,
though it took several attempts to con-
vince administrators that the calls of

distress weren’t a tasteless prank, and
that the unthinkable had occurred.
“I was captain of the wrestling team,
so it just kind of felt like an obligation to
keep everybody calm until help arrived,”
he said.
News of the crash spread quickly

through the town of Whiteish, which
was home to about 3,700 residents at the
time, but it would take hours for authori-
ties to conirm the names of the nine vic-
tims.
Scot Ferda, who today teaches at
Whiteish Middle School, was in the high
school gymnasium watching the basket-

ball game when reports of the crash be-
gan trickling in. A close friend to many
on board the bus, including both coach-
es, he felt the blood drain from his face.
“There’s a generation of people who
remember exactly what they were doing
LEFT: Scot Ferda addresses the crowd at Whiteish High School before a moment of silence in observance of the tragedy. RIGHT: A school plaque in when they heard John F. Kennedy was
remembrance of those killed when a bus carrying the Whiteish High School wrestling team crashed along U.S. Highway 2 on the southern edge of Gla-
cier National Park. Nine died and 18 others were hospitalized in the deadliest highway accident in Montana history. GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
assassinated. There’s a generation of
A
people who remember precisely where
they were when they heard about 9/11. In
staring through the rear-exit window at Whiteish, there’s a generation of people It was pretty crazy. We just huddled out- t Denny’s, which still stands but
Belcher, the truck driver, whose face was who can remember every detail of the side trying to igure out what the hell to has since been re-named the
streaked in blood as he approached the moment they heard about the wrestling do. We thought the bus was going to ex- Glacier Haven Inn, team cap-
door with a pry bar to force it open.
tains Spurlock and Osborne began tak- team’s bus crash in 1984,” Ferda said re- plode, like in the movies.”
“That was the irst face I saw, and my ing stock of those present. On a piece of cently, just prior to leading a moment Brousseau’s leg was broken, his tib-

irst instinct was to get out of this ve- notebook paper, they wrote down who of silence at a Bulldog wrestling match ib snapped on impact, and he lay help-
hicle,” Spurlock said. “I got like 10 steps was accounted for and who was missing. against Columbia Falls. Ferda called out less beneath a pile of crumpled bus seats,
and realized I had to help everybody get After a few minutes, they’d winnowed the names of those lost in the tragedy 30 which Norby helped lift of the fresh-
out. The front of the bus was on ire al- the list down to nine people, all of them years after it occurred, almost to the day.
man so he could crawl out. Meanwhile,
most on impact. A few of us got people dead.
Emily Withrow remembers in pains- Osborne was extracting the surviving
organized. We were carrying those who They were head wrestling coach taking detail the gut-wrenching mo- cheerleaders from the debris.
couldn’t walk. Everyone was in shock.”
Jim Withrow, 33; bus driver Jim Byrd, ment she heard of the wreck.
“I was sitting right behind the cheer-
“[Belcher’s] head had slammed into 41; assistant coach Wayde Davis, 27; his “I was rocking Ian when I got the leaders. Everybody in front of me died,”

the side of the truck,” Norby said. “He 24-year-old wife, Jana, and 3-year-old call. All they said was that the wrestling said Brousseau, who along with Halver-
met us all bailing out, saying, ‘sorry son Casey; team statistician Pamela bus has been in an accident with a truck. son managed to hop out of the bus and
kids, I tried to put it in the ditch.’ He Fredenberg, 16; and cheerleaders Kim That’s all they could say,” she said. “I just hobble a quarter-mile down the road
was bawling. He knew what kind of mess Dowaliby, Tracy Maddux and Stefanie kind of waited and all of a sudden neigh- to Denny’s Inn, half-jumping and half-
had just transpired and then somebody, Daily, all 16.
bor ladies started showing up. It became leaning on his teammate for support.
the police maybe or the highway patrol, Brieanne, the young daughter of more and more apparent that this was “I knew right where we were and that
grabbed him and started interviewing Coach Davis, approached Spurlock and serious. They said, ‘what can I get you?’ Denny’s was just down the road. That’s

him. I never did see him again.”
asked where her parents were; the team and I said, ‘Jim. I want Jim.’ I knew that where everyone ended up, where we all
Even though the front of the bus was captain had no words.
he would have called if he’d been OK, converged. It was a like a triage area,” he
engulfed in lames and some students “I just said, ‘they’re not here, hon- but it was four hours until I found out said.
thought it might explode, the wrestlers ey,’” Spurlock said. “She knew they were he’d died, four hours of wondering, is he Norby recalls the entire team help-
sprung into action, lifting and carry- gone, but what do you say? That really or isn’t he? It was horrible. I remember ing one another down the road and, after
ing anyone who was too injured to walk. broke me up. She was so small. She had looking out the window and thinking, I about 50 yards, hearing the tires on the
With the front of the bus burning, they glass and cuts on her face.”
really don’t want to do this alone.”
bus blow up. When he turned around,
knew they could only do so much.
The captains also monopolized the The tiny community immediate- the bus was fully engulfed.

“There was a ine line separating bar’s pay phone and instructed everyone ly banded together in support and to “There was nothing anyone could
those who died and those who lived,” to call their parents, allowing each stu- mourn, everyone devastated, remem- do,” he said.
said Norby, who fractured his hip but dent two minutes to explain what had bered former Whiteish Mayor Jim Put- Inside the bar, one wrestler was
was too adrenalized to notice the injury happened and assure their loved ones nam. In the days that followed, a media stretched out on the bar and Slaybaugh,
as he helped carry cheerleaders out of that they were alive.
circus descended on the remote town. one of two surviving cheerleaders who’d
the door and down the road to Denny’s Brousseau recalls that his parents NBC’s Roger O’Neil interviewed stu- been knocked unconscious and carried
Inn, a bar, caf́ and motel, a quarter-mile didn’t know whether he was alive or dents in an empty classroom, recording to safety by her boyfriend, sat on the

away. “If you were in the third seat on ei- dead, and later found out that they’d as- their tears as they described the inal pool table, icing her leg and waiting for
ther side of the bus and back, you sur- sumed the worst.
moments before the crash and its after- emergency personnel to arrive.
vived.”
“It took me years to get over this math. The New York Times covered the Cheerleader Sue Stocking had suf-
He continued: “Half of the bus was thing. I still have nightmares about it,” crash and wire stories appeared in near- fered serious internal injuries, includ-
on ire. All the seats and the plastic were he said.
ly every national paper.
ing a pierced lung, and Brousseau recalls
burning. We were carrying anyone that Seated in a booth inside the bar, Nor- Putnam ordered all lags lown at holding her hand during the ambulance
couldn’t walk and I remember Dennis by recalls trying to join Spurlock in re- half-mast and a memorial was orga- ride to Kalispell.
was trying to bear the heat and go up turning to the crash site to look for sur- nized. President Ronald Reagan sent the

front, knowing that there were people vivors, but when he tried to stand up he civic leader a letter expressing his and
inside, that the coaches were up there.
couldn’t move, realizing that he’d bro-
Nancy’s condolences, a gesture the for-