Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of a plane crash near the Tri-State Airport in Huntington, WV, that killed 75 people, including most of Marshall University's varsity football team.

Winston-Salem resident Craig Greenlee will never forget Novemer 14, 1970. He was a student on campus and got to know many of the players and staff when he was a safety on Marshall University's football team during the 1968-1969 season.

Greenlee lost his best friend in the crash, Scottie Reese, a football player from Waco, Texas.

"So many people were touched by it whether you went to school there or not. Ladies lost boyfriends that night. I lost my best friend who was on the plane that night. There were no such things as athletic dorms as we know them today back then, so they were scattered and you have a situation where college life being what it is, people got to know each other on a personal level and you couldn't escape it really if you even wanted to, " said Greenlee.

The 2006 movie We are Marshall brought the tragedy to the big screen. But Greelee said the Hollywood version fails to capture the stories of tragedy and triumph that followed many students like him. He is now a freelance sports writer in the Triad and is a substitute teacher. He said the untold stories on campus inspired him to write a book about the disaster.

"There's a chapter in the book where I talk about some African American students at the time were able to through the help with some ministers in the city, charter a bus and go to as many funerals as they could and they wound up going to a wake and three funerals for seven players in the span five days and covered around 1,500 miles," said Greenlee.