It was another story of tragedy, and the morning of Oct. 3, 1970, the Rocky did its job again, acting as messenger, mourner and questioner.

A twin-engine airliner carrying at least 40 persons, most of them football players and officials of Wichita State University, crashed and burned high on the east slope of the Continental Divide north of Loveland Pass at 1:14 p.m. Friday, reporter Dick Thomas wrote.

. . . It was believed to be the nation's worst air tragedy involving a sports team.

The plane, with registration number N464M, was one of two Martin aircraft carrying the Wichita State football team to Logan, Utah, for a Saturday game against Utah State University. The second plane, with 39 persons aboard, landed safely in Logan, where its passengers were immediately taken to a motel and given sedation.

Witnesses on the ground said that the Martin 404 aircraft appeared to labor to gain enough altitude to cross the Divide. The plane crashed at 11,000 feet.

'I didn't do anything'

Carl Hilliard was a veteran Associated Press reporter in Colorado when the Wichita State plane went down and he rushed to the scene. In nearby Bakerville, he found a shaken witness.

Bob Lincoln, 32, a black, bull-shouldered construction electrician, curled his hands around a beer in a roadside tavern about five miles from where a Wichita State University plane crashed Friday afternoon, killing many of those aboard.

"I said to the guy who told us - 'Hey, that's my school. I'm going up there,' " Lincoln said.

Lincoln said he had attended Wichita State in 1957 and also played football there. He and a handful of others who were working at the Straight Creek Tunnel scrambled to the crash site. They found there was little they could do. They covered one victim they found who had been thrown from the plane.

"We went up there to help - in any way - if we could," Lincoln told Hilliard.

"There was nothing alive in that plane. We found a shoulder pad, and a helmet. I think a jersey, and a football shoe.

"Don't use my name," he said. "I didn't do anything. I just used to go to school there."

Sports news

The Rocky devoted 12 pages of coverage to the Wichita State crash, but the only mention of it in the sports section was a brief, bland wire story that chronicled past air tragedies involving sports figures.

The lead sports story was the naming of former Denver Bears manager Billy Martin to manage the Detroit Tigers. Quarterback Joe Kapp, who the year before had led the Minnesota Vikings to the NFL championship but was sitting out the current season as a free agent, signed with the Boston Patriots. The NFL finally had merged with the upstart AFL, but Kapp's move to the American Football Conference team was still regarded as a defection.