This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The telegram arrived just before the BYU football team would play the biggest game in school history, a few hours after Beverley Probert became a widow.
No one knows when the Cougars' next conference title will come, due to BYU's independent status. What's certain is that the first championship never will be forgotten, because of the surrounding events of Nov. 27, 1965.
A recent 50-year reunion brought together dozens of players from that breakthrough season and relatives of the eight boosters from the Salt Lake Valley who, along with five crew members, died in a plane crash on their way to the title-clinching game in Albuquerque, N.M. The Cougars' 42-8 victory over New Mexico forever will be framed by the circumstances of that day, including the response of former BYU star Marion Probert's wife. In a message that coach Tommy Hudspeth read to the team, she cited her husband's hopes that BYU someday would win a championship, and inspired the Cougars to "do your best to see his wish fulfilled."
That's apparently all the players needed to hear, and they responded well in tribute to the Cougar Club members.
"I felt bad for New Mexico, because we absolutely dominated 'em," said Glen Gardner, a defensive lineman who lives in Sandy. "I think we would have beaten them anyway, but it sure lent credibility to what we were doing there, honoring those guys."
The players, coaches and boosters were aligned in their ambition to lift BYU's downtrodden football program. Hudspeth, the 34-year-old coach who had taken over the previous year, built a diverse team that included several former U.S. Marines and junior college transfers, with a dynamic offense featuring quarterback Virgil Carter, receiver Phil Odle and the Ogden brothers, John and Steve, as running backs.
Roger Parkinson, a Salt Lake City physician, had grown up outside of Washington, D.C., so he took it personally when George Washington University beat the Cougars 23-6 in 1963. The Washington Post's headline about GW "drubbing the Mormons" convinced Parkinson that if BYU's football team represented his church, he wanted the Cougars to perform better. He was motivated to launch the supporting Cougar Club, which now has about 5,000 members.
"Athletics were a big part of his life," said his wife, Jean Parkinson Lee, who lives in Salt Lake City. "He wanted to see BYU excel."
The club's founding coincided with Hudspeth's revival of the football program. The '65 team would beat Utah for only the third time in history and stir unprecedented interest, resulting in a DC3 plane being chartered to take fans to Albuquerque for the season's final game. Scheduled to stop in Provo to pick up another 20 people, the plane never made it past Point of the Mountain, crashing into the hillside in snow and poor visibility near Camp Williams. There were no survivors, in the second major air disaster in Utah that month, following the deaths of 43 passengers upon landing in Salt Lake City on Nov. 11.
News of the accident reached the team during its pregame breakfast in Albuquerque. "We were in shock," said defensive Bob Roberts, a West Jordan resident. "That was a little more than an 18-year-old mind could comprehend."
LaVell Edwards, BYU's defensive line coach in '65 at age 35, hesitates to directly link the Cougars' performance against New Mexico to their emotional response. But he said, "I know this: We played the best total game that we'd played all year."
So a program that had posted only four winning seasons since 1940 finished 6-4 overall and 4-1 in the Western Athletic Conference, distinguishing itself in a state where Utah State had made national impact in the early '60s and Utah had won the '64 Liberty Bowl.
No postseason opportunity awaited the '65 WAC champs, in an era of few bowl games. The Cougars earned the fourth title awarded in the WAC, with six charter members. BYU would go on to win 22 more championships in the WAC and the Mountain West. Although the school's next conference title would not come until 1974, in Edwards' third season as head coach, he has consistently credited Hudspeth for raising the level of the program — beginning with the '65 team.
"We've always appreciated [Edwards] for that," Gardner said.
Gardner and Roberts were among the organizers of the 50-year reunion, which brought about 45 players to Provo from around the country in October. They felt strongly about remembering the families of the crash victims, who welcomed being included. Hudspeth long had looked forward to attending the event, but he died of cancer in June at age 83.
Three generations of Hudspeth's relatives assembled in Provo. "Everything we did that weekend," said his wife, Ruth Ann, "we kept saying, 'Gosh, Tommy would have enjoyed this so much.' "
Carter and Odle, the vanguard of the passing offense that would take hold in Provo about a decade later, are in the BYU Hall of Fame. So is Probert, who became a surgeon after starring as a defensive end in the early 1950s.
The school retired Probert's No. 81, undoubtedly in part to memorialize the other crash victims.
Beverley Probert's game-day message to the team is commemorated in duplicate plaques at LaVell Edwards Stadium and Smith Fieldhouse, where the building's east addition was dedicated to the Cougar Club members. The plaques celebrate "the courage of their wives."
Twitter: @tribkurt —
BYU's 1965 football season
BYU 24, Arizona State 6*
BYU 21, Kansas State 3
Oregon 27, BYU 14
BYU 34, San Jose State 7
Wyoming 34, BYU 6*
Utah State 34, BYU 21
BYU 25, Utah 20*
Colorado St. 36, BYU 22
BYU 20, Arizona 3*
BYU 42, New Mexico 8*
* — conference game —
In remembrance
Victims of a Nov. 27, 1965 plane crash:
Cougar Club members
• Dr. J. Bernard Critchfield, 42, Taylorsville
• Dr. Antoine Dalton, 35, Holladay
• T.R. Gledhill, 43, Salt Lake City
• Dr. Gordon Lewis, 39, Salt Lake City
• Dr. Roger Parkinson, 37, Holladay
• Jim Peterson, 40, Holladay
• Dr. Marion Probert, 32, Murray
• Richard Wilkins, 38, Salt Lake City
Crew members
• Diane Edde, 18, Grantsville
• Garth Edde, 45, Grantsville
• Calvin Higgs, 41, Salt Lake City
• Norma Jenkins, 23, Salt Lake City
• Kenneth Myers, 43, Bountiful