Close friend of the OSU family remembers the 2001 plane crash

“I did what any guy would do I flipped the TV remote, and I’ll never forget because I flipped across MSNBC and the lady said ‘Once again a King Air plane has crashed, all ten on board are dead.’, described Riddle.  “And I kept flipping, and then I thought, we fly on King Air and we were in Boulder today (January 27^th, 2001).” 

In that moment he realized he lost his OSU family.  Ten men were killed on the plane that was flying out of Colorado to Stillwater.  It crashed at 6:37 near Denver, CO. 

“It literally felt like somebody had kicked me in the stomach and my knees got weak and thank God there was a chair behind me because I fell into the chair,” said Riddle.  “I was in shock.”

Riddle explained his feelings about “survivor’s guilt.”  He said he was supposed to be on that plane.  Two days before the crash he asked his co-worker, another broadcast engineer for the Cowboys, Kendall Durfey, to go cover the Colorado game instead of him.  Riddle’s friend asked him to host a show in town and so Durfey said “No problem” when Riddle asked for the favor to switch.  Riddle said he knows he would have died instead of Durfey if he had gone on that trip. 

Another part of the tragedy that made moving forward with his life even harder was that Riddle lost his best friend on that same flight, the Cowboys play-by-play announcer, Bill Teegins.  Every January 27^th Riddle goes to Teegin’s gravesite and places a Coors Light on it. 

“When I went there today (Friday) I was thinking about those road trips,” said Riddle.  “He'd always order a Coors Light and I'd always order a Bud Light, and that was our deal.”   

He said the second OSU plane crash that happened on November 18^th, 2011 that killed the women’s basketball coach Kurt Budke and his assistant coach, Miranda Serna hurt him even more because it brought back the memories of the first one. 

The library tower on the Stillwater campus rang ten times on Friday to mark the moment when the plane went down.