McDonald was even commissioned by Rolling Stone magazine for a story. Pierce and McDonald continued producing stories about the crash for various outlets for days afterward. It's funny what sticks with you after all these years." "I don't know why, but I just remember seeing the body bags and (mortician) James Coco sitting on a table eating a hamburger," Pierce said. None of the three saw the exposed bodies, "but we ended up at the funeral home later after we left the airport." "Norm and I met at the airport and we called Dan McDonald," Pierce said. McDonald began gathering details to file a story for UPI, while Pierce was providing news to The Associated Press' Ed Tunstall, who later became the top editor at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans. The debris field gave me an idea of how forceful the crash was." It almost looked like a bomb had hit the plane. I figured a plane had gone down and it wasn't hard to figure out whose plane it was. "When I got to the airport I drove right up to the gate and walked through that would never happen today," McDonald said. "I had a message from Norm Fletcher to get out to the airport," said McDonald, who said his roommate had no details why.įletcher, who had a booming voice and would later become Natchitoches Parish sheriff, was then the broadcaster for Northwestern State football as well as the civil defense director for the parish. McDonald said he and friends had gone to the Waddle-N-Grill after the concert and returned home, where he was greeted by his roommate. "So I got Sampite out of another meeting and he walks up to Jim Croce's widow and says, 'I just want you to know we cut that damn tree down,'" Pierce said. "It's important," Pierce said he remembers Sampite telling him. Years later, when Croce's widow Ingrid visited Natchitoches and Northwestern, the late Mayor Joe Sampite insisted to Pierce that he meet her. In it, he spoke of his desire to reconnect with his wife and son, perhaps quitting the music business and becoming a "public hermit" to work on movie scripts and short stories that would keep him closer to home. Ingrid received the letter a week after her husband's death. None of the three know why Croce wanted to make an early exit from Natchitoches, but a letter from Croce sent to his wife Ingrid just before his death shows Croce was growing weary of the road and was missing his family, which included the couple's 1-year-old son A.J. "It was good, but the crowd wasn't hyped and there wasn't an encore," said McDonald, who is semiretired and living in Acadiana after a long career as the University of Louisiana at Lafayette's sports information director. Gilbert, Pierce and Dan McDonald, who was a Northwestern State sophomore and a reporter for the student newspaper Current Sauce, remembers the concert as being low-key. "That had to be a reference to the tennis match." "There's a YouTube recording of the concert somebody must have got on a cassette tape and at the beginning you can hear somebody from the Student Government Association telling the crowd he didn't know the score," Gilbert said.
LYNYRD SKYNYRD PLANE CRASH BODIES TV
King's demolition of Riggs drew 90 million TV viewers. Pierce and Gilbert said the crowd was likely diminished because the historic "Battle of the Sexes" tennis exhibition match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs was televised that night. "The official crowd was 2,000, but I bet there was only 1,000 people there," said Pierce. Pierce said the school paid Croce and the rest of the group $4,250 for the concert. Pierce was director of the university's news bureau in 1973 and attended the concert with his son, who was a big Croce fan. "He tried to call a taxi, but there weren't any taxis in Natchitoches," said Jerry Pierce, vice president of external affairs at Northwestern. Initial reports said Elliott caught a cab, but two reporters who covered the crash said they later learned Elliott had to walk and run most of the way to the airport before police gave him a ride the rest of the way.
In fact, the group had been set to spend the night in Natchitoches, but called the pilot, who was staying at the Lakeview Motel, to depart early. It was the last show on that tour, and I’m sure he was ready to get back home."Īctually, Croce was scheduled to play another show at tiny Austin College in Sherman, Texas, but he was nearing the end of the tour and anxious to leave Natchitoches for his next stop. "In retrospect, that’s evidence that he was anxious to get the hell out of there. "I saw Croce standing at the side of the stage chatting with some people, but mainly looking at his watch," Gilbert said.