I was watching the Notre Dame-Clemson football game Saturday night, and I kept looking for them. In the mass of humanity that night I didn’t expect to see them, but I kept looking for them. I was praying that there was some mistake. It wasn’t true, right? It was just a Facebook hoax or a horrible nightmare. It was real alright, and somewhere in the midst of the 81,000 screaming fans at Memorial Stadium, there were four empty seats. Those seats were to be occupied by Charlie Smith, his son Scott Smith, Scott Bibler and Tony Elliott. The four friends flew in Charlie’s Piper PA-32 from Warsaw Municipal Airport Friday, and were literally minutes from landing at Oconee Regional Airport in Clemson, South Carolina. Then something went wrong. A call of “mayday” went out to air traffic controllers around 3:15 p.m., and then silence. Soon after, the wreckage of that small six-seat plane was found near a lake along the South Carolina-Georgia border. There were no survivors. By now you have seen and heard dozens and dozens of people pay tribute to these four men and send condolences to their family and friends through media interviews and on social media sites, and they earned those accolades. Included in this group are a man who literally created something from nothing. Charlie Smith took the young men from farm communities in Kosciusko and Fulton Counties who had been playing football against each other with passion and intensity and taught them how to play together so well that they become state champions at Tippecanoe Valley in less than five years. It’s not like he took a bad football team and made them good, he made a football team where there had never been one before, and they won big, as the Vikings claimed the 1979 state championship. Who does that? A man with incredible confidence and the ability to lead, that’s who. A guy like Charlie Smith. His son Scott sat in the co-pilot’s seat last Friday in that now haunting ‘selfie’ they took and then posted just before takeoff. Scott Smith was a lawyer in Warsaw, and he will be remembered for fighting for his clients with the same spirit and fierceness that he did when he played for Tippecanoe Valley back in the 1980s. In the back was Tony Elliott, a racing legend throughout the area and beyond. When NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers like Tony Stewart and Kasey Kahne are on social media noting their sorrow and sadness over your passing that means something. I did not know Elliott well on a personal level, but I know when his racecar hauler pulled into a track, whether it was Warsaw Speedway, Kokomo Speedway, Eldora, or if he was representing this great country like he did a number of times in New Zealand, the opposition knew they were in for a dog fight all night long. And then there was Scott Bibler. “Bibs” was the head football coach at Tippecanoe Valley when I started broadcasting Valley games in 1994. Hosting a relatively new show called “On Board with the Vikings” was part of the job description then (and still is for Tim Keffaber today). We would talk about the game the night before with Coach Bibler, and then he would bring with him two or three players from the team to be on the radio too. The point was for the fans to get to know the players better. Bibler was so interested in that part of the show being a success, and at the same time helping make me look good, that each week he would feed me a little tidbit about each kid who was there to help break the ice. He’d tell me something like “ask Chad about fishing” or “Eric wants to learn how to build bridges.” That was a signal to me that Scott Bibler cared about the people around him and he wanted to make them better – even the broadcaster. You can’t put a value on that. He was always positive, even in situations that seemed darkest and bleak. He was an optimist’s optimist. He smiled and it made you feel better. His heart was as wide as a football field, and you didn’t have to be around him long to come to know that. He was sometimes accused of being “too nice.” Imagine that. The last time I saw him was at the recent Steven Curtis Chapman concert at the Wagon Wheel 10. I saw him backstage at the meet-and-greet, and his greeting for me was the same as it has been for the last 21 years: “BIG ROG, WHAT’S UP BABY!” I cannot imagine walking into the Valley gym to broadcast basketball in November and him not being there to greet me that way. To the Smith, Bibler and Elliott families, I just want you to know that there aren’t enough flowers in all the greenhouses in Indiana, nor enough sympathy cards, nor enough pictures from racing celebrations, or videos of pregame speeches or “selfies” from seats in the southeast corner of Notre Dame Stadium with the Golden Dome in the backdrop, to express our own grief right now. There aren’t enough words or enough space on pages to write out what we feel in our broken hearts: sorrow, disbelief, pain, despair. But know this: these four men touched the lives of literally hundreds of thousands of people through their work and their play. They loved and they laughed and they made a difference, and in the process they changed the world (or at least their corner of it). Oh that we can have the same said about us someday. And it CAN be, but start now because you don’t know when your last chance will be. History will show that on October 3, 2015, Notre Dame lost a football game at Clemson by two … but on the day before, on the scoreboard of our hearts, we ALL lost by four.
