Courtesy photo Pete Naputano shows off his Marshall jersey.

By Neil Rudel

nrudel@altoonamirror.com

A local man who survived the worst plane crash in sports history because he was injured and did not make the trip has died.

Pete Naputano was spared from the Nov. 14, 1970 tragedy that took the lives of all 75 members of the Marshall University football team — including 37 players and six coaches — when the team plane crashed just outside Huntington, W.Va., while returning from a game at East Carolina.

Naputano suffered from a broken heart ever since.

He passed away Sunday at Garvey Manor at the age of 73.

“He lived with it for 53 years,” older brother Fran Naputano said. “He wished he was on the plane.”

“He was kind of frozen in time after the plane crash,” close friend Richard Fiore said.

A 1968 Bishop Guilfoyle High School graduate, Naputano was a backup defensive end who played in Marshall’s first eight games. An arm injury prevented him from being with the team at East Carolina so he drove home for the weekend.

The plane crashed at approximately 7:36 p.m., and news reports started a couple of hours later.

Naputano heard it on the radio and hurried to WFBG, which was located in what is now the WTAJ building on Sixth Avenue. He identified himself and was shown the report.

Needless to say, he was devastated.

Many of his local friends weren’t aware of his injury and thought he was on the trip.

“For a day and a half, I thought he was dead,” Fiore said. “Everybody did.”

Naputano returned to captain the Thundering Herd’s 1971 team as the program attempted to slowly rebuild. He graduated from Marshall in 1972 and continued playing at the semi-pro level, first for the Pittsburgh Ironmen and then as a player coach for the Pittsburgh Wolfpak.

He was inducted into the Semi-Pro Football Hall of Fame, located in Pittsburgh.

“Football was his outlet,” Tom Irwin, another close friend, said. “Pete wanted to be a Division I football player in the worst way.”

Naputano helped as a consultant with the “We Are Marshall” movie that debuted in 2006, but the experience and the film were “uncomfortable” for him, Irwin said.

Naputano was stricken with Parkinson’s disease a few years ago.

He was in a Pittsburgh nursing home before Fiore convinced him to come home, and he was a resident at Garvey for the past year.

That helped to prove support and peace.

“He was really upbeat, even with Parkinson’s,” Fiore, who visited weekly, said. “He was always talking about football. Even with all the terrible things that happened to him, he was a unique person and full of vitality.”

Fiore said Naputano often received visitors and was in touch by phone with countless ex-BG teammates, “probably 30 some guys,” he said, mentioning former Notre Dame quarterback Tim Sigrist.

“When he got back to Altoona, it was easier,” Fran Naputano said.

“It’s a shame he died so quickly, but he also didn’t have to suffer,” Fiore, who spoke with Naputano the day before he passed, said. “He had a storied past, that’s for sure.”

In an interview with the Mirror’s Cory Giger prior to the movie release, Pete said he wanted his ashes to be spread at the Marshall memorial at Spring Hill Cemetery in Huntington.

“I’m going to take them down in the spring,” Fran Naputano said, adding he notified Marshall of his brother’s passing, and the school alerted its alumni base with a message of condolence.

In addition to his brother, Fran, Naputano is survived by another brother, Mark; a nephew; two great-nephews; a niece, Krista Schlecht and her husband, Joe, and many friends.