Most people in Wichita have heard of, or even remember, the October plane crash of 1970. 

A plane carrying the Wichita State football team crashed into a Colorado mountain on its way to a game against Utah State. Although she wasn’t born yet, Abigail Wilson can never forget that day, as her uncle was one of the nine football players to survive the crash.

Wilson, now a journalist for KMUW, Wichita’s Public Radio, was recently awarded a 2016 Gracie Award for her documentary about the fatal plane crash almost 46 years.

The Gracie Awards are rewarded to programming created for women, about women or by women, who have made standout contributions in electronic media.

“It’s pretty incredible,” Wilson said. “Just because this project started out so small but ended up growing into something much bigger.”

Wilson wasn’t expecting any awards when she started on “The Pieces that Remain: Remembering the Wichita State University Plane Crash” as a graduate student at WSU. After earning her bachelor’s from from Benedictine College, she was assigned a project about WSU’s history.

“I chose the plane crash because I had this family connection to it, but my uncle never talked to any of us about it,” she said. “He’s kind of distant from our family.”

Wilson’s uncle, Bob Renner —the Shockers’ quarterback for the 1970 season — was one of those nine survivors. It has been years since he’s mentioned it to anyone, even his own family, Wilson said. Not knowing much about the story, Wilson had always heard her mom (Renner’s sister) talk about how it changed his life. She was curious.

Aside from her familial ties to the incident, she also wanted to educate people because she felt as if not many people are even aware of it. About a month after the plane crash, Marshall’s (a college in Huntington, West Virginia) football team suffered a plane crash, as well. Although similar tragedies, Marshall’s seems to be more well-known.

“A lot of people think the crash is the reason why we don’t have a team, and that’s not true,” Wilson said. “I mean, the university does their memorial every year but this (the documentary) kind of just came to life through my work. People just kind of move on but what I wanted to highlight was what about those people who can’t?”

Even the crash site hasn’t moved on. The bodies have been removed, but larger parts of the plane, including the wings, still remain alongside the debris. Wilson traveled to just west of Silver Plume, Colorado, to hike to the crash site with her mom, a crash survivor and the survivor’s family. At the site stands a memorial, and, as she described it, “just metal all over the place.”

Renner became a different person after the crash. Him and his niece still don’t have a normal relationship. He doesn’t attend the annual memorial put on by the campus, and he only comes around certain family gatherings.

“We’re not really that close, but it made me appreciate who he is more and try to understand a little bit of why he is who he is,” Wilson said.

As a journalist, Wilson said she learned more about how victims are affected by tragedy, and that she can never know what kind of battle they are fighting on the inside.