Celebrating a friend 9 years after passing

My co-worker David Melson called my attention to an Associated Press story about the ninth anniversary, on Wednesday, of the Oklahoma State University plane crash.

Kendall Durfey, my best friend in college and my roommate for a year after college, was killed in that crash, along with nine others.

Kendall and I were undergrads at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, where his father, the late Dr. Thomas Durfey, was head of the communication arts department and my academic advisor. After graduation, we worked for a year at a radio station owned by the Durfey family in Wagoner, Okla. I had aspirations of becoming a screenwriter and was biding my time until two of my other professors could start a film production company in Texas.

Eventually, Kendall went back to school, earning his master's degree from Oklahoma State and working for the school. He produced educational videos and was the engineer for radio broadcasts of OSU's football and basketball games. It was that job, with the athletic department, which had taken Kendall to Boulder, Colo, for an OSU basketball game. He, two players, two pilots and five other athletic department personnel were returning from that game when their plane crashed in a pasture near Strasburg, Colo., 40 miles east of Denver. All 10 were killed.

While at Oral Roberts University, I was in charge of the campus movies for 2 1/2 years, and Kendall and I both also worked together on the campus radio station. We combined the two by producing a series of parody radio commercials, poking fun at various aspects of ORU campus life, which would be played on the PA system before movies. I did most of the writing, but Kendall had the production genius to make them sound right, and he also did a funny, high-pitched voice as "Dr. Herb Zimmerman," a running character in the commercials.

Kendall was relaxed and easygoing, but he was serious about his work, and good at it.

Kendall worked for a while at KCFO, a popular and professional-sounding Christian music station in Tulsa, one that was ahead of its time in many ways. I remember arriving back in Tulsa one August after summer break and calling Kendall during an on-air shift. I altered my voice.

"I'd like to make a request," I said. I knew full well that KCFO was tightly-formatted and didn't usually take listener requests.

"I'll do the best I can," Kendall responded, diplomatically.

"I'd like to hear 'When Jesus Comes Back And Sends All The Communists To Hell, Won't It Be Wonderful Up There?'"

"Carney!" he roared. "When did you get back in town?"

The title "When Jesus Comes Back...." had actually been originated by one of my other ORU friends, Darrell Grizzle, in a letter complaining about his work at a Southern gospel radio station in Georgia. But it had somehow become a running gag between Kendall and me.

Eventually, after my year in Wagoner with Kendall, I moved to Texas to work for my former professors. But their funding fell through; I moved back to Shelbyville, tail between my legs, and took a job at the local newspaper. I would call Kendall every few months, or eventually every year or so, to see how he was doing. I had not talked to him in a year or two when I learned about the crash. He was married and had a child, but I never got to meet his wife or daughter.

According to the AP story, by Murray Evans, Oklahoma State has kept the memory of the plane crash victims, including Kendall, alive. A "Remember the 10" run will raise money for counseling services at the university, and the bells of the university carillon toll 10 times each year at 6:37 p.m. on the evening of the anniversary. A basketball game fell on the anniversary this year, and plans were to hold a moment of silence before the game.

For a long while, I had a sticker in the back window of my car with the number "10" and an OSU orange ribbon, in memory of the plane crash victims. It gradually faded and peeled away. But I can still see Kendall in my head, and hear his voice.

Actually, I can his voice in a more literal sense as well. I have audio files of our parody commercials posted at my personal Web site, where I and our ORU classmates can listen to them any time. I write these words on Wednesday, the day of the anniversary; I'll have to listen to the commercials later and raise a glass to Kendall and the others who lost their lives on that January night in 2001.

--John I. Carney is city editor of the Times-Gazette and covers county government. He is also the author of the self-published novel "Soapstone." His personal web site is lakeneuron.com.