Pastor speaks at Evansville service

Rev. Paul "P.T." Wilson offered words of comfort to a nearly capacity crowd at the University of Evansville's Neu Chapel on Thursday as family, friends, school supporters and employees remembered the 29 people killed in the tragic Dec. 13, 1977 airplane crash that killed the school's basketball team.

"I discovered there are no answers but rather, in the spiritual journey, you simply walk on," Wilson said at the memorial service. Wilson, who is DePauw University's chaplain and pastor at Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church in Greencastle, was a student at Evansville at the time. He was one of the featured speakers at yesterday's event.

The Evansville Courier & Press reports that Rev. Wilson, "as a religion and philosophy student at the time ... helped comfort students and members of the university community and recalled how the number of people gathered at Neu Chapel surged several times that night, each time more news was reported. 'We had such an outpouring of support from all over the country, so helpful, of people calling to say they were praying for us,' he said."

The story written by Mark Wilson continues, "Wilson said the plane crash was a tragedy that extended beyond the university. 'The plane crash affected the DNA of this community as well as the university,' he said."

Evansville's current basketball coach, Marty Simmons, also spoke at the gathering.