Awards - Hockey

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• Til the day Amp Bessone died (almost 60 years later) he never got over this accident. He always felt responsible for all his boys and felt he didn't protect these two young men. It haunted him his entire life.
11/16/2014 5:29:38 AM by Anonymous
• The Gitzen-Loutit Award is a hockey award for outstanding defenseman and is still given out each year. The award is named in honor of two students killed in a bus accident on Saturday, Jan. 14, 1950. The hockey team was on a chartered Copper Range bus heading north on US27 north of Gaylord when the sideswiped a Greyhound bus heading which was heading south. Both buses had bad damage, with the sides of each ripped open and some passengers thrown.Robert J. Gitzen was a sophomore mechanical engineering student from Houghton and player on the team, while Richard D. Loutit was a third year civil engineering student from Battle Creek and student manager of the team. Both were killed instantly.Three passengers from the Greyhound bus were also killed, including a 2-year-old girl. Oddly enough one of the other deceased on the Greyhound was traveling from Mohawk.Many other passengers on both buses were seriously injured. The list of injured from the Copper Range bus is a veritable who's who of Tech from that time: Bill Frantti, Bert, Pete and Jocko Noblet, Jimmy Ruhl, coach Amo Bessone and AD Alan Bovard.Some of the injured stayed in hospital in Gaylord over the succeeding weeks. After the accident, those who could travel headed north by train to the straits. Richard Nebel, a judge from Munising, sent cars to St. Ignace and drove the guys back to Munising where they stayed overnight until cars sent from Houghton could pick them up.[Details summarized by Erik Nordberg (MTU Archives Staff) from Daily Mining Gazette, Monday Jan 16, 1950 and Michigan Tech Lode, Jan 19, 1950.]
4/20/2009 12:04:03 PM by Anonymous