‘You will get through this’: How two LSU families persist without Carley McCord (2024)

Editor’s Note:This story was included in The Athletic’s Best of 2020.View the full list.

BATON ROUGE, La. — For the first four months after his wife died, Steven Ensminger Jr. slept on the couch. He couldn’t go into their bedroom. He wasn’t ready. Baby steps. That’s been the plan. So for four months, he would cuddle up with Carley’s little toy poodle Reggie Bush and sleep on the couch.

Or at least he tried to sleep. There were weeks he’d stay up all night and then fall asleep in the morning for the entire day. There were weeks he didn’t leave the house. He’s watched seemingly every show on Netflix. He’s rewatched LSU’s national title season maybe 10 times. His cousins constantly tried to get him out or at least to come over to grill in the backyard. Sometimes he’d say yes. Often he’d say no. He tried grief counseling, but that wasn’t for him. A pandemic hit the world. That’s more isolation. That’s more time to think about it. Carley’s family worried. His friends did, too.

He was 32 years old, and he had to start his life over. But was it OK to start over? Was it OK to keep living? He wrestled with it every day.

Carley McCord’s death in a plane crash was Dec. 28, almost eight months ago. She died, along with four other people (Gretchen Vincent, Michael “Walker” Vincent, Robert Vaughn Crisp and Ian Biggs), while flying from Lafayette, La., to Atlanta to see LSU play Oklahoma in the College Football Playoff semifinal game. She went to cover the game as a reporter for WDSU in New Orleans. She went to see her father-in-law, LSU offensive coordinator Steve Ensminger Sr., coach his way to his dream season. She never made it.

They were going to have kids. Carley was going to go on to a major television job. Ensminger would finally leave the nitrogen plant he worked at and return to coaching, just like his old man. All those plans went down with the twin-engine Piper turboprop plane.

Then, in May, Ensminger let himself sleep in the guest room. Baby steps. He started doing projects around the house, building furniture or mowing the lawn because he still hears Carley’s voice telling him to do it. He got a new car. He visited her grave constantly. He grew out a beard for the first time in his life and kept his hair long, because Carley preferred it long. He always wore his wedding ring.

He started looking into coaching jobs. Carley always wanted him to leave the plant, where he worked as a chemical operator. She thought he’d be happier if he were coaching, and football has always been where the Ensminger men turn when life gets hard. He got a call from Assumption High in Napoleonville, La. They wanted him to come in to talk sometime. He said, “I’ll come right now.” His first day as Assumption quarterbacks coach was in June.

So the night before his first day at Assumption, the night before the start of his new life, Ensminger thought, Hey, I’m starting my career over. Let’s try something. He decided to leap his two biggest hurdles at once. He took off his wedding ring and attached it to the chain around his neck, and he spent the night in his and Carley’s bedroom. He stayed on his side of the bed. Reggie sprawled out across the rest anyway.

“It felt good,” he said. “It was comforting.”

There are days Karen McCord can’t think about her daughter anymore. She has to put her away, just for a little while.

Karen’s grief counselor told her to try grieving for two hours a day and work her way down. Good luck with that. Carley doesn’t leave her mind for more than a few minutes at a time. Karen’s the type who believes in crying when you need to cry, feeling when you need to feel. But Karen is also a doer, much like Carley, who literally worked eight jobs at a time.

She teaches at Northshore Technical Community College, which gives her a nice 90 minutes of freedom. Her two other children, Kaleigh and Carson, joke that you’d never know anything was wrong, because Karen is so adamant she won’t let all the nights she wakes up crying at 2:30 in the morning kill her spark.

Five people died and one survivor was seriously injured in the crash, but it altered the lives of hundreds, leaving the families and loved ones scattered and searching for answers. There’s no right way to grieve. There’s no playbook. Karen believes in facing it head-on, staring it in the eye as she manages each obstacle. Just don’t think she’s not hurting. When you ask Karen how she’s doing, her steadfast response is “I’m breathing.” Her grief counselor asked what her goals are.

“To survive,” she said.

At least she has her hobbies. She has her distractions. Her husband, Tracy McCord, lost his in the pandemic. He can’t play with his band, Pocket Change, five to six times a month. He can’t sing at 5:30 p.m. Mass. He can’t go to his Knights of Columbus meeting two to three times a week. He retired and then lost his daughter, then the whole world stopped.

“We really haven’t had the opportunity to get back to the routine of our lives that was our life before the accident,” he said. “That routine has simply been put on hold. So moving forward, which we know we have to do, has been put on hold.”

Carley was a public figure, a major Louisiana sports reporter and the daughter-in-law of the national-championship-winning offensive coordinator. So here’s the worst moment of this family’s life, and it’s public for the world to see.

There have been acts of kindness. People have checked in. The family has launched several scholarship funds, raising more than $100,000. Carley’s sister Kaleigh’s children’s clothing company, Little Louanne, completed Carley’s mission of designing a collection to raise money for local radio host Matt Moscona’s son, Drew, who was born with a rare genetic disorder. Nick Saban sent flowers, and there’s a plant from Joe Burrow right by their front door. All of this is appreciated, and in a way it’s proof of Carley’s success.

Kaleigh laughs at the morbid joke of it all: “My sister wanted to be famous. Anybody in the media like that with their face on the news and on the radio, you want to be famous. She was famous. In her final hour, she made it.”

But even the good reminders of Carley are still reminders of what they lost. Any time the family goes to the store or out to eat, they get The Look, as Karen and Tracy put it. Tracy once went to Academy Sports to pick up some ice chests, and while waiting in line a woman gave him The Look and reached out to hug him.

“I’m so sorry, how do I know you?” he asked.

“From church,” she said. “We listen to you sing every Sunday. We’ve been praying for you and your family every day.”

Karen has felt the prayers. She will strongly say her faith has grown these seven months. The McCords have just had to accept the reminders will never go away.

“My thing is when people go, ‘It’ll never get better,’” Karen said. “I’m just like, ‘Oh dear God. Please don’t tell me that.’ If it never gets better than this … Oh my.”

The day is a permanent blur in their minds, a moment they’ll never escape.

Carley was scheduled to fly out early Saturday morning. She was invited by Gretchen Vincent, whose husband owned the plane. Carley told her mother she’d call when she landed. She texted her husband to say she loved him.

Karen was shopping at Fresh Market. Tracy was at home. Kaleigh was on vacation in Dallas. Her brother Carson was browsing for a new truck.

Steven was at work at the CF industries chemical plant. He couldn’t get time off for the game, so he was sitting in the plant kitchen alone eating lunch when he received a call from his aunt, Nina Couch.

“Steven, did Carley fly to the game?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Where did she fly out of?”

“Lafayette.”

“Let me call you right back,” she said before hanging up.

He didn’t think anything of it. He remembers it was gloomy out, and he stayed in the kitchen until she called back.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“You need to sit down,” she told him.

He repeated the question: What’s going on?

“There was a crash,” she told him. They didn’t know too much, just that it was a plane from Lafayette going to the game. She said they’d try to find out more and call back.

Steven tried to call Carley. He didn’t know how long the flight was. Maybe she was completely fine. He tried to call his parents, Steve Sr. and Amy. No luck. And then he walked out of the locker room and saw his cousin Warren Couch, the best man at their wedding and one of his closest friends. They worked the same shift but in different units, so they never normally saw each other. It sunk in something was truly wrong.

Warren took Steven to the front gate, where his aunt Nina and uncle Willy were waiting. He got in the car, and that’s when they told him: Carley was dead.

“I lost it,” he said.

The plane took off in low visibility and crashed into trees and power lines one minute after takeoff.

Steven felt so physically ill, his aunt and uncle took him to a hospital near the plant as his blood pressure skyrocketed. The hospital put him on sedatives, and Steven faded in and out of reality. His phone blew up, and Nina asked to hold it, but he kept asking to speak to his father.

He had to make sure Steve Sr. knew he wanted him to coach in the Peach Bowl that night.

When his father called back, he was calm, almost stern.

“Son, you will get through this,” Steve Ensminger Sr. said. “It’s what we do. We face the darkest times in our lives and it’s what we do, we get through it.”

After a few minutes, he finally said, “I’ve got a game to go win. I’ll call you after.”

Once Steven was released from the hospital, his sister took him to his Aunt Nina’s house, where they all sat and watched the game. He sat in the middle of the couch staring at the screen, but he couldn’t remember a single thing that happened. He was in a daze, numb, knocked out from the sedatives. LSU won 63-28. Instead of a dream come true, his family was living through a nightmare.

He spent the night on his sister’s couch. He lay there all night, wide awake, until the door opened in the morning with Steve Sr. and his mom, Amy, back from Atlanta to take him home. He stayed at their place for the next few nights, but he still didn’t sleep. Finally, he said, “I need to go home.”

They drove him over and asked to come with him, but he wanted to go in by himself. He walked into the home he and Carley shared, and he sat down on the couch and cried.

Kaleigh feels the loss of her sister strongly, and she wears it. She and Carley were 16 months apart. They did everything together.

They had matching cars. They joined the same clubs, had the same friends and both went to Northwestern State. They even lived together the final few years of college. They had plans to grow old together. They fought. And they loved. They were sisters.

And then her sister was taken from her three days after Christmas and the day before Kaleigh’s 32nd birthday.

“I’ve been very unhappy,” she said. “I’m not gonna lie to you. This has been probably the worst year in America, but for me on top of everything else, it’s been horrific.”

Her brother Carson was able to put his grief aside for months while trying to help Steven and his parents. He kept filling his emptiness with distractions, such as planning his wedding, until he finally walked into Steven’s house for the first time in June and it hit him. He’s just now doing his soul searching.

Meanwhile, there are days Kaleigh wakes up and thinks Carley is still around. She can’t tell you how many times she’s called her — hundreds — just to hear her voicemail. She’s left voicemails for her, too.

People kept sending flowers, and Kaleigh had to put a stop to it. Carley hated flowers because they died so quickly. She carried a fake bouquet at her wedding. She’d want to do something practical with the money people were spending. That’s why they started the scholarship funds. And Kaleigh remembered how much Carley wanted to do something for the Moscona family. Carley worked on Moscona’s show, “After Further Review,” and became close with Matt. Moscona remembers Carley being the first to sprint up and hug Drew when he came into the studio. So Kaleigh started Carley’s Little Angels with the hope of helping raise money for Drew’s physical therapy, tuition and medical costs.

She’s getting closer to Carley that way. The day of the accident, as a distraught Kaleigh drove eight hours home from vacation in Dallas, her husband had them stop in Natchitoches, the home of Northwestern State. It was their place together. It was where Carley grew into the person she was. First, Kaleigh wanted to go to Mama’s on Front Street, where Carley used to work, but it was too crowded. She tried to go to campus, but everything was gated during winter break.

They drove all over, until they found one open gate in the entire school right by the football field. This was where Carley came of age covering football. It’s where she and Steven had their engagement photos taken. “It was her happy place,” Kaleigh said, “and she led me there.”

Kaleigh got out of the car and sat alone on the field with her sister.

Carley handled the grocery shopping in the relationship. She didn’t trust Steven to do it, always giving him a hard time that he bought the wrong stuff. He hadn’t grocery shopped in years. The first time he went after her death, Steven walked into the store and froze, unsure of what to buy. He walked straight out of the store and went home.

He laughs telling the story, just one more odd thing that can surprise and affect him, one more land mine he had to get past to ever return to this made-up place called normal. Like how he did the dishes and Carley did the laundry. He laughs telling how the washer and dryer broke this spring once he started doing it.

This summer, they were going to talk about having kids. There wasn’t any pressure. Her job made the choice difficult, but the time was coming. Her career was also about to take off. She had a call from the NFL Network, and a major station in Houston was interested, too. She was so excited because that meant maybe Steven could get back into coaching. He hated working at the plant, working crazy shifts. It was hard on his body. His sleep schedule was destroyed. And he missed coaching — he had spent one season as a high school assistant after graduating from Louisiana Tech.

So that’s why he took the job at Assumption. It was time for him to make plans for his new life. All those baby steps were for this big leap. Carson said he’s seen a light come on for Steven since he started coaching in June.

It’s been natural, with veteran coach Keith Menard — who played for Steve Sr. at Nicholls State — giving Steven freedom and authority on certain things. They talk ball constantly and analyze how to make Assumption better. He drives past the CF plant on the 40-minute ride to Assumption, a reminder that he’s finally doing what Carley wanted. He made his own playbook in his spare time, and how he turns to football when he’s having a tough day. He got that from his old man.

Steven Jr. and Steve Sr. spend hours on the phone talking ball, with Jr. asking Sr. constant questions about concepts and LSU’s tactics. College football is a different game from high school, so sometimes Steven gets carried away in coaches’ meetings and the staff tells him to dumb it down. One day, Steve Sr. came over and they went over RPOs for three hours.

This is how Steve Sr. helps. He’s a tough Louisiana man who doesn’t show weakness. When Carley died and Steve Sr. still coached, LSU staffer Emily Villere Dixon said, “It’s all he knows how to do right now.” Because, again, when life hits hardest, the Ensmingers turn to football.

“It’s easy for him to have that conversation,” Steven Jr. said. “Most people are like, ‘Does your dad take you fishing or something?’ No, our thing is football and cooking. … In my phone, he is ‘Coach Dad,’ and he always will be.”

Steve Sr.’s never asked about Carley. That’s not his style. He is the kind to fight through things. Former defensive coordinator Dave Aranda called it “this John Wayne quality.”

His relationship with Carley was close, dancing together at her wedding and always giving each other flak in a good-natured way.

The only time he ever came close to mentioning Carley’s death around Steven was in New Orleans two days before the national championship game. Steven Jr. decided to go, because if his dad could coach in the game, he could at least be there for him. Everybody wanted to go out and have fun in the Big Easy, but Steven just sat in his room watching TV. Eventually, Steve Sr. said, “Let’s go up to the hospitality suite.”

The father and son sat up there for two or three hours, having a few drinks and simply talking football. Then, when they were getting off the elevator to go back to the room, Steve Sr. turned to him and said:

“I don’t know how you do it.”

That first week in the McCord house will forever be the worst of their lives. It was hectic, planning the funeral and handling the logistics of losing Carley while family and friends hovered, trying to help. People came in and out of the house, which sometimes was nice and sometimes became exhausting. By Wednesday, Karen and Tracy had to kick everybody out.

But there was something else. Kaleigh, her husband, Todd, and their two young kids stayed at the house. So did Carson and his fiancee, Rebecca.

“This sounds very strange,” Carson said, “but it was really nice to know you had your family around all the time.”

Once kids reach a certain age and everyone’s out of the house and working and starting their own families, it’s rare to have everyone together again for an extended period. All the kids live nearby, so they’re in and out to say hello but they rarely need to stay over.

“There was a sense of security about it,” he said. “You had everybody around, and we were all kind of huddled around every night and we were all together and we were all kinda working through it and trying to get through the initial shock.”

Kaleigh cries as she’s told what her brother said, because it affirms the bizarre feeling she felt too. You learn who’s there for you. You learn who will show up. It was the most pain they’ll ever feel combined with the most love.

They combed through photos of Carley and planned the funeral. Carson took Steven out to golf just to get his mind off it. They ate dinner together. It was a week Carson will hold dear to him forever.

They all consider Steven part of the family, too, with Karen calling at least once a week to say, “I just needed to hear your voice.” He went to their Super Bowl party, and he and Carson hang out plenty in ways that aren’t just about Carley. And the way he’s come out of this and leapt into coaching leaves them all inspired.

There are strange consequences to this sort of tragedy. Mother’s Day is hard, as Carley always did something sweet for Karen and Kaleigh, plus the reminder Carley will never be a mother. There’s also newfound anxiety. Tracy was never a worrier, but now he worries every time Karen goes to the store. Kaleigh answers every phone call from her parents with “Are you OK?”

Then there’s the next step. There’s the way they’ve grown together. There’s the way they’ve learned to open their eyes to each little moment of life, not wanting to miss a beat. There’s the motivation to live life like Carley would want them to. And there’s the ability to simply laugh about things, like Kaleigh talking about how her equally dramatic sister went out with national news and an epic narrative surrounding a football game.

“I laugh about it now, because it’s so Carley,” she said.

Carley and Steven shared a birthday, July 24. She would have been 31. He’s now 33.

On that day, he went to Carley’s grave at midnight. During the rest of the day, he didn’t want to leave the house, so he grilled some chicken and red snapper. Karen brought over a cookie cake, and Steven posted pictures of them together on Facebook reading, “Happy Birthday Angel! We will always share July 24th! I love you!”

Couch and the other cousins picked Steven up in May and forced him to go to Uncle Earl’s bar. He stressed about people seeing him and whether it looks bad having drinks a few months after his wife died. But then he thought about what she often said, “Don’t care about what other people think. Just be you.” So he relaxed a little.

Carley’s voice is a constant. She tells Kaleigh to get involved with Carley’s Little Angels. She tells Karen to go teach. She tells Tracy to find new hobbies and for Steven to get back into coaching. She tells them all to keep living, because sitting and mourning her isn’t that.

It’s only been about eight months, and they all have different goals. Karen just wants to keep going. Kaleigh wants to reduce that anxiety. Carson wants to appreciate what he was in front of him. Tracy wants to get back to his normal self.

And Steven, on a recent day, as he saw a visitor out, pondered how he would spend the rest of that afternoon. He laughed for a moment before saying that he was planning to cut the grass.

Carley would be on him to do it.

(Top photo courtesy of Steven Ensminger Jr.)