HUNTINGTON — Stevie Wonder dubbed Philadelphia 76ers legend Darryl Dawkins “Chocolate Thunder” because Dawkins was described to Wonder as the chocolate guy putting down thunder dunks.

D’Andre “Chocolate” Wilson didn’t have such luck on how he acquired his nickname.

“During birth, I came out extra dark and my father said my name was ‘Chocolate,’” Wilson said in an interview last week. “Ever since then, my name has been Chocolate.”

No matter the humorous beginnings, life has been sweet like chocolate for Wilson.

HUNTINGTON — For more than 30 years, the thought of coming to Huntington brought only pain and sadness to Moses “Mo” Lajterman.

His brother, Marcelo Lajterman was the kicker on the 1970 Marshall Thundering Herd team that perished on Southern Airways Flight 932. Mo Lajterman was the keynote speaker at this year’s Marshall Memorial Fountain ceremony, but how he started his journey to Huntington started back 12 years ago.

“I decided in the year 2000 that I was going to come here with my brothers, without my brothers,” Lajterman said. “I had spoken to Tommy Shoebridge (brother of 1970 Herd quarterback Ted Shoebridge). He kept saying to me you have to go to Huntington and meet some of the people there, you would never believe what goes on there.

“And I said, ‘Tommy, I don’t want to go, I don’t want to be reminded of what happened in 1970, it’s bad enough that we talk among ourselves and go to the cemetery and pay our respects and that’s good enough for us.”

“He goes, ‘You are missing the point. You have to go there and feel the love and see what happens when you get there.”

That same year, West Virginia Public Broadcasting was preparing a telecast documentary about the 1970 Marshall plane crash; Lajterman was finally compelled to make the journey to Huntington and MU.

“There was a documentary, ‘Ashes to Glory,’ and all the sudden it came to me that I had to be here whatever reason, I had to be here,” Mo Lajterman said. “I called my brothers, Abe and Tito, and they were still emotional, they didn’t want to come here to Huntington and said, ‘no, we’ll skip it, we still don’t want to be there.

“I said, ‘Guys, I’m going by myself,’ and that’s exactly what happened. I came here; I didn’t know a soul. I knew Tommy (Shoebridge), and we ended up seeing the documentary at the Keith Albee Theater.”

The experience of coming to Huntington, seeing the story of the football team plane crash, and feeling the embrace of the Marshall family left an everlasting mark on Lajterman.

“I remember coming back, talking to my younger brother,” Lajterman said. “Tito, I said, ‘You have to feel the love and the emotion that goes on here. I couldn’t even finish the conversation and started tearing up and crying and I said, ‘I have to call you back,’ because the emotion was just too much for me.”

It took Lajterman a few hours to call his brother again, but when he did, he was determined that the family had to travel to Huntington, to see and feel what he experienced.

“I called him back and I was able to speak to him again, but I said to him, ‘Listen, next time we’re coming together, you, myself and Abe and we’ve going to have to come back here together.” It would be a few years before an opportunity came for the Lajterman family to all come to Huntington. It came by phone in 2006.

“Steve Chapman (freelance TV producer) called us about coming for the movie premiere of ‘We Are … Marshall,’” Lajterman said. “That’s the first time we came together, the three of us.”

The “three of us” included Abe Lajterman; he still harbored deep emotions over the events of Nov. 14, 1970. Abe has a unique connection to Marshall; he played soccer at Davis & Elkins from 197072; his 1971 team won the NAIA  championship.

He even competed against Marshall men’s Coach Bob Grey during Gray’s playing days at Alderson-Broaddus.

It was Abe who came to Huntington after the crash to take care of Marcelo’s affairs. It left a scar.

“For many years I was angry and I was upset with this whole thing that happened with this accident,” Abe said. “Because of Mo pushing us to come, we decided to come with the premiere of ‘We Are …Marshall.’”

For a second time, a movie about Marshall and its football program left an everlasting mark on the Lajterman family. The  experience left the brothers wanting to do more than pay their respects to Marcelo. “Coming home, among the three of us, we came up with the idea of doing something for our brother Marcelo, so his name goes on, and we came up with a tournament,” Abe said.

“Originally it was going to be a kicking tournament, which was going to involve high school players that are going to go to college. We were going to raise some money and donate it to them, but it developed into a golf tournament, and I’m happy to say after six years we were able to donate quite a bit of money in Marcelo’s name and an endowment at Marshall University.”

In a few short years, what once was a place of sadness had now become a second home for Mo and his brothers.

“We do enjoy coming to this family, we love it here, we really do,” Mo said. “We look forward to it.”

So, 12 years after his first visit here, Mo received a phone call from Marshall Athletic Director Mike Hamrick.

“In the beginning, when Mike asked me to be the keynote speaker (at the 2012 ceremony) I had reservations,” Mo said. “I said to Mike that I would get back to him in a couple of days; it actually took three to four days before I got back to him, but I knew all along I wanted to be the keynote speaker.

“It’s just an amazing thing that people keep coming back year after year. It’s getting bigger all the time. It’s just amazing, 42 years and people still never, ever, forget what happened, and that’s a great feeling for us, it really is.

“And that’s why we come back. We come back here for that.”

HUNTINGTON — The Marshall Thundering Herd is averaging more fans this season than 2012 — yes, even with three home losses this year — but will that really matter for the Houston game after dropping their sixth game of the season with a 38-31 loss at UAB? The last two home games for the Marshall Thundering Herd have not been the best at the turnstile, with announced crowds (that’s tickets accounted for by sales, students, etc.) of 22,563 for UCF and 22,041 for Memphis.

Maybe you can blame television and really bad weather on UCF crowd, despite the Knights being a hated foe of the Thundering Herd. That night, the Joan C. Edwards stadium wasn’t a place to be on a Saturday, but the following week was a nice day for a one-win Memphis team, and that game wasn’t televised — and many guessed the actual attendance at 16,000-to-18,000.

Early in the season, the expectations are high, and so are the crowds.

But when you aren’t winning and it’s late in the season — maybe it’s cold, maybe it’s wet, or maybe life catches up with you — is it realistic to expect to crowds on par with the 33,436 fans that showed up for a rivalry game early in the season like Ohio?

Or even the 27,188 for the conference home opener against Tulsa?

“Naturally, because of the weather, you will experience a decline in attendance” said Aaron Goebbel, Assistant Athletic Director of Ticketing.

“It is difficult to have identical expectations.”

But despite the recent drop in attendance, the actual average is ahead of last season.

In 2011, Marshall averaged 25,874 in five games. In five games this season, Marshall has averaged 26,109.

That’s an increase of 1,175 fans from the season total of 129,371 last year with one home game to go, but will the fans show to watch a six-loss team, coming off a bad loss to UAB?

The final home game is going to be a tough sell, with a 4-6 Marshall team taking on a 4-6 Houston squad. Keep in mind: Marshall hasn’t been eliminated from bowl eligibility and the offense is still fun to watch, averaging 38.8 points per game.

But the Herd is a team that also sits on the verge of postseason elimination, playing another one in the same boat, and it might be easier to stay at home and watch this one on television or keep track of the game with your radio (on SuperTalk 930 AM and 94.1 FM, of course). I don’t think you solve the problem on Saturday.

Fans are either going to come or they are going to stay at home, and most of them made their mind up after the UAB loss.

Instead, I think it’s time to look toward next year and beyond.

We know the answer is winning, it will solve everything, because everyone loves a winner.

That is not an indictment of fans, its just fact.

Fans are predictable — if you win they show up, if you lose, they don’t.

Yogi Berra said it best, “If people don’t want to come out to the ball park, nobody’s gonna stop ‘em.”

But that doesn’t mean the opportunity to give fans a reason to come to the game doesn’t exist, as teams with losing records all across the country draw fans.

It starts with engaging the alumni.

In the 15 years since the day I graduated with the class of 1997, I have not seen one piece of mail letting me know that football season is about to start, and how I can become a season ticket holder.

Alumni are already invested in the school — why not invest back in them. Will every person that ever-attended Marshall want to come to a football game?

No.

However, but if it was easier for every person who attended Marshall to become a season ticket holder, or buy tickets, you would have more opportunities to boost your gate.

Winning the hearts and minds of the students is vital to the future of Marshall athletics.

Chad Pennington, Randy Moss, Byron Leftwich and Troy Brown are just names to many students that go to Marshall.

It’s not that they are apathetic; these are just not their heroes — hey, many of them were not even born when Brown was leading the Herd to the I-AA title in 1992, 20 years ago.

Rakeem Cato, Tyler Williams, and Dominick LeGrande are the new heroes, and these students should embrace the new heroes the way fans remember the old.

While winning will help energize the student body, creating a culture where the students are passionate, willing to take ownership of the team is imperative.

Students at Duke are proud of their passion, they compete to show it at basketball games.

Maybe it’s time for Doc Holiday to go “walkabout” on campus this week and next year, and talk to every student he can and share the passion he has for the program.

Marshall is a commuter college. It’s easy for students to pack up after their last class on Friday and head home for the weekend. Winning football will help keeping students on campus, but making every home game is an event, that is what football is all about, it is why so many older fans look forward to the six yearly events. Why not make the weekend surrounding the game an event, including (but not limited to) concerts, activities, events, picnics or even bonfires or outdoor events.

Think it doesn’t make a splash at UCF when they have a band out front of the basketball building before a Marshall game, with a portable ice rink in Orlando, Fla.? No doubt.

The Marshall athletic brain trust has to find out what students want and then give it to them. Give them a reason to stay on game day. Students and alumni alone will not fill Joan C. Edwards stadium, and just because Marshall is playing a football game, people won’t just show up.

The Cincinnati Reds make it a point to market outside of Cincinnati, and they have ticket agents that have regions in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and West Virginia.

Why? The Reds are a small market team.

They fight for every potential fan possible because the Cincinnati city alone can’t sustain the team.

Marshall needs to take this approach, constantly reaching beyond Huntington and the Tri-State into all of West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and southern Ohio.

“Thunderfest at Great American Ball Park” has been a fun time at Reds games in Cincinnati for years.

Why can’t Ashland, Ky.; or Ironton, Ohio; or Putnam County Community Day happen every year at Joan C. Edwards Stadium. Of course the real fix is winning, and right now Marshall isn’t, so will the fans care this Saturday after the loss to UAB? Houston, and the Herd, will find out Saturday

HUNTINGTON — On Oct. 12, the Marshall volleyball team defeated the then-Conference USA leader Rice at home in three sets. The Thundering Herd had something to prove, especially against the Owls, a team that dominated them the last time they were in Huntington.

Those are things you don’t forget, and the play on the court showed.

“They didn’t forget Rice coming into our building two years ago, beating us two nights in a row and kind of laughing and giggling and having way too much fun, rather than having to play as hard as they could to beat us,” Marshall Coach Mitch Jacobs said. “They didn’t forget that when we beat Rice at home this year.”

Marshall was 16-5, and had improved to 6-1 in C-USA with the win over Rice, so it’s natural for young athletes to feel good about the early success. It also was a warning sign for Jacobs.

“We were trying to get them to understand that we’ve been living on a fine edge, we’ve been executing extremely well in the fundamental areas of the game,” Jacobs said. “With all of the wins piling up, it’s just human nature to feel good about yourself, you want to feel good about yourself … You find ways to feel good about yourself when things aren’t going right.”

Since the Rice game, things haven’t gone right for Marshall, dropping seven straight matches. It’s now in a three-way tie for seventh place in C-USA with two home matches left, and is in danger of missing the upcoming conference tournament that includes eight teams.

The Herd team that played like it had something to prove all of the sudden lost that chip on its shoulder.

“We went from a team that was trying to gain respect to a team that thought they had respect. That’s just not going to help us,” Jacobs said. “We’re playing these teams last year and I remember playing at UAB and we were so injured that we had a makeshift lineup and I remember some basketball guys sitting behind our bench just telling our girls they are the worst athletes,  worst volleyball players they ever seen, and loudly.

“I remember players on the other side of the net hearing it and laughing, and I think our players forgot about that kind of stuff."

“Sometimes when you feel good about yourself, it’s easy to forget why you were trying to feel good in the first place. Sometimes when that happens, a team can lose an identity."

“We were doing so well that our offense started looking really good and that’s just not the identity of this team. The identity of this team is defense and ball control and serving tough. We were doing so well in those areas that our offense started looking good, but it was only looking good because it was coming off of those areas of the game."

“Our offense starts looking so good and all of the sudden our team  is like, ‘This offensive thing is great, it’s so much fun.’ And they stop focusing on the areas we needed to stay focused on, that’s serve, pass and play defense.”

It’s also those fundamentals that Jacobs is now working on to get his squad ready for a postseason push that’s needed.

“We’re a good enough volleyball team that when we’re really executing the fundamentals, we can put pressure on people and we do some areas of the game very well that when our fundamentals are really strong that we’re able to get into those areas that we do really well at and put pressure on teams and try to break them down,” Jacobs said.

“Without the fundamentals being done soundly, we’re not a good team. That’s just something that the team bought into from the start, we recognize as a group that our fundamentals have slipped and that’s kind of lead to the slip in our season right now.”

Jacobs is optimistic that his team can get back on track and finish strong enough to make the postseason.

“They get it,” he said. “They understand, and we play our best when our backs are against the wall, so hopefully, once again our backs being against the wall, knowing we have to win now to get into the tournament.

“We’ve got to play every point like it’s our championship at this point. There is no more game by game, set by set, every point has to be played like you are in the championship match, otherwise there won’t be any shot for a championship match.”

The question remains: Can this team come out of the slump they are in and make that final push?

“We’re doing the best we can, they are pushing hard in practice and we’re trying to come out of it,” the Herd coach said. “The key is that we just have to stay bought in to the parts that are most important to us, the straight fundamentals of serve and pass, and we’ve got to keep our identity

“This little stretch is tough on everybody because it’s not hard to have a group bought in when you successful with what you are doing. But now the fact is that we’re not getting though those points, but I think we’ve got a full buy-in again.

“The other side is our opponents practice, too, and our opponents have their backs against the wall as well. Who’s willing to go forward when they’ve taken their best shot, that’s going to be the last teams that are going to make it to the (C-USA) tournament.”