"The week before Munich, my mother was washing their shirts, then the following week she was polishing the coffins," says United fan Ken Ramsden, who was 12 at the time.
Saturday, February 6, marked the 63rd anniversary of the plane crash in Munich that claimed the lives of 23 people, including eight Manchester United players, after stopping for refueling on the way back from the Champions Cup match in Belgrade.
His mother Irene and aunt Joan worked in the laundry at Old Trafford Stadium in Manchester.
Ramsden would have a career at United spanning the next 50 years as program editor, press representative and club secretary - until his retirement in 2010.
But his memory of that time has lived on and today gives us a fascinating and very personal insight into those weeks before and after the accident - as well as the way the club began to recover afterwards.
- The greatest tragedy of Italian football
- How Solskjaer changed Manchester United
- When the Red Devils encounter the Cyrillic alphabet: "Why only Mata writes normally"
Would you like to hear the outcome of the draw? Go to the laundry room
At the time when United flew to Belgrade, Matt Busby's young squad was the dominant team in England.
“Busby's Babies" won the title in the First League in 1956 with an 11-point lead and with a team in which the average age was 22.
They won it again the following season.
My aunt Joan, who is now 93, worked at a kiosk that sold refreshments on match days.
The secretary of the club, Walter Krickmer (who died in Munich) told my aunt that the club was opening a laundry room and asked if she knew anyone else who would work there.
It was that simple. Without any job interview.
It must have happened in 1955 or 1956 and everything happened in the basement, right next to the dressing rooms.
If it rained intensely, everything would be flooded. Let me tell you, it happened several times.
At that time, the largest number of football players trained at Old Trafford. The staff was not numerous.
When I joined them in 1960, there were maybe 10 or 11 of us and that was the whole club.
They knew everyone and, of course, they knew the players. They saw them every day.
They would come to the laundry room to make a cup of tea, smoke a cigarette or borrow a newspaper.
Bobby Charlton, Duncan Edwards, Mark Jones - all of them came to the club somewhere from the side, so they were sometimes a bit lost and a bit lonely.
They saw a calmer side of life in my mom and aunt. The friendly side.
If there were lipstick marks on their shirt collars, they would take them to the laundry room to be washed.
That's roughly what it looked like.
At the time, the FA Cup draw was always broadcast on the BBC. Everyone would stop to hear the results of that draw.
There was only one radio in the club and it was in the laundry room.
Players would hang around there to hear the results of the pairings. It was such a place.
- Rio Ferdinand - the naughty boy from Peckham who changed English football
- Matić spoke up: I can't, it reminds me of the bombing
- From Partizan's babies to giants from Old Trafford
The jerseys of the first team were hanging on the street
The players were big stars for me, but they came to the stadium by bus or on bicycles.
They went to the same shops as anyone else.
We lived in Salford. Eddie Coleman - another one of those killed in Munich - was born and lived in Salford, somewhere near Longford Park.
During the school holidays, I would come to the stadium, like many other kids, just to hang out there.
We couldn't enter the stadium, but we stood there in front and waited for the players to come in or out.
Anyway, in those days, when my mother and aunt did laundry, they usually hung it out to dry on a line stretched between the stadium walls and the fence that ran along the railroad tracks.
Now can you imagine someone hanging jerseys to dry like that?
My mom would come out with a basket full of jerseys and when she saw me, she would bring me into the stadium.
That would make my day.
All the other kids watched me enter the stadium. She would take me to the laundry room and make juice.
Players and coaches were coming down. I was in seventh heaven.
I remember one day I was in the locker room for some reason. Tommy Taylor and David Pegg entered.
Tommy lit a cigarette - something you can't do these days, of course.
He dropped the matches and I quickly jumped to the floor to pass them to him.
I looked down at him and he was laughing and nudging Peg: "Look at this little chump."
On Saturday nights, the players would dance in the square.
Fans could see them there. Or in shops where fish and potatoes were eaten.
On Sunday afternoons we could go to Longford Park in Stretford and see them playing football with the children there.
They would walk there, someone would bring a ball and they would join the kids. That's how it used to be.
- The story of Sir Matt Bezby - from the war, through the fatal flight from Belgrade, to the dynasty
- How Didier Drogba helped stop the Ivory Coast civil war
Breaking news? We have been waiting for them for days
United beat Red Star 2:1 at Old Trafford in the first leg of the quarter-finals.
On Wednesday afternoon, they drew 3:3 in Belgrade, advanced and then boarded a charter flight to return home.
They landed in snowy Munich to refuel their plane.
On the third attempt to take off, their Airspeed Ambassador plane went down, went through a fence at the end of the runway and hit a house.
We didn't know much about the match, just what we saw in the papers.
The next day, it must have been about four o'clock in the afternoon, mom came home from work and I had just come back from school.
Someone came to the door. It was a boy from the next street.
He knew where my mom lived, so he came to tell her that he had heard on the radio that there had been a plane crash.
My mother scolded him and sent him home with the words that such awful things should not be said.
She couldn't believe it was true.
But over the next few hours and days, the truth came out.
I have been to the museum on several occasions. Spread newspapers are displayed there.
It's quite amazing how slowly the whole story unfolded.
One day it was the way it was, the next day it would be a little better, and the next day it would be worse.
It took five or six days for the story to be fully told.
I remember being at school on Friday and there was a rumor in the yard that Tommy Taylor had survived.
It was actually journalist Frank Taylor.
Today, it is difficult for people of later generations to understand how the news arrived slowly and how there was very little of it.
I remember it was a long time before the whole story came out.
- Why did Nemanja Matić decide to say "goodbye" to the Serbian national team
- The man who built Anfield and Stamford Bridge
They polished the coffins - because they wanted to do something
Some time after the accident, dead bodies started to arrive.
There is plenty of footage showing them arriving at Manchester Airport and being brought down.
The gymnasium, which was located next to the locker room, was turned into a temporary morgue.
The bodies remained there for some time.
My mom and aunt polished the coffins. Partly because they wanted to do something.
I'm sure they didn't need the polishing, but since they were so close to them, it was a reflection of care, concern for them, like when they were alive, so they continued with it.
It always stuck with me that one day they were washing their jerseys and then the next week they were polishing their trunks.
It's amazing even now, sixty years later, when you think about it.
Not much time had passed since the war.
No one came and said "how are you feeling, are you okay?"
That wasn't the way it was done in 1958. You would just keep doing what you were doing up until then.
Back on the field, 13 days later
"When whenever football was played, United was complained about," said club president Harold Hartman for the purposes of the catalog that accompanied United's first game after Munich.
Unbelievably, it happened on February 19, just 13 days after the accident.
United beat Sheffield Wednesday 3-0 in the third round of the FA Cup and progressed to the final that year, when they lost to Bolton.
We lived in Salford, so it took us maybe 15 minutes to walk to the stadium.
My mom would get two tickets for each match, so my dad and I went to the games.
We were going down Trafford Street, and there were more people coming from the direction of the pitch than going towards it, because the stadium was already full.
We fought with the mass of fans to get through. It was unreal.
A great sadness and tragedy accumulated in us, and we had the opportunity to go to a game where we will be able to shout and cheer.
It was cathartic, I think.
But it was also an incredible realization that the club continues.
It was, I suppose, a relief.
Sheffield Wednesday could have been a no-show. They had no chance.
I felt sorry for them. They were all sorry.
They were not allowed to win. We were outmatched.
- Evaristo - a football master who was loved by both Real and Barcelona
- "Crazy gang" from Cádiz that destroys the giants
People worked for nothing da the club would survive
Seven footballers died before United played Wednesday, while Duncan Edwards died a few days later.
Manager Matt Busby was in a very bad state and received communion twice.
His assistant Jimmy Murphy did not travel with the team as he was in charge of Wales at the time, so he took charge of the team for the rest of the season.
He signed contracts with new players and promoted some of the young team, but the team, understandably, was no longer in shape, so they finished the season in ninth place.
Goalkeeper Harry Gregg and defender Bill Fowkes returned home relatively quickly - Jimmy Murphy went there and brought them back.
They both played against Wednesday and I was in awe of Harry and Bill's strength to play again so quickly.
We didn't just lose eight players. Johnny Berry and Jackie Blanchflower survived but never played again.
All in all, don't forget that the club started building this team before Munich.
There were players like Shay Brennan, Wilf McGuinness, Ronnie Cope, Freddie Goodwin, Alex Dawson, Mike Pearson. A few really successful players.
To be perfectly fair to them, their careers were severely affected by the fact that they were thrown into the fire before they were ready for it.
On another occasion, it would take a few more years.
After the game with Sheffield Wednesday, it seems that some normality has returned to the club.
Sometimes I think of one of my predecessors, Les Oliva, the assistant secretary who was killed in an accident. He was 28 years old.
Les is suddenly thrust into this incredible situation. The club had very few or no people in management.
The stewards and the team in charge of maintaining the field came in the evening, after working hours.
They worked without compensation, they would just open the mail, sort ticket claims and the like.
The club functioned with the help of a stick and string.
There was no money. There was no financial support from either side, there was no one to take over the club.
Letters were just opened and read, they would be mislaid and left in a pile, the cards were sorted.
It was very slow and tedious work.
How they managed to cope with everything that happened then is still a mystery to me.
All people could see were the ghosts of Munich - so they stopped coming
Some say the accident made United a unique case.
I like to think she made us very humble.
I think that Munich has a special affection and love for Manchester United.
I know from experience that after Munich a large number of people stopped coming to the stadium.
There are those who say they "became fans only after Munich".
It might be true for some, but many stopped coming to the stadium because they couldn't bear to come and watch, as they say, the ghosts of Munich.
This may not be as well-known as some others, but the fact is that a large number of people have admitted to me over the years that their fathers or uncles could no longer bear coming to the stadium.
Follow us on Facebook i Twitter. If you have a topic proposal for us, contact us at bbcnasrpskom@bbc.co.uk
Bonus video:
