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I was running a couple errands this morning when I heard Dan Patrick say that Gordie Howe had died. Turns out Gordie died in Toledo, where I was running some of those errands. He was 88. Gordie, who had been living in suburban Toledo with his son, Murray – head of radiology at a local hospital, made his final public appearance in March at a Red Wings game to celebrate his final birthday.
I didn’t have an Ali story to share when The Champ passed, but I do have a personal Gordie Howe story from my youth that might be of interest to some of you.
I grew up outside Dayton. Cornfields for days. Factories. Hills that flattened out to more cornfields. More factories. Highways. Not many hockey rinks. Barely any hockey on TV, unless you caught a random ESPN game in the 1980s. Professional hockey — the Dayton Gems, playing at Hara Arena — was huge during the 1960s and 1970s (International League; back-to-back Turner Cups in 1969-70), but fizzled out and were gone after one final season that ended in 1980.
Dad was a baseball and football fan. Hockey was a foreign language to him and that was passed down. We knew the obvious stars like Gretzky, but a guy like Gordie Howe was a name that you knew from encyclopedias. I was aware of the name and that he was a legend, but I’d never seen footage of him playing or heard many stories.
Eventually hockey came back with the Dayton Bombers of the ECHL in 1991 and Hara Arena was about 9 miles from where I grew up, so it became something we’d go watch a few times each season.
Then, in 1993, my dad said his fishing buddy, also the Bombers equipment manager/do-it-all-guy, needed some help with the Bombers and wondered if I’d be ‘stick boy’ for the season. I was 16, not doing anything in the winter and it would be working with Double-A hockey players that I’d been paying to watch, so I took the job, which was pretty much an internship.
The Bombers season started in early November or so. About a month later — December 12, 1993 to be exact — Gordie Howe came to Dayton as part of his 65th birthday tour to do a pregame skate with the players who idolized the guy, meet & greet with the fans and sign autographs.
My assignment that day was to work the Bombers locker room, a cinderblock cavern that included a 12X12 or so room that served as the head coaches office and Gordie’s room before and after the pregame skate.
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I was filling up the freezer with hockey pucks and Gordie was removing his skates in the locker room. I was minding my own business, not trying to bother Mr. Hockey. There wasn’t another person in the locker room. The game had started.
This is how I remember the exchange:
Howe: “Where are all the good looking Dayton girls?”
Me: [gibberish].
A friggin’ puck bunny question from Mr. Hockey!
I probably said something like, “There aren’t many that come to the games,” while chuckling. Memory of what I said escapes me to this day, but I remember that single line from Gordie & him busting my balls. The exchange probably lasted 15 seconds. Maybe 30. There might’ve even been more small-talk than that.
It’s one of those moments where you freeze because you’re talking to an encyclopedia sports hero that I’d only met via books and magazines.
And the hero on the other end couldn’t have been any nicer. At 16, I didn’t totally understand what just happened. That came later as I got older and became more aware of the Howe legacy.
I was just at the Indy 500 with a group of people on a party bus and ‘Nicest celebrity you’ve ever met’ came up. I told that story about Gordie Howe.
Gordie Howe & Martin St. Louis during 2008 NHL All-Star weekend. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
Here’s what Dayton Daily News sports columnist Tom Archdeacon wrote in the newspaper December 13, 1993:
Her name was Jackie and she came through the autograph line between the 10-year-old tough kid and the hefty woman in the nylon jacket, who said her name was Junior “. . . ’cause Daddy didn’t have any boys.”
All kinds of people stopped to meet hockey legend Gordie Howe at the Dayton Bombers’ game Sunday afternoon at Hara Arena. But none gave more meaning to the moment than Jackie Moore, a teacher at Cleveland Elementary.She showed up with her husband, wore a Bombers’ jersey and called herself “a Bombers’ freak,” but soon you learned this wasn’t simply a fawning fan’s attempt to rub elbows with a sports star. “Sure I was crazy about coming up to meet him,” said Jackie, “More important than the legend he built on the ice is the one he’s now making off it. I appreciate what he’s doing here in Dayton.”
Sunday, Howe made Hara another of the stops on his 1993 Gordie Howe 65th Birthday Tour. This year, the silver-haired Hall of Fame legend – who Bomber announcer Steve Kirk rightfully introduced as “the greatest hockey player of all time” – has been going out of his way to give something back to his sport . . . and its fans.There are to be 65 stops on the birthday tour. Dayton, said Howe, was either 55 or 56. What is special is that he’s not charging. No appearance fee. No pricey demand for his autograph. No trying to trade stardom for a buck.
If a club like the Bombers simply pays his expenses – for Dayton it was air fare from Detroit and a pair of nights at a Marriott’s Residence Inn – he shows up and works all day for you. Any money made on him – through souvenir sales, raffles, whatever – must go to a charity of the hockey club’s choice.The Bombers chose the Multiple Sclerosis Society.And that’s why Jackie Moore wanted to meet Gordie Howe. She has MS. So did her ex-husband.
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…Yet, should you think Gordie Howe has gone completely soft, you should have been with him Sunday at Hara as he signed autographs for hundreds of people. He joked, made conversation and agreed to almost anything, until a 10-year-old fourth-grader from North Dayton – a little roughneck with no manners and a lot of mouth – tossed his ballcards and cap in front of Howe.”Hey, sign these,” the kid snapped.
The pen froze in Howe’s big hand. He looked up at the kid, “Son, do you know the difference between demand and respect? It just takes one little word.”The kid paid no attention: “Hey, sign the cap first.”
Howe looked at the cap, then flipped it a few feet away and quietly said, “Next.”The disgruntled kid – after a curse and a pout – retrieved the cap, wormed his way back in line and finally managed to amend his request with a “please.”
Howe winked and signed.Like so many tough guys before him, the kid also had been touched by the legend.