Willie

by Willie O'Ree

  The NHL chose Seattle and Denver as their expansion franchises. But they didn’t then put teams in either city—so you have to wonder whether they’d just been bluffing as a countermove against the WHA. In fact, neither city would really join the league for years—Denver in 1995 when the Quebec Nordiques relocated there, and Seattle, which will begin play in 2021.

  So in June 1974, with no arena to play in and the WHA making incursions into the hockey market in the west, the Western Hockey League officially folded and the Gulls and Roadrunners shut down.

  I moved on to the San Diego Sharks, who were part of the Pacific Southwest Hockey League. The PSHL, a semiprofessional league, operated in California, Nevada, and Alaska from 1972 through 1995. A PSHL season was short, ranging from fifteen to thirty games between anywhere from four to eight teams. I guess I can trace the trajectory of my career up and down, from my climb to the Bruins to my games in this particular loop.

  It was pretty much like a circus, that league. Fighting played a big role in the action. And as part of the teams’ marketing efforts, PSHL games were often paired with side attractions like broomball and roller derby. It was not for hockey purists.

  I gave them two seasons, and then I retired. I wanted to spend more time with Deljeet, who was working in the financial aid office at the University of San Diego, and I was tired of all the travel. Until you play in a western league—with its greater distances between league cities—you don’t realize how much travel you have to do. So whenever I hear a player on a western team mention this, I know it’s not just an excuse but a genuine source of fatigue. Travel takes a lot out of you, or rather, what’s left after you’ve given it your all on the ice.

  * * *

  —

  There really is no such thing as a retired hockey player. There are just guys who don’t play hockey anymore.

  I’d been a professional hockey player my entire adult life, and then suddenly I wasn’t. That is, I wasn’t playing. But every instinct I’d built up over a long career told me it was time to go to the rink every afternoon. I still had the competitive juices, still wanted to be with the guys. It’s a reality that every pro athlete has to deal with: the silence and loneliness and feelings of loss that come when you’re no longer part of a team, playing the game that has defined your life.

  But I’ve never been one to dwell on problems; I’ve always tried to find my solution. I’m not criticizing those who are built differently, but forward motion has always been my default direction—and now that I wasn’t a hockey player I needed to find something else to do.

  My goal was to get back into hockey—somehow, any way I could—but I was a long way from the ice. I worked in construction, I worked for Pepsi driving a truck, I was the assistant manager of three Jack in the Box restaurants, and I sold cars at John Hine Pontiac in the Mission Valley in San Diego. I was pretty good at it, as I like people, and of course my fame as a hockey player drew in customers. But I was still restless.

  When you’ve spent twenty-one years as a professional athlete, when you’ve heard the roar of the crowd and felt the thrill of scoring a goal, any goal, it can seem as if your life has suddenly been switched to slow motion when you leave the arena for civilian street. But I knew my playing days were over, and that this was something I was going to have to process. I also knew that it wasn’t the excitement I craved so much as the competition. To put it another way, I missed testing myself. So I figured I’d just have to do that with whatever team I would find myself on.

  Then came the prospect of entering the security business. A guy named Mike Gore, whose dad was San Diego’s chief of police, ran Strategic Security and invited me to join the company. I was reluctant at first, since I didn’t know a thing about security. But Mike said I had only to take a test to get a California state “guard card.” Security, he added, would be a piece of cake for me—especially after so long watching out for myself on the ice, and through one eye to boot. I was happy selling cars, though, so I thanked him for the offer and wished him luck. Then, six months later, Mike called me again to say that a position had come open. And now I wanted to give it a try.

  So I set about getting a guard card. In California, the state’s Bureau of Security and Investigative Services requires you to go through training before you can get a license to become a registered security guard. First I had to do eight hours of instruction in the Powers to Arrest, then another forty hours of courses that covered all kinds of things, such as state law, patrol techniques, report writing, how to question people, and so on. I got my guard card, and I was even licensed to carry a “concealed weapon,” which means a gun you wear under your suit jacket. It was strange to be wearing a gun on the job. And I’m happy to say that, in the fifteen years I would spend in security, I never once had to use it.

  At first my job was to go around to the various stores and construction sites that had our security guards on-site and check up on them. I was working the night shift, so I’d often find guards asleep on the job—which wasn’t surprising, since unless you get trouble, the night shift can be long and dull. I was sympathetic to the guys and didn’t want anyone to lose their job for nodding off at three a.m. in the dead quiet, so I’d just give them a warning and move on. I mean, you look out for your teammates.

  Eventually I moved to the day shift—and, as it happened, found myself back in the world of pro sports. Strategic Security looked after security for the National Football League’s San Diego Chargers. Working Chargers’ games, I figured, would be a kind of career extension for me: if I wasn’t going to be a professional athlete, at least I’d be around them, and who knows where that could lead? I was writing a new chapter of my life, and while my aim was to somehow get back into hockey, I’d go where the story took me. And the NFL was a pretty good place to be.

  Security for an NFL game is a huge operation. I’d leave our house in Santee, a suburb of San Diego, early on game day—which, unless we were in the playoffs or on Monday Night Football, was always Sunday—and make the twenty- minute drive to San Diego Stadium out in Mission Valley East. I was used to playing in hockey rinks that could hold fifteen thousand people or so, but that stadium could hold seventy thousand, which presented that many more challenges in keeping everyone safe. I really enjoyed it, too. This was the kind of competition that mattered. Me against the bad guys.

  By this time I was the security supervisor, meaning I’d sit up in the command post with the fire marshal and police officers. We would watch the crowd on video screens and through binoculars and check in with each other on walkie-talkies. We also got to see the game, which was a bonus. Dan Fouts had just joined the Chargers as quarterback, so I was able to see him at the beginning of his Hall of Fame career.

  There were never any real problems at Chargers games, just rowdy drunks acting up sometimes and people trying to smuggle in marijuana and other drugs. Neither were there master terrorist plots, as in the 1977 movie Black Sunday, where bad guys try to blow up the Super Bowl. Still, those NFL Sundays were long, what with the pre-game planning, working the game itself, then the post-game debriefing. It was a good twelve-hour day, just as it had been when I played on the ice. Which I still dreamed about doing—I missed the game something fierce. I knew my playing days were done, but somehow, somewhere, I wanted to get back into hockey.

  * * *

  —

  I liked working security, but when Strategic underwent cutbacks I moved on to a job at the Hotel del Coronado, on San Diego’s Coronado Island. “The Del,” as it’s called, is one of the most spectacular hotels in the world—a huge white Spanish-style building right on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, with white sandy beaches and tennis courts, swimming pools, massive outdoor patios, and wonderful gardens filled with all kinds of tropical plants and flowers. It’s the most famous building in San Diego. So you could say that I was once again in the big leagues, even though still far from the ice.

  Inside,
the Del has beautiful wood paneling everywhere, and fine restaurants and bars, and first-rate shops. It’s a very elegant place. We’d get lots of weddings and big fancy parties there, with lots of folks just passing through to take a look—although some of them were up to doing more than that, which is where I came in. I’d walk between eight and eleven miles a day, keeping track of the action, and keeping myself in shape for whatever was coming next.

  The Del has seen a lot of famous people visit since it was built in the 1880s; it’s still one of California’s largest all-wood structures. When it opened in 1888 it was the largest resort hotel in the world, and the first to use electrical lighting. Thomas Edison, the genius inventor, installed the electric lights himself. L. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, stayed in the hotel while he wrote the book. Some people even think the turrets in Emerald City were inspired by those on top of the hotel. I found myself wondering whether any of its guests inspired other characters, because I can tell you, the entire world passed through the Del.

  It’s a place everyone wants to see, and a lot of people have seen it on the silver screen, since a number of movies have been filmed there, my favorite being Some Like It Hot. The one everyone wants to know about, though, is 1408, the movie based on the Stephen King story about a haunted hotel room—a room that was inspired by the Del.

  King called his story “1408” because the room’s numbers add up to unlucky thirteen, but the room that actually inspired him is number 3502. It’s been investigated by ghost hunters, one of whom found thirty-seven “abnormalities,” among them changes in temperature, magnetic fields, and electronic emissions with no observable cause. Phantoms have been reported prowling the hallways and going up and down the stairs, although I never saw any, and toilets were said to flush by themselves and so on, but my job was to keep watch on things I could see, and ghosts weren’t one of them.

  Even though I enjoyed my work—and was good at it, being named Employee of the Year twice—I still wanted to get back into hockey. Just one more time.

  And so I did. In 1978–79 I played fifty-three games for the Pacific Hockey League’s San Diego Hawks. I’m pleased to say that my forty-three-year-old self scored twenty-one goals and added twenty-five assists. (The league leader, Jerry Holland of the Spokane Flyers, scored thirty-eight goals, and he was twenty-four at the time.)

  And then I quit hockey for good. Deljeet was pregnant; I was going to be a father again. Our daughter, Chandra, was born in July 1979. And this time I vowed that, instead of chasing pucks up and down the coast, I was going to be home for the baby.

  In the winter of that year, my father, Harry, died at the age of eighty-eight. The ground was still too hard to dig his grave, so we waited until summer to bury him. My father had had a good long life, and had seen much change for the good. And although I didn’t give a eulogy at his funeral, if I had I would have thanked him for being a great father to me and my brothers and sisters, and for supporting us all as we made our way in a world that was better because of him. I was happy that he’d lived to see me achieve my dream of making the NHL, and making history, to which our family name will be forever attached. My mother, who’d been married to him for sixty-six years, was heartbroken. So when I returned to San Diego after the funeral, it comforted me to know that I still had brothers and sisters in Fredericton who would keep an eye on her.

  My father’s death and Chandra’s birth in the same year were two life events that focused me on what I planned to do for my wife and daughter, and for myself, before my time on earth ran out. I’d just left hockey forever, but I’d still lie awake at night thinking of ways to get back into it. I didn’t see how I could.

  But then other people did, and I began a life in hockey all over again.

  14.

  BACK IN THE NHL

  I kept working in security at the Del, which meant I was home while Chandra was growing up. Over the years I’d take her to her games with AYSO, the soccer league for kids, so I was able to watch as she became a very good soccer player. Seeing my daughter play and enjoy sports was a joy, but it also made me miss the game that had been so good to me. Then, in 1990, San Diego got a new hockey team.

  The Gulls swooped back into town that year with a franchise in the International Hockey League. I saw my chance to get back in the game, not as a player, but by doing anything I could to connect with the sport. They were coached by Mike O’Connell, a former Boston Bruin, which could give me an edge, as Bruins stick together. After all, I was well-known in the community, and I figured I could help them out.

  I didn’t know a soul in their front office when I made my way there to offer my services. But they knew who I was and were very happy to see me, which made me feel great. It’s always nice to be welcomed—and I was welcomed into the new edition of the team with open arms. They asked me to work in community relations and ticket sales, reasoning that my profile in San Diego would help get fans in seats. They were right, and for the next seven years, although I kept working at the Del, I was the Gulls’ top salesman.

  To promote the team, and the game itself, I’d go to community dinners and events and would speak at schools. People listened, too—I had the experience to back up what I was saying, and many of them had been fans of the Gulls, and of me, back when I used to play for them. This public exposure, and especially speaking to students, turned out to be good training for what was coming next. Of course, I didn’t know what was coming next at the time. All I knew was that I needed more hockey, somehow.

  I also knew that I needed to deal with my blind right eye. For years I’d ignored its throbbing pain, a pain that sometimes felt as if someone were poking my eye socket with a penknife. Now that I wasn’t playing hockey anymore, I was paying more attention to that eye. So I finally went to an ophthalmologist to ask if anything could be done.

  He told me that we had two options: he could inject a solution into my dead eye and rebalance the pressure points, or he could surgically remove the eye and get me a prosthetic one.

  I chose the second option. So the surgeon cut out my eye and replaced it with a fake one that looks just like the real thing. I clean it as you would a contact lens, pop it back in my eye socket, and away I go. If I don’t clean it and it gets grit or a hair on it, then it can be just as annoying as the pain had been. So I’m quite thorough about keeping the prosthetic eyeball I can’t see out of as good as new.

  With my eye pain gone, I’d pretty much resigned myself to working in security until I retired in a couple of years. Or changed my fortune through some kind of hockey miracle.

  * * *

  —

  More than half a decade later, in 1996, I was still in security and hoping for a shot with a team—working with players, managing a club, anything really—but by then I was going on sixty-one. I figured my chances were slim at best, and best wasn’t looking very good at all. Still, I’ve never given up on anything. So when I’d wake up in the morning I’d tell myself that today just might be the day when I could get back into the game I loved so much. You just never knew. And all you had to be was ready for the chance.

  That day came when, out of the blue Southern California skies, I received a phone call from Bryant McBride, the newly appointed vice-president of the NHL’s diversity program.

  Bryant, a black man, was born in Chicago but raised in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. He has a pretty impressive résumé of firsts. He was the first African American elected class president at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he served as a cadet from 1984 to 1986. In 1988 he graduated from Connecticut’s Trinity College, where he had been the first African American to be elected class president and was voted an All-American defenseman for Trinity’s championship hockey team. In 1990, McBride got his master’s degree in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. This was not a guy to sit around and wait for permission.

 
; Bryant had been in a meeting in New York with, among others, Lou Vairo of USA Hockey (the game’s governing body in the United States) when my name came up. Lou, who’d coached the U.S. national men’s team and had been an assistant coach with the New Jersey Devils, was appointed director of special projects for USA Hockey in 1992. He and Bryant were discussing how they could join forces and open up the game to a more diverse range of kids. Hockey was, at the time, still a pretty white sport.

  When they got to talking about how Jackie Robinson had broken baseball’s color barrier in 1947, Lou said, “Well, we have our own Jackie Robinson in hockey.” The room went dead quiet and then someone said, “Who is it?”

  Lou Vairo, a native of Brooklyn, had seen me play in the old Madison Square Garden with the Bruins, and even score a goal against his beloved Blueshirts. So he told the group about me. (It’s one of the things that hockey could do better, and that I’m trying to do with my own work: to tell the game’s own great story more widely and with more volume.)

  Bryant McBride, a hockey guy of note himself, had never heard of me. He was amazed to learn that hockey had its own Jackie Robinson—and saw an opportunity. Bryant wondered if I might like to get involved with the NHL’s diversity program. Did anyone know where I was? No one did.

  This was 1996, so you couldn’t just go and Google me because there was no Google. But Lou Vairo remembered that I’d been playing out in Southern California, and even remembered that I’d been a San Diego Gull. (That’s how real hockey guys think. They remember players and their teams the way chefs remember recipes.) As it happened, Bryant knew a couple of FBI agents in San Diego, so he called them up and asked if they could help.

  Now, I’ve never been in trouble with the law (well, except that time when a neighbor in Fredericton complained about our baseball games on the street and the police came). The most I’ve received by way of law enforcement (by which I mean those guys in zebra sweaters) has been time in the penalty box. In short, I was not known to the FBI.