by Willie O'Ree
But I was known to the security business, thanks to my guard card. So within a few hours the FBI guys called Bryant back and told him they’d found me.
That’s when I got the phone call I’d been waiting for since 1961—a phone call from the NHL. But this was one I’d never even dreamed of.
* * *
—
Bryant McBride told me he was directing an NHL diversity program, a new venture to attract a more diverse group of young players to the game. He laid it all out for me (or rather, he laid out where he thought it might go, since he was creating it from the ground up), and then posed the question: Would I like to get in on the ground floor of this wonderful idea and see how high we could raise it?
I thought about it for as long as it takes to shoot a puck into an empty net. Yes, I said, I would like that very much.
Bryant wanted to choose twenty-four hockey-playing kids from different ethnic communities—black or Latino or Asian—from all over North America and give them a big-league treat. He would fly them to Boston to play in a special hockey tournament to be called “The Willie O’Ree All-Star Weekend.” And, of course, he wanted me to be there, too.
You can’t imagine how thrilling this was. That morning I’d woken up, had breakfast, kissed Deljeet and Chandra goodbye, and gone to work at the Del, just as I’d done for the last few years. Then that evening, with one phone call, my life changed. I was back in the NHL.
If you had told me that something like this would one day happen when I was playing for the Bruins, I would have said you were crazy. I thought I had reached the pinnacle then, but now Bryant McBride was offering me another pinnacle to reach. To change the complexion of the game I loved.
I told Bryant I’d have to get the time off at the Del to go to the All-Star Weekend named after me. My boss knew that l was trying to get back into hockey, so when I asked him for time off and explained why, he said, ‘‘Go and have fun.”
And you’d have to be dead not to have had fun at that All-Star Weekend. The kids, from all across the continent, were uniformly great, and they sure could play hockey. They played one game at a local rink followed by one at the Fleet Center, where the Bruins played. They were in awe playing on an actual NHL rink. I certainly remembered the feeling of stepping onto NHL ice for the first time. Just being on it made you better.
It was also the NHL’s All-Star Weekend, so I got to see many of the friends I’d made thirty-five years earlier, back when I played for the Bruins: Fernie Flaman, Bronco Horvath, Fleming Mackell, Leo Boivin, and Johnny Bucyk. We had a great time remembering the old days. Whenever I’d needed backup on account of knuckleheads giving me grief, all those guys—Bucyk, Stasiuk, Charlie Burns, Jerry Toppazzini—would ride to the rescue. Unless we were leading an odd-man rush, I was never left outnumbered. So seeing them again was like being back in the locker room when I’d first met them in 1958. But this time with a difference.
It was Johnny Bucyk who brought up my blind right eye. He couldn’t imagine how I’d pulled it off. They knew I was fast and that I could check, but they’d had no idea I could only see out of one eye. How had I done it? This Hockey Hall of Famer was looking at me with a kind of awe, which in itself was heartening. I told him I’d just done what I always did, and played the game. Then I added how great it was to see them out of one eye again now, and that I hoped they’d help me with my new mission: to bring more kids into the game that had made us all so happy.
One Bruin who could not have been more generous with his time was that obscure defenseman named Bobby Orr. As one of the greatest Bruins to ever wear the black and gold, he had many demands on his time that weekend, but he always had time for the kids. He signed autographs all day long, until every kid—and every mother, grandmother, uncle, and cousin—had the great Number 4’s signature. He was such an inspiration to the kids, and to me. Bobby Orr is a gentleman. It has been a privilege to get to know him and to have his help.
The weekend went by far too fast and I was sorry to leave, but I had a feeling I could make the next All-Star Weekend just as good.
* * *
—
Now that we’d pulled off our first success, though, Bryant McBride had other plans. He asked me to go to Bellingham, Washington, to help psychologist Dr. Bob Osterman with a sports dinner he was hosting. Bob was running an innovative program, called Creative Concepts, that was using hockey to help kids who were having problems with the law. The idea was that, in playing the game, they’d be taught how to better control their anger. Now, that may seem kind of counterintuitive, given what a fast and passionate game hockey is, one frequently punctuated by the very anger he was trying to manage. But I knew from my playing days just how much discipline and control you needed in order to play the game well.
Bob knew it, too, but he was worried no one would show up at his dinner. So, to help promote the event, I went on the radio in Bellingham and even visited a juvenile detention center to speak to kids about the program. In the end, they had to put in more tables to seat all the people who came. I was now seeing the power I had to change lives for the better through the very game that had made my life so rich.
The following year, the NHL asked me to attend the next Willie O’Ree All-Star Weekend, this time in San Jose. Once again I had to ask for time off from the Del, and again my boss had to find someone to replace me. Actually, I worried I might lose my job, still not quite seeing that maybe this NHL gig would be more long-term than I’d imagined.
Then the next year, 1998, I was invited to the NHL All-Star Game in Vancouver, which coincided with the fortieth anniversary of my breaking the color barrier. This time, though, the NHL wanted me to help break another barrier. Bryant said, “Willie, I’ve been talking to Gary Bettman about you and what you’ve been doing, and we were wondering…what would it take for you to join the NHL Diversity Task Force on a permanent basis?”
Hearing that the NHL commissioner himself was rooting for me made me a believer. Just as I’d been invited into the Bruins all those years ago, the big time was calling me once more. I thought about it for about one second and said, “Two weeks’ notice.”
Meaning the notice I’d need to give the Del. Then I’d be free and clear to join the NHL. After spending years as a player trying to get into the league—and then back into it—here I was, getting another chance. At age sixty-three.
I had to laugh: I wouldn’t have believed this if I’d read it in a book. I, the first black man to play in the NHL, was going to help minority kids find a dream and then live it. I’d be helping them skate on the same ice I’d skated on. I was going to be a pioneer once again.
15.
A CLEAN SHEET OF ICE
Here’s the funny thing about life. You don’t know the meaning of what you’ve done until you’ve done it. You can’t. All you can expect of yourself is to keep doing your best. All you can do is what you know is right. Even when it’s hard. Even when the odds don’t look good. Even when the easier path is laid out in front of you. Do that, and things may just work out.
That’s not the same thing as saying you’re always going to win. No one wins every time. You may lose more than your fair share. There are no guarantees.
Well, just one. If you don’t stick to your guns, you’re definitely not going to win. So give yourself that shot. You’re the only one who can.
Did I set out to be the name of the NHL’s diversity program when I stepped onto the outdoor rink in Fredericton during the Second World War? I did not. Did I think about helping inner-city kids in the United States when I was racking up goals in the Quebec league? Not at all. What I was thinking about, though, was doing my best. And I’m grateful every day that I did.
Joining the NHL to help guide its diversity program from pretty much the beginning was the type of challenge I love: to do something new and bold with an outcome that could only be called a win for everyone. My favorite kind of victor
y.
At that point there were about four or five programs; we have thirty-four now. My duties then and now are to travel around to the different programs and help these kids, on and off the ice, develop their hockey skills and life skills.
Our slogan, “Hockey Is for Everyone,” is exactly what that means—we won’t turn any boy or girl away. And over the past twenty-three years I’ve seen a big increase in the number of kids who want to play the game, and who’ve realized, because of us, that they can.
One of those players is Gerald Coleman, who was with our program called PUCK, Positive Uplifting of Chicago Kids. I met Gerald when he was thirteen, just a skinny little black kid who wanted to be a goaltender. Everyone tried to talk him out of it by pointing out that he was black, as if that fact alone would put the brakes on his dream. It staggers me still that we can think that way, but luckily for hockey, Gerald didn’t. In him I saw my young self when he said he was going to make the NHL and that no one was going to stop him. People tried, for sure. When he was a high school freshman, a gym teacher kept the tired old blockade going by asking Gerald why he was “playing a white man’s game.” Well, because he liked it. And because in our program he’d seen kids of every color playing hockey.
Since we started the program we’ve had nearly fifty thousand kids participate. Gerald Coleman was the first to make it to the NHL—when, in 2003, he was selected 224th overall by the Tampa Bay Lightning. Gerald had come off a terrific junior career with the Ontario Hockey League’s London Knights, having won the Dave Pinkney Trophy twice as part of the goaltending team with the lowest goals-against average. And the season after Gerald was drafted by the Lightning, he would win the Memorial Cup.
He wound up playing two games for Tampa, then spent the rest of his career in the minor pro league before injuries made him hang up his skates in 2014. But I’m very proud of Gerald and what he accomplished. I saw a lot of myself in him.
* * *
—
I also see a lot of myself in kids who come off the ice crying because someone has said something awful to them. I do everything I can to change how they hear those insults. I tell them that they’re just words, and that the best way to deal with the people who think they can hurt you with those words is to be your best and to show them your game on the ice.
I know: sometimes I didn’t always take my own advice. But once a young player learns to believe that the power is with them, not with the racist, they’re transformed.
One such case hit me close to home, since it happened to a young player in Fredericton. Taylor Leblanc, who is of Acadian, Jamaican, and Chinese descent, is the eldest of three hockey-playing brothers. He was twelve—the same age I was—when someone made a racial remark that left him puzzled and hurt. He’d never heard it before and wasn’t sure how to respond.
When a mutual friend in Fredericton told me about it, I gave Taylor a call. I know what it’s like for these kids. But I also think it’s tougher for them today than it was for me because we live in a society where it’s become acceptable to publicly disparage your fellow human beings for whatever reason—their skin color, their place of origin, their gender or sexual orientation. Maybe it’s always been like that. But now, with so many ways to broadcast hateful views, it seems much louder. And there’s already just so much pressure on you as a kid.
So I called Taylor up and we talked about it. I told him the best way to respond was with his play, and by ignoring the bullies and the bigots, because ignoring them was the thing that drove them crazy.
The racism never stops, but it’s how you deal with it that makes the difference. I sometimes wish these ignorant, mean-spirited people could see the effort these kids need to make and the circumstances they need to overcome just to get on the ice. Not everyone has a pond to play on or parents who can make a rink in the backyard. Hockey is expensive, no doubt about it. And it’s become a lot more so since I started playing eighty years ago. You need to wear all the protective gear, which costs about $700, and which a lot of families can’t afford. So if these kids want to play hockey and don’t have the money, we’ll pick up the tab. And if they don’t like it, then someone else will get the gear and no hard feelings. We’re only trying to help kids who want to play, and no kid who wants to play is ever turned away.
* * *
—
I’ve learned a lot in my role as ambassador for the NHL and its diversity outreach. But one lesson I wish I hadn’t learned is seeing how this rich, privileged continent of ours still has so many problems to fix when it comes to how we treat kids, how we treat our future.
I’ve been in too many schools where teachers have to buy the textbooks, pens, and paper for the students. I was in a school in Harlem that had concrete floors covered with ceramic tiles—whenever you’d move a chair it screeched across the floor in a way that would make fingernails on a blackboard sound pleasant. The problem was solved when the principal, out of her own pocket, bought tennis balls for each chair leg in that school. In fact, while I was talking to the kids at her school, I noticed that she’d pop out of class a couple of times, on the hour. Later she told me she had to move her car or she’d get a ticket. There was no parking space for the principal of this school.
One funny thing happened there, though. At the end of my talk, I gave the students signed hockey cards with a photo of me as a Boston Bruin—young, proud, and looking great in my Bruins jersey. Then, when I asked the kids if there were any questions, one little girl put up her hand.
“Who is that in the photo?”
Everyone laughed, and I assured her that it was me.
She wasn’t buying it. “It doesn’t look like you,” she said, and everyone laughed again.
So I told her to do a little time travel as I mimed the pose in the photograph, and to imagine me as a guy not much older than she was. And then I saw her smile in delight. She got it. I was who I said I was.
One time in Pennsylvania, I had more kids coming to hear me than I had cards to give out. I never like to see a kid go away empty-handed, so I told the students that if they didn’t get a card I’d sign anything they wanted me to sign.
This didn’t make the school administration happy, since it added about another hour to my event as kids brought up backpacks, lunch kits, and yes, textbooks for me to sign. I signed them all, including the back of a kid’s jacket. I could imagine the conversation he’d have about that later with his mother.
* * *
—
When I first started with the diversity program I’d sometimes be on the road for three weeks out of the month, but today my schedule is gentler. During the course of the year I’m away for about one week every month, from the beginning of the season in October till the end of it in June. It’s still a lot like being a player. I travel, I go to the rink, I work out, I have my afternoon nap—a player staple on game days—and I get to meet wonderful people across the continent.
The Adeniye family certainly counts as among the best. I first met Ayodele “Ayo” Adeniye in 2005, when he was just six years old. His mother, Lisa Ramos, would drive me around Columbus whenever I was in town for one of my clinics, and Ayo—who was enrolled in the Columbus Ice Hockey Club, part of the NHL’s “Hockey Is for Everyone” program—was always asking me questions, getting my take on what it took to play in the NHL.
He’d gotten interested in hockey at about the same age I did—when he was three. He was at a friend’s birthday party at a local ice rink when he saw a high school hockey game on an adjacent rink—and told his mother that this was the game he wanted to play. Now, his mother comes from an athletic family: her grandfather played baseball in the Negro Leagues and her father had not only won the state championship in high jump and cross country but had played basketball for the army in Europe as well. But, like so many families of color, hockey wasn’t part of their sporting history.
And yet Ayo persisted. When Lisa enr
olled him in basketball as a little kid, instead of running around like the rest of the children, he moved about the court in ice-skating motions. It must have been pretty funny to see, but Ayo was serious: he wanted to play hockey. His mother got the message.
It was more than just being black hockey players that made us bond. Ayo had eye problems, too. He was born with misaligned eyes, which led to a few surgeries to rebalance his eye muscles and literally get his eyes straightened out. Every time I was in Columbus we’d get together. I watched him grow both as a person and as a hockey player.
But it wasn’t all a smooth ride for him, either—especially when he got cut from the Ohio Blue Jackets’ AAA hockey program. He could have quit then. But he remembered what I’d told him: “If you think you can, you can.” So he joined the Cleveland Junior Lumberjacks, his mother driving him to and from the city, a two-hour trip each way. Ayo played hard, and eventually worked his way back onto the Columbus team.
Today that little six-year-old is a six-foot-five, two-hundred- pound defenseman who, beginning in the 2020 season, will be playing for the University of Alabama-Huntsville Chargers, an NCAA Division I team in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association. And I bet we see him in the NHL before too long, patrolling the blue line for a team smart enough to give him a shot.
* * *
—
I was in Columbus in February 2018 when the Blue Jackets held their “Hockey Is for Everyone Night.” During pre-game warm-ups, Blue Jackets defenseman and “Hockey Is For Everyone” ambassador Seth Jones and the team used rainbow-colored Pride tape on their sticks and practiced with Pride-themed pucks. The program wants to include everyone—and on this night we were celebrating LGBTQ athletes, coaches, and fans.
