by Willie O'Ree
Over the past two decades we’ve brought the same message to thousands of kids—from urban to rural and in between, from kids of color to the LGBTQ community to people with physical challenges who play sled hockey: that hockey is indeed for everyone.
And that there are more places than ever to play the game. When I first started playing I was on the ice every day: after all, I lived in a cold place with natural ice for nearly half the year. During the winter I could skate anytime I wanted. But today I’m happy to note that there are rinks everywhere, regardless of climate—Harlem in New York, Texas, Georgia, Carolina, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, Arizona, all over the place. And it doesn’t always have to be ice. In-line rinks are big here in San Diego, and there’s even one named after me in Boston. It doesn’t matter to me whether kids are playing on ice or pavement. They just need to be able to play.
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I love many things about my job, but what I love most is seeing the excitement kids have about playing the game. Just as I did, they love feeling as if they’re flying when they skate, the breeze whipping past them as they go. They feel as if they can do anything. And as I tell them, “If you think you can, you can, and if you think you can’t, you’re probably right.”
Kids who’ve never been out of their own inner-city neighborhoods are amazed that playing hockey gets them a ride on an airplane and a place at my All-Star Weekend. Kids who’ve never been given anything get free hockey equipment donated by the NHL and USA Hockey. Kids who’ve been in trouble at school or with the law find a place where they can be taught teamwork. And as any hockey player knows, if you don’t have teamwork, you don’t have a team.
When kids ask me what it was like when people called me names, I tell them, “I just looked at myself as a man, and knew that people had to accept me as a hockey player because of my skills and ability.”
There’s a saying I like a lot: “Each man is three men: who he thinks he is, who others think he is, and who he really is.” I tell the kids to know who they really are and be true to themselves. Everything will flow smoothly after that. If I can just get that message through to one person, then I’m happy.
When I go to the rink to give the kids some on-ice help, or when I talk to them in the locker room or in their school auditorium, I see the pride in their eyes. I see that my words, and my story, connect with them in a way that will help them love this great game the way I love it. They don’t need to win the Stanley Cup, although every hockey player has won it in their mind’s eye a couple of times, to be sure. They just have to know they can play if they want to play, and take it all from there.
16.
THE CALL, PART 2
After my hockey career ended, whenever the Hockey Hall of Fame would come up in conversation people were surprised to learn I wasn’t in it. “But you broke the color barrier!” they’d say. And I would agree, but gently remind them that Baseball Hall-of-Famer Jackie Robinson had also won Rookie of the Year and I had not. There were certainly similarities between us, but they weren’t going to elect me to the Hall of Fame out of charity. I did wonder, though, if one day I could maybe get there by some other means.
I’ve been recognized by many organizations, and I’m grateful for their acknowledgment of my life in hockey. I was elected to the New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame in 1984, a wonderful distinction, and one my mother was alive to see. She died three years later at the great age of ninety-three. So I was happy that both my parents got to see what I’d achieved and the honor I’d brought to the O’Ree family name.
In 1992 my hometown of Fredericton put me up on its Sports Wall of Fame. Then, in 2003, the NHL awarded me the Lester Patrick Trophy for my contributions to hockey in the United States. I’d played for Lester Patrick’s son Lynn in Boston, so that was especially sweet. It felt as if I were connecting to the team and to that epic time in my life all over again.
In 2005 I was named to the Order of New Brunswick, and the following year I was honored with my induction into the Black Ice Hockey and Sports Hall of Fame in Nova Scotia.
The fiftieth anniversary year of my NHL debut was a big one for me as well. In 2008 the league honored me at their All-Star Game in Atlanta, which has had a significant role in the story of civil rights in the United States. The theme that year was diversity, so not only was my achievement celebrated but also that of John Paris Jr., who in 1994 became the first man of African heritage to coach a pro hockey team when he became bench boss of the International Hockey League’s Atlanta Knights.
I also got to drop the ceremonial puck for Jarome Iginla, who was on the Western Conference All-Star team and whose father hails from Nigeria. Iginla was not only an excellent hockey player but a pretty fine baseball player as well, winning the job of catcher for the Canadian national junior team. He’s a great guy, and serves with me as an NHL diversity ambassador. He’s even said that I had inspired his path to pro hockey.
In 2008 I was inducted into the San Diego Hall of Champions, and in the same year I received an award from San Diego State University for Outstanding Commitment to Diversity and Cross-Cultural Understanding.
The biggest honor to me that year, maybe in my personal top two, was having a new sports complex named after me in Fredericton. As a kid playing on the city’s ponds I could never have dreamed of Willie O’Ree Place—an amazing recreation facility on the north side of the Saint John River, a little more than two miles away from the street where I grew up. It’s big and it’s welcoming, with a large glass front to let you see inside and want to come in. And what you’ll find is not one but two NHL-sized ice surfaces, eleven spacious dressing rooms, offices for officials and event organizers, and an indoor walking track where you can look down at the shiny rink below. I’ve very proud of the fact that it houses a gallery of photos depicting Fredericton’s celebration of sport along with three rooms for community use, food and drink services, a wellness center, a seasonal youth center, and an indoor skateboard park. It’s fully accessible, too, so you can walk in or wheel in and see its wonders. It gives me chills to think that generations of people will be able to enjoy this center and maybe learn a bit about me as they do. And carry it all forward.
In 2010 I was astonished to be inducted into the Order of Canada by Governor General Michaëlle Jean. This is the highest civilian honor a Canadian citizen can receive, and in joining people like Maurice “The Rocket” Richard and Jean Béliveau, you could say that I did make their team in the end.
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Back on January 18, 1958, when I pulled on that black and gold Bruins jersey for the first time, I never ever imagined that such recognition would come to me. So on January 17, 2018, when the Boston Bruins honored me on the eve of the sixtieth anniversary of that historic moment with a pre-game celebration, it nearly brought me to tears.
They even ran a segment of that game as it had appeared on television. There I was, up on the big screen in TD Garden, playing my first game all over again. I’d been so proud to be there, so full of dreams. The day had already been wonderful, with Boston mayor Marty Walsh and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman announcing that one of the city’s street hockey rinks would be named after me, along with the league that went with it. The mayor added that he was making January 18, 2018, “Willie O’Ree Day” in Boston. Back when I was riding the train in from Roxbury to suit up for the Bruins, if you’d told me that would happen I’d have thought someone had cracked you over the head with a hockey stick.
And just as they had sixty years before, the Bruins were playing the Montreal Canadiens that night. I received a standing ovation when I walked out in my Bruins jersey, number 22 of course, along with four kids from Boston’s SCORE, a program that brings the great game to inner city kids. Those kids stood proudly beside me as I dropped the ceremonial puck for Bruins captain Zdeno Chara and Montreal’s Max Pacioretty. After that it looked like Montreal might ruin my party when they
scored thirty-one seconds into the game on a deflection, but then the Bruins came roaring back to defeat the Canadiens 4–1, putting the icing on the anniversary cake of that glorious night.
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As I said when I began this tale, my story has many beginnings—and that night in Boston ushered in another one. And it all connected back to my hometown. For it started the next morning when a fine New Brunswick sportswriter named Bill Hunt fired up his computer and wrote his weekly sports column for Fredericton’s The Daily Gleaner. And it was a much different story than the last time a New Brunswick sports journalist had written about me, when I was ambushed with news of being traded from Boston.
He was planning to list the things I had accomplished as a kind of round-up piece about me, but as he wrote, one big question nagged at him: How was it that the player who’d broken into the NHL in the Jim Crow United States—six years before the Civil Rights Act became law and a year before the Red Sox fielded their first black player—wasn’t in the Hockey Hall of Fame? The title of his column answered the question: “Time to Put Willie in the Hall of Fame.”
The next day Hunt wrote a follow-up piece that explained the nuts and bolts of the nomination process and how anyone could put together a package for it. Of course, the trick is getting that nomination package past the selection committee with 75 percent of the votes, since getting elected is no easy thing. But when my Fredericton friends David and Brenda Sansom read Bill Hunt’s piece, they got to work.
David Sansom has known my family since he was eleven years old, which was a while ago. (He’d been out fishing on the Saint John River when we all pulled up for a family picnic and invited him to join us.) Today David is among my group of friends who go back decades; his wife, Brenda, is a more recent member, but we’re teammates nonetheless. It was Brenda’s experience as former Fredericton city councillor that galvanized into action what would eventually be called Team Willie.
At first, things didn’t move too fast. So Brenda, David, and Bill had to beat the drums loudly, going on local radio shows, meeting people at community centers, spreading the word and putting out the call for letters of support. Now, we live in a world where everyone seems to be writing things all the time—on Twitter, Instagram, email—but it takes a lot to write a letter, especially if you’re not a writer and especially if you’re feeling the pressure about what that letter is supposed to accomplish.
The first ones came into Brenda and David from my fishing pals, my card-playing buddies, and people who knew me around Fredericton and the Maritimes more broadly.
And then, with about two weeks to go before the nomination package was due, “no later than midnight April 15,” letters started flooding in. I don’t think Brenda and David were getting too much sleep as they and Bill Hunt struggled to keep up with them all. Team Willie told me they received dozens of letters of support—from everyday people and hockey fans, from current and former NHLers, from past premiers of New Brunswick, from a sitting premier, from a former lieutenant governor, from a Canadian senator, and from a number of community groups.
Some of the letters that moved me most came from black NHL players. Joel Ward, at the time a forward with the San Jose Sharks, wrote a two-page letter that explained how my life in hockey had influenced his own. “What Willie has done for the game cannot be put into words. But it can be recognized,” Ward said. “When you think about ‘builders’ of the game of hockey, who has sacrificed more and given more of himself to the game of hockey than Willie O’Ree?”
Another black player, Wayne Simmonds, who at the time played for the Philadelphia Flyers, wrote a piece supporting me in The Players Tribune, an online journal where athletes tell their stories. I’d met Wayne during his rookie season with the L.A. Kings and thought he had a great future ahead of him. He had the on-ice talent and the off-ice personality that can’t be taught. In his piece he said that, in meeting me,
I was meeting my hero. For every single kid who was ever told to “stick to basketball,” Willie was like the first man on the moon. He wasn’t just a hockey player. He was an astronaut. Without Willie, there would be no Jarome Iginla. There would be no Grant Fuhr, or P.K. Subban or Ray Emery or Dustin Byfuglien, or so many others who have had the honor of playing in this great league. There would definitely be no Wayne Simmonds.
Team Willie also got a letter of support from P.K. Subban’s father, Karl, one that meant the world to me. P.K. is another fine athlete and person; he now plays for the New Jersey Devils while one brother, Malcolm, plays goal for the Las Vegas Golden Knights and his other brother, Jordan, a defenseman like P.K., plays pro in Austria. Karl Subban used to take little P.K. skating at Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square late at night—Karl was holding down two jobs, and that was the only time he had. His words about me affected me as much as I’d affected him.
Willie stepped on the ice with the Boston Bruins in 1958, the year when I was born, and made hockey history. He is a pioneer and a trailblazer. Willie achieved in the face of adversity. He changed the game and he changed society and he changed minds. Willie O’Ree’s story must not be forgotten. He has made it possible for my boys to have the NHL dream and to believe they could achieve it. He changed hockey which is now for everyone. Hockey needed him and so does the Hockey Hall of Fame. The time is right!
And so, with support like that, Brenda, David, and Bill managed to get my seventy-page nomination package into the Hockey Hall of Fame just before the deadline. After that came a couple of months of waiting while the selection committee did its work.
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As it happened, a film crew was following me at the same time; they were making a film, called Willie, about my life. So on the day the Hall of Fame was set to make its announcement of the 2018 Honoured Members, I was at home in La Mesa, where I’ve lived for thirty years, with my wife Deljeet and our future son-in-law Talib—along with Bryant McBride, who was one of the film’s producers, and Montreal-born Laurence Mathieu-Léger, who was its director. We were all waiting for the phone call while the camera rolled.
Meanwhile Laurence had another camera unit at David and Brenda’s Fredericton home. They were having a party—optimists that they are—and the plan was for me to call them as soon as I heard from the Hall of Fame, which was supposed to happen between nine a.m. and noon my time.
I have to admit that I was nervous that morning, just as I’d been for my first game in the NHL. Now that the pinnacle of hockey life was within reach, I wanted to touch it so badly that I didn’t know what I would do if I failed.
There’s a wonderful scene in the film where it’s getting close to noon, everyone’s nerves are getting frayed, and Bryant McBride comes into my trophy room to show me the time on his phone: 11:11. I’m not superstitious, but 11:11 is a time to make a wish, which is what Bryant told me to do.
I did, and right then, the phone rang.
We had four different phones out on the kitchen counter, and at first I wasn’t sure which one was ringing. But I managed to pick up the right one—because on the other end of the line was John Davidson, chair of the Hall of Fame selection committee, along with Lanny McDonald, a former chair and a great NHL player.
They told me I’d been elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame as a builder—a person who’s helped “build” the game forward. I was truly at a loss for words, which you’ll see if you watch the film. I was overwhelmed with happiness and pride, and, because I’m so competitive, a little relief. I’d wanted to win this one so badly, and now I had.
Talib had two phones up, one filming it and one with Chandra on FaceTime so that she could see what was happening in our kitchen, which was just one big celebration. And there was another one waiting to break out.
Back in Fredericton, Brenda and David and my friends—some of whom had gathered in the Cabin restaurant, my favorite restaurant in the world and one of Canada’s top
seven road-trip food stops—were waiting for my call to tell them the news, good or bad. And since the news was so good, I decided to have a little fun with them. I tapped in their number, and when Brenda answered I told her I’d gotten a call from the Hall of Fame. Then I paused dramatically. Finally she asked nervously, “How did it go?” “Pretty good,” I said, and paused again. Then I let it all come out.
Brenda shrieked with joy and with a few tears, too. She and David and Bill Hunt and Bryant McBride and a cast of hundreds who’d supported me on this latest journey had made it all happen.
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In November 2018 Deljeet and I made the trip to Toronto for my induction. With us were Brenda and David, my pal Junior Doherty and his wife, Lynn, and a pretty impressive group of my hockey comrades: goalie Martin Brodeur, right-winger Martin St. Louis, Team Canada star Jayna Hefford, Russian legend Alexander Yakushev, and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.
The Hall of Fame was established in 1943, with players and builders first inducted into its ranks two years later, in 1945. Since 1992 it’s been housed in the beautiful old Bank of Montreal building in Toronto, where each November they host the induction ceremony.
In fact, my 1958 accomplishment—certainly part of the great story they tell of hockey’s history—had already gained me a presence in the Hall. Beside a life-sized portrait of a young me, leaning on my stick in my Bruins uniform, is some text explaining what happened on that evening of January 18. The Hall also contains a glass display case celebrating diversity, and in it stands one of my scuffed Northwood hockey sticks, its nearly straight blade with black tape around it and my surname written on the handle. Now, though, I was about to become an Honoured Member, my name and story on a plaque in hockey’s pantheon.
