Why We Remember Gordie

By Neil Earle

Gordie Howe

At drafty but venerable old St. James High School at the top of Bond Street in Carbonear one thing you could depend on that winter of 1960-61 was the Monday morning hockey debates. Usually Big Jim Squibb stood by the reserve blackboard to update the standings from the previous night’s NHL battles. Our kindly and astute principal, Mr. Graham Newell, had allowed us this extra-curricular privilege.

These were the days of the old Six Team League so it was an easy feat to erase Montreal Canadiens (colored in red chalk) by Toronto (colored blue) or Chicago (white) and keep the paradigm up for all to see. Whoever’s team was in the lead got bragging rights all week.

There was one team that never quite made it to the top of the chart that winter. It was the Detroit Red Wings. They were the team I – as a diehard Leaf fan – feared the most. This was Harold Laing’s team and we feared them because we knew in our bones that once Detroit made the fourth playoff spot everything was up for grabs.

There was one reason for that.

Gordie Howe.

Source of Song and Story

Jim Squibb would always push his idol “Big Bobby” Hull as the best but in our heart of hearts – no matter how many Beliveaus or Mahovlichs we could drum up, we knew Gordie Howe was the greatest.

There was even a song about him:

Gordie Howe was the greatest of them all,
The greatest of them all,
The greatest of them all;
You can have your choice of all the rest
If you’re a Howe fan, you’ve got the very best

Shucks, I even remember the melody! It was bad enough having Harold Laing as your neighbor on Carbonear South, when I went to Memorial U I stayed with my cousin, Jack Badcock. He was much more loud and vociferous about his worship for Mr. Hockey, Mr. Elbows, Mr. Destroyer of Lou Fontinato – the same Gordie Howe.

Marina Gambin wrote in a charming confessional for the March 30, 2014 Compass how in her small town of Branch near St Mary’s Bay her aunt and uncle had four pictures on their wall – the Virgin Mary, the Sacred Heart, Pope Pius XII, and Gordie Howe!

I believe it. There was no escaping this man’s influence if you were a hockey fan in those years. This is one reason former CeeBee Alex Faulkner scoring two goals in a 3-2 win over the Leafs electrified the whole province in the semifinals of 1963. Alex wore the same uniform as Gordie Howe, you see. In 1976 I got to get Gordie’s autograph when he visited Winnipeg playing for the Houston Aeros, me little dreaming he would last as long as he did.

The statistics have been fondly retold, the anecdotes are still being related along the hockey grapevine but for millions of us of a certain age (even Leaf fans) Gordie Howe is and was the gold standard of hockey. Neil Isaacs, a sports scholar from Baltimore (yes, there are such creatures) told me he thought Howe was the athlete of the century “considering the opposition he faced every game.”

Wayne Gretzky obviously felt that way since he took Number 99 because Number 9 wasn’t available when he broke into the NHL.

The Mild Demeanor

No question about it the man had class and endurance. It was the almost effortless ease with which he glided to the net at a sometimes 70 degree angle, the loaded pause, the fondness for the accurate wrist shot, his humble Clark Kent demeanor off the ice and his superhero stature when on it. Canadians loved that last trait. The stories told this week show he was much more outgoing and service-oriented than some of his critics alleged. Some felt he should have been much more outspoken against hockey violence in the 1970s when the dark stain began to spread across the sport. Bobby Hull sat out a game in protest, Gordie did not. But there was no denying the man’s points total in a hard-nosed fiercely competitive, trolley schedule league in an intensely focused six-team confederacy. We all knew of Geordie’s six time MVP trophy and six time scoring trophy.

And once in the playoffs – my son, look out – for the line of Delvecchio, Ullman and Howe with Sawchuk in goal could sink your team’s Stanley Cup chances as often as not. It got to the point where the great Howie Meeker (who won Rookie of the Year honors over Gordie in 1946-47) would announce upcoming games on CJON as “Tonight, Montreal plays Chicago, Toronto plays Gordie Howe!

Yes, really.

The Capacity to Idealize

Even President Barack Obama knew who he was as did CBS Evening news and the front page of the LA Times way down here in the palm latitudes. The uber-modern Twitter universe took note of him as well. Someone in Detroit posted a picture of Hull and Howe and their six-pack abs titled “When steroids were called farm work.”

That caption says a lot. Was that really a purer more innocent time back there at St. James High school in the early Sixties? Or up on Bull Pond? Or the marsh? That could be argued both ways but it is good to think that there is something wholesome and redeeming about the capacity young people have to idealize, to come out of themselves in a salute to exceptional achievement and endurance. For the older of us hockey conjures up memories of quieter more peaceful days on the pond when we thought friendship and fun and dreaming youth would last forever. And Howe.

(Carbonear-born Neil Earle has written on hockey for The Journal of Canadian Studies and other publications. He is finishing a book on hockey from a fan’s perspective.)