by Willie O'Ree
And midway through that almost five-minute interview, it was I who brought up the elephant in the studio. In recounting my arrival in the NHL I mentioned that my old coach Phil Watson had told me I could be “the Jackie Robinson of hockey.”
Ward Cornell was not a flashy interviewer, but he was sharp.
“In terms of this business of being the Jackie Robinson of hockey,” he said, his head down, his arms folded across his beefy chest, “have you had any troubles?” We both knew the kind of troubles Robinson had experienced over his entire major league career.
I realized that I could go two ways here. I could tell Ward Cornell about the “maudit negre” chants in Quebec, the “Colored Only” Jim Crow restrictions in Georgia, the fact that “troubles” was too mild a word for it. Or I could give him the hockey answer.
You probably know what I mean by “hockey answer.” If you’re looking for insight into deep questions, don’t ask a hockey player with a mic in your hand and the camera rolling. Hockey players tend to say as little as possible, because the less you say, the less you can say wrong. Players worry about saying something the coach won’t like. Or even worse, something their opponents will like. Remember, hockey players love to get under each other’s skin. If I tell the whole league on national television that racial barbs really bother me, I can pretty much guarantee that I’ll hear more of them. After all, if I tell them I’ve got a sore rib, they’re going to hit me every chance they get.
Above all, you want to be team-first. That’s just hockey culture. Talking about your own unique challenges is about as far from team-first as you can get. So I gave the hockey answer, and let viewers figure it out for themselves.
“No, none that you could say were troubles,” I told him. “I’ve heard a few jeers, but I guess all hockey players get that.”
Which is true, but they didn’t get the type of jeers I was getting in some arenas.
And then, ever so casually, Cornell asked me, “When you’re on the road, whom do you room with?”
I told him that on the road I roomed with Charlie Burns.
“Good,” said Cornell. After that he moved on to the fate of the Bruins: we were sitting in the basement at that point in the season, and it’s where we would finish. But this seemingly offhand question about my roommate would have revealed much to an audience at the time, who were well aware of the discrimination many U.S. hotels showed to black people by turning us away at the door. And my answer told everyone that it wasn’t a problem for the Bruins, or for me, and shouldn’t be one at all.
Indeed, I’ve never had a problem with any of my teammates on the eleven pro teams I’ve played for. The guys wearing the same jersey as I wore have been supportive, and considerate, and rooting for me on every single team, no exceptions. The problem was with the players on the other teams.
Now, that doesn’t include the Montreal Canadiens or the Toronto Maple Leafs. Canada likes to think of itself as a more tolerant society than the United States, and maybe it is, although, as I’ve said, I’ve had my problems at home. I think the real reason I was left alone when Boston played in Canada was that players and fans knew me from my junior and minor pro days. I was a familiar face.
But in the United States, even though all the players were Canadian, I was a black face in a very white game with a very white fan base. I used to hear ugly name-calling in New York, Detroit, and Chicago, from the fans, mainly, but sometimes from the players. Just as Coot had predicted—and prepared me for—players would cross-check me. They’d take runs at me to knock me into the boards. They wanted to see what the black guy would do. And there wasn’t a game in my first NHL season when an ugly racial remark wasn’t directed at me.
I’ve said that I let racism go in one ear and out the other, but I heard it all right. And one night, after an opposing player had called me the N-word, I decided to do something about it. I skated up to the referee and told him, “This guy just called me a nasty name.” The referee said, “What do you want me to do about it?” and then skated away. I got the message. I’d have to deal with it myself. And so, yes, I had my fair share of fights—never because I wanted to fight but because I had to. Even so, in my 1961 NHL season I racked up only twenty-six minutes of penalties, which was pretty low compared to some of my penalty totals in other leagues I played in. I did have to fight more in the western league, where I played for fourteen years. Guys came after me. But I was also an aggressive player, and that had something to do with it as well.
Today the NHL takes racial incidents very seriously. It’s sad to see that racist words and actions still happen, but very good to see how the league responds. Players who insult another player because of his race are punished with heavy fines and are embarrassed in the media. A couple of years ago all five major league teams in Boston joined up to combat racism among fans, so it’s still very much with us. Back then, though, I didn’t have any official help. I knew I’d have to look after myself.
It was on the ice in Chicago that I had my worst experience with another player. I was excited about playing Chicago Stadium, a large, gorgeous arena, the biggest in the United States when it opened in 1929. And I was excited about playing against the Black Hawks and learning some tricks from their big star, Bobby Hull, a.k.a. the Golden Jet. He was fast, but was he faster than me? I was hoping to find out.
Bobby Hull could certainly shoot the puck harder than I could. His shot was so hard that it scared goalies. Bobby, a left-winger like me, loved to shoot from the slot. He’d won the Art Ross Trophy as the NHL’s scoring champion the previous season by firing his cannon from there, and he’d win it twice more before he was finished. In fact, four of the first six fifty-goal seasons in the NHL belong to Bobby Hull. With his blond hair flowing as he made a thrilling end-to-end rush, he was yet another reason why people loved the energy and speed of hockey.
Chicago also had future Hall-of-Famers Glenn Hall in goal and Stan Mikita at center. Hall had reflexes so fast that just when shooters would figure they had him beat, his glove hand would whip out and he’d snatch the puck in midair. He was so nervous before games that he used to throw up, but once he was on the ice he had nerves of steel and that glove hand to match.
Stan Mikita was blessed with many talents on the ice. He won the NHL scoring title four times in five years and the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s Most Valuable Player twice. He was also tough, but that’s because of his tough childhood. In 1948, when Stan was just eight years old, his parents shipped him out of his native Czechoslovakia, not wanting him to grow up under the communist dictatorship. So Stan came to live with his aunt and uncle in Canada. It was hard enough for me to leave home when I was nineteen to go to another province, so I can’t imagine how scared this little kid felt being sent across the world to live with strangers. He didn’t speak English and looked like he came from a poor Eastern European country, so the other kids picked on him. Stan fought back, and kept on fighting back, right into the NHL. I knew how he felt. In 1966, his six-year-old daughter, Meg, asked him about his frequent trips to the penalty box. “Daddy, when that guy in the stripes blew the whistle, why did Uncle Bobby [Hull] go sit with his friends and you went all the way across the ice and sat by yourself?” Mikita was so moved by his child’s question that he changed his belligerent style and decided to just play hockey. As a result, he won the Lady Byng Trophy the following two seasons for gentlemanly play.
So there I was, in the old Chicago Stadium with all these stars, looking forward to a great game. They played the national anthem on that big Wurlitzer organ, and the fans roared to shake the rafters. That old organ did make the hairs stand up on your neck. It was exhilarating to be there.
But I didn’t get to see how I stacked up against Hull. The game was less than two minutes old when trouble hit. It was just the second shift of the first period when Chicago right-winger Eric Nesterenko skated up to me and called me the N-word. Nesterenko was big: six two or th
ree and about two hundred pounds. He was rough, too. His nickname was “Elbows” because he liked to pop guys in the face with them.
So he called me that nasty name, and before I had time to respond, he took his stick and butt-ended me in the mouth. Butt-ending is one of the dirtiest things you can do in hockey. A guy will slide his top hand down, exposing the end of his stick. Then he’ll jam that knob into another guy’s ribs or, as in my case, his face. Along with slew-footing, the butt-end is about as dirty as hockey gets. The butt-end is nothing more than an attempt to injure another player, and that’s what Eric Nesterenko was trying to do to me.
It worked. His butt-end knocked out my two front teeth, split my lip, and broke my nose. Then Nesterenko stood there, smiling, and said the N-word again. I stayed on my feet, though, and stared him down. So he tried to high-stick me. But by that point I’d had enough. I ducked under it and smacked him over the head with my stick. I cut him pretty good—it took fourteen or fifteen stitches to close him up.
Blood was now flowing from my mouth and from his head, but he wasn’t ready to quit. He’d thought I would back off, and now he was mad that the black man had fought back, so he went after me. He grabbed me; we went up against the glass. He was bigger than I was, so he had a longer arm reach. I knew I couldn’t beat him in a fight because of his size, so I pulled him in close to make sure he couldn’t punch me. The safest place in a hockey fight is as close as you can get to the guy who’s trying to punch you.
Meanwhile, both benches had cleared and everyone was fighting. The fans were hollering at me because that’s what fans do at opposing players. Or maybe a few were hollering at me for daring to play hockey while black.
Finally, the linesmen broke up the brawl. Nesterenko and I each got five-minute penalties for drawing blood and ten-minute misconducts.
They took me to the Boston dressing room to fix me up. They plugged up my broken nose and washed off the blood. I wanted to go back out and play, but the trainer said it was too dangerous. The Chicago officials had said there’d be “injuries” if I went back in, which meant someone might try to kill me. Which is pretty much what I felt Eric Nesterenko had tried to do already.
Chicago believed that they couldn’t control their own fans or players, so they locked me in the Boston dressing room for the rest of the game—for my own protection. The room didn’t have a TV as they do today, so for nearly the whole game I sat there alone, wondering what was happening out on the ice. So much for seeing Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita and Glenn Hall. I was a prisoner in Chicago Stadium.
After the game, things were still tense. The Chicago officials told us we’d need a police escort to get out of the rink safely. The police marched us to our team bus, but there wasn’t any trouble. Eric Nesterenko wasn’t out there waiting for me. There was no mob. We got on the bus and safely out of Chicago.
When I spoke to my parents, they told me they’d read all about my fight. But the newspapers didn’t tell the whole story. The gist of it was that “Willie O’Ree and Eric Nesterenko had a bloody stick-duel in Chicago.” I didn’t tell my parents what really happened. And I never did. For the rest of their lives, they never knew the truth. It would have hurt them too much.
* * *
—
I had to go back to Chicago again later that season. I was sure Eric Nesterenko wanted to pay me back for cutting his head open. Sure enough, during the warm-up he gave me a two-handed slash to the ankles, which is bad enough: you can break a guy’s ankle doing that. I didn’t react, though; I knew that’s what he wanted. That night I kept my eye on him, but he didn’t attack me again, and he didn’t call me any names. Maybe he figured he didn’t need me cracking my stick over his head again.
I had a chance to find out thirty years later. In 1991 I received a call from the NHL inviting me to the All-Star Game in Chicago. I was surprised—I hadn’t heard from the NHL in a long time. Still, I was pleased by the invitation, so I went. The NHL put me up at the luxurious Drake Hotel and paid all the expenses for me and my wife, Deljeet. Chicago is a really great city, with wonderful architecture, restaurants, art galleries, and people, and this time I aimed to enjoy it.
So I went to my first All-Star function, and who was there but Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita? I said hello to them both—the very guys I’d missed seeing play in my first game in Chicago, now in the same room as me. They were friendly, and Bobby still is when I see him at NHL events.
Then I walked up to the bar to get Deljeet a glass of red wine. And who was standing next to me? Eric Nesterenko. I turned to look at him, and instead of hurling a racist epithet at me or butt-ending me with a hockey stick, he said, “Hi, Willie, how’s it going?”
I was stunned. After the ugly things this man had said and done to me, now he was regarding me as just another guy at the bar? Maybe he’d thought using the N-word against me was just good old-fashioned trash talking. It’s not. Trash talking aims to needle an opponent by casting doubt on his strength or his intelligence or his girlfriend, but within the context of the game. Racism aims to diminish the humanity of a person, period. It’s not about a game, it’s about your life. There’s a huge difference, as anyone who’s ever been racially abused will tell you.
So I had two choices in this unexpected encounter. I could break his nose, which might be briefly satisfying but would ruin the All-Star Weekend for everyone and ensure that I never came to another one. Or I could just answer him as if meeting up was the most ordinary thing in my day. So I said, “Not too bad.” Then I walked away.
His violent attack on me was something that happened a long time ago, I figured. What good would it do to bring it up now? It would have been nice to hear him say, “I’m sorry. What I said and did was wrong.” I don’t think I ever will.
11.
GONE
I played forty-three games for Boston during that 1960–61 season, and since a season in those days was just seventy games, I’d been up in the NHL for more than half of it. It had been a very good stretch for me, despite the ugly stuff on the ice. I could deal with that. And now that the players and fans had seen how I handled it, I figured the novelty of their bigotry would wear off.
The most important thing to me was that not only had I played those forty-plus games in the NHL, but I’d pulled them off with only one eye. My secret was still safe, and in the process I’d managed to score four goals and add ten assists for fourteen points. That wouldn’t win me the NHL scoring title, but I wasn’t hurting the team, either.
Still, the team had endured a pretty bad season. The Bruins were the lowest-scoring team in the NHL: we’d lost forty-two games, tied thirteen, and finished in last place with forty-three points—eleven points behind New York, who were second last. It was, in fact, the beginning of a rough patch for Boston. They would finish in last place for the next four seasons, then in second last, and then in last place again—until they put this kid named Bobby Orr on defense.
But all I knew in the summer of 1961 was that I’d be returning next season with the Bruins. I’d been invited into the office of coach Milt Schmidt and manager Lynn Patrick. Despite our last-place finish they were relaxed and friendly. Schmidt had been named to the Hockey Hall of Fame, so he was especially upbeat. “We’re very impressed with your play this season,” they told me. Even better, they promised me a future. “Look forward to being back with the Bruins next season,” they said. “Now go home and have a great summer!”
I was so proud—and relieved, too: I’d be a Boston Bruin next season, and the season after that, and, with luck, for the rest of my NHL career. So I hustled home to Fredericton and told everyone what the Bruins had said. My parents were happy for me, my friends proud. And my brother Richard, all those years older than I, was now looking up to me. I felt like a star.
It didn’t last long. I’d been home for about six weeks when a long-distance call came. My mother answered the phone and said, “Willie, it’s
a sportswriter from the Telegraph-Journal who wants to speak to you.”
The Telegraph-Journal was Saint John, New Brunswick’s big provincial paper. As I went to take the phone call, I thought that maybe finally the media was catching up with what I had accomplished, breaking the color barrier in the NHL, and then catching on in the world’s best hockey league. No one had yet written such a story, and it might be time to write one now.
I picked up the phone. The sportswriter introduced himself, then asked me a stunning question.
“Willie, what do you think of the trade?”
“You have me at a disadvantage,” I told him, but my heart was sinking. “I don’t know what trade you mean.” Why would a sportswriter be asking me about a trade unless it involved me?
The news had just come out, he explained. “You have been traded to Montreal for Cliff Pennington and Terry Gray. How do you feel about playing for the Canadiens?”
I was speechless. On the one hand, Montreal was the best team in the NHL. But on the other, Milt Schmidt and Lynn Patrick had told me, in person, that I’d be playing in Boston. The Bruins knew where I was, and yet no one had called to tell me anything about a trade.
The sportswriter was just doing his job, but he must have known how I felt: as though I’d been cracked over the head with a hockey stick. But I recovered my composure.
“If I’ve been traded to the Montreal Canadiens, I’ll probably be playing for one of their farm teams,” I told him. Montreal had won five straight Stanley Cups from 1955–56 to 1959–60. They’d finished first with ninety-two points in the 1960–61 season—almost fifty points better than the forty-three we’d earned in Boston. Montreal had brilliant players like Jean Béliveau, Henri Richard, Dickie Moore, Boom Boom Geoffrion, and a bunch more coming up in their deep farm system. I didn’t think they needed me to give them that extra edge.