Other than hanging around the Calico Kitchen, Phyllis would come to see me play hockey during the season. She’d never boast, but she was a good athlete herself. Her sport was softball, and I would go along to see her games. She was just finishing high school, and I was working whatever farm jobs I could get and putting a lot of mileage on the car while travelling to games in and around Woodstock with the Junior B team.
Ours was a small wedding at the Anglican church in Paris in 1960, and we had a party afterwards at the farm. That’s how people did things back then. It was pretty modest. We didn’t rent a hall or anything like that; my mother and her friends just made a nice spread of food, everybody came and had a good time, and that was it.
After we got married, we moved to Brantford and lived for a time in a rented apartment. Now, we were a young married couple: I was twenty-one and Phyllis was just eighteen. Brantford was quite a change, in lifestyle and scenery, from the farm. When I started looking for a house for us, people laughed at me and said I wasn’t looking so much at the house as at the backyard, to see if it was big enough and flat enough for a skating rink. I guess those same people now think I had some foresight. But I admit it, that is how much I loved hockey. And if I was going to be living away from the river, a flooded yard out back was going to have to do. So that is what I was hoping to find: a house I could afford on my starting-out salary at Bell, with a flat yard ripe for flooding in winter. And that’s exactly what I found. A good thing, too. By the time Phyllis and I moved into our home on Varadi Avenue, where we still live today, I was a chain-smoking twenty-two-year-old family man, already wondering how to make ends meet and getting a head start on my reputation as a worrywart. I still played hockey in my spare time with Warren and some of the guys from Bell on a team called the Princeton Panthers in the rural league, but I had no more dreams of my own for the NHL.
I was also the proud new father of a little baby boy named Wayne Douglas Gretzky, who, I soon figured out, liked how the world looked with a stick in his hands and a pair of skates on his feet as much as his old man did. I decided to teach him everything I knew about hockey, the sport that was already a big part of my life, and as it turned out, was always going to be.
Yes, that backyard rink turned out to be a pretty good idea after all.
chapter two
SMALL-TOWN DAD
I would never deny that I’ve been extremely fortunate over the years, but I have to tell you that my life as a husband and father didn’t exactly get off to the luckiest start. I have no doubt that Phyllis would agree with me on this one. It was 1961. Wayne wasn’t even a year old. Just a few days before we were moving from our apartment into our new house (the one with the nice, flat backyard), I had a terrible accident on the job. As much as my aneurysm changed me and made me appreciate life more, I’d say that the accident in my early twenties was the first time I was given a second chance at life.
Starting out at Bell, I was a lineman. That particular day, we were guiding a big underground cable into a manhole with a wooden frame. It was a makeshift arrangement of heavy wooden cross-arms, about eight feet long and four inches in diameter, which we could weave the cable through. We were pulling on the frame, and somehow the cable tightened and the frame got flung up from the manhole with great force. It hit the back of my head, cracked my safety helmet, fractured my skull and cut open my scalp, severing all the nerves on one side of my head. You can imagine how Phyllis felt getting that telephone call. It was touch-and-go for quite awhile. In the early days, while I was in a coma, and before I showed any signs of recovery, she was advised by the people at the hospital to call in a priest.
But in the end, thankfully, I did recover with most of my senses and faculties intact, though it took a long time, probably a couple of years. The blow from the accident left me totally deaf in my right ear. My inner ear is damaged, and that’s why I stagger sometimes—I lose my balance. I hear a “shhshshshsshsh” in my ear twenty-four hours a day; it’s like the sound you hear from a seashell. It can be annoying, but I just ask people to stand or sit on my good side if they’re talking to me, and I guess by now I’m used to it.
I went back to work after about a year and a half, but I got transferred to a different department. I became an installer, then a repairman. Over the next three decades, I worked for the business communication services group, on teleprinters, fire alarms and special circuits, all around the Brantford area. In those early years, especially when we had to get by on the disability payments I got while I was off work, it was pretty tough sometimes to make ends meet. You had to be resourceful to get by, but both Phyllis and I came from big families, where you learned how to do that. You made do, and you didn’t have a lot of extravagant needs. I’ve always been careful about spending money, hating to see anything go to waste. I’ve been teased about that a lot, but it’s a habit you develop when you haven’t got much to spend. It’s true I once vetoed new curtains for the living room in favour of skates for the boys. Skates or drapes—could there really be a contest? A sheet over the window would do the job just as well, in my opinion.
And yes, I drove the same model Chevrolet station wagon for years, and I named each one the Blue Goose. I didn’t see anything wrong with driving those cars till they had 200,000 miles on them, though I admit there was some grumbling from the back seat on the way to and from hockey practices and whatever other activities the kids got into. I remember one time when the back window wouldn’t go all the way up and snow was blowing in on the seat. But the old Blue Goose was a reliable car for a family of seven, and, to be honest with you, I felt more comfortable driving that than I would have a shiny new Cadillac.
Back then, I had no idea I’d ever get a chance to drive a Cadillac. It did happen, though. I was still working at Bell, when I came home one day to find my car was gone. Another car I didn’t recognize was sitting there in the driveway. I said to Phyllis, “Where the devil is my car?” She said, “Your car’s in the driveway.” I said, “Phyllis, where is my damn car? I want my car!” She said, “You’ve got a new one out there.” Well, sure enough, Wayne had bought us a blue Cadillac for our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. I said, “No damn way I’m going to drive to work in a Cadillac.” I was an installer! Do you know how embarrassing it was to be seen driving a Cadillac to work? The guys really levelled stares at me over that.
When our kids were little, there was nothing out of the ordinary about our family. After Wayne was born in 1961 came Kim in 1963, Keith in 1967, Glen in 1969 and finally Brent in 1972. We were elated with each new arrival, but I must admit, I got pretty blasé about the whole maternity process by the time baby number five came along—a little too blasé, I think, in Phyllis’s opinion. You see, just before Brent was born, Wayne had a big minor hockey championship across the border. I wanted to go and see the game, but Phyllis didn’t like the idea of me being away when her due date was so close (understandably, as I appreciate now). I said, “You’re going to be all right, the baby’s not due for another couple of days.” So, off I went with Wayne to the game.
When we got home, there was no Phyllis. She was up in the hospital, having given birth to our fifth child in my absence. Phyllis remembers that when I walked into her room in the maternity ward, the first thing I said to her was, “We won, we won!” She looked at me like I was crazy and said, “It’s a boy, Walter.” I guess I have to admit that sometimes I took my devotion as a hockey dad a little too far! But of course, I welcomed my brand new son with open arms; another budding hockey player, after all.
Maybe our family was a little bigger and busier than most, but we were living a pretty typical small-town life, like all the other families around us, with dads who had regular jobs and moms who mostly did not work outside the home. Brantford was a good place to raise children. We had great neighbours, like Mary and Sil Rizzetto, whose kids grew up with ours, and who remain our friends all these years later—even though our boys put their share of pucks and balls through the Rizzettos’ bas
ement windows. Mary says you could tell the changing of the seasons by the sports equipment coming in and out of our house. Hockey might have been our favourite sport, but I encouraged my kids to get involved in other activities during the summer months. These days, it’s more common for people to get their kids out training on the ice all year long, but I always thought it was better to mix it up and give them a break. For one thing, it meant that when hockey season got going in the fall, the kids were really excited about it and motivated to train, because they’d had some time away from the rink, playing other sports. And it also meant that they weren’t sick of the sport by age thirteen from having played nothing but hockey every day.
In those early years of raising our families, it wasn’t unusual for Sil and me to borrow some money from each other back and forth, to tide us over till our paydays. We didn’t think anything of it. These are the kind of folks we came to know and trust over the years, who celebrated our kids’ successes—and I don’t mean just Wayne’s—along with us, as we did theirs. They were always there to help out when life took more challenging turns. I don’t think you can overestimate the value of people like that in your life. Just be thankful they’re around and realize they’re priceless. They are a part of the memories I treasure.
Times could be tough, money was scarce, the house was small, just a standard-issue wartime bungalow, and family life was hectic. We had to put food on the table, and there was lots of hockey gear to buy—we always made sure that, if nothing else, the kids got new skates that fit them properly.
I was known as a worrier. Ask people who knew me back then to strike a typical Wally Gretzky pose, and they’ll put one hand on their forehead, the other on their stomach and pace around like Groucho Marx (emphasis on the Grouch)—and don’t forget the cigarette constantly burning between my fingers. I admit I didn’t always eat properly, either. With my job, helping my parents at the farm and delivering all those kids to their various practices and games at any given time, not to mention my own occasional games of pick-up hockey, I can tell you that it was sometimes hard to find the time to eat. I’d just forget. There was so much to fit in.
A snapshot of the Gretzky family during the ’60s and ’70s, if you could get us to stand still long enough to pose, would show you a growing young family that loved sports and always had some kind of activity on the go, be it hockey, baseball, lacrosse or track and field. Sometimes, the kids’ hockey games would go one after another down at the arena, in order from Peewee to Bantam, so we’d be able to watch Glen, then Keith and then Wayne in one place. Other times, we would travel around to different places watching one or the other of them play. Phyllis and I would often divide that up. I think we decided pretty early on that our kids would get equal time with us as much as possible. She’d take them to early-morning practices, since I was such a night owl and didn’t like to get up, and had to go to work, anyway. And I’d go to their games.
WAYNE GRETZKY: Watching his sons play hockey was my dad’s greatest thrill in life. When I see how many activities he’s involved in now, I have to laugh and shake my head, because back then, you’d have to have a forklift to get him away from home, even for a day, if it was for something other than one of his kids’ games. He just never took a break. His forte was how hard he worked, and how he instilled that work ethic in us. Hockey tournaments were the vacations.
We loved to do it all, but it took up a lot of time and I realize now that accommodating all the family and work responsibilities put me under a lot of stress. I’m high-strung anyway. With my habit of staying up late at night, skipping meals and chain-smoking, I guess it’s no wonder that I suffered severe headaches, and ulcers too. Some nights, the pain in my head behind my right eye was so bad, I couldn’t lie down in bed. I’d just sit in a reclining chair all night, dozing and trying to battle the pain, which could at times make me literally feel sick to my stomach.
When I think about some of those terrible headaches, and knowing that the doctors who operated on me after my stroke found scar tissue in the frontal lobes, I feel there must have been swelling and even bleeding in the vessels in those days. Looking back, I know I didn’t have the healthiest lifestyle on the planet, and I certainly would not recommend it to anyone today! It was just go, go, go, all the time, without much thought of the effect all that stress was having on my physical state. It didn’t occur to me to check with a doctor about the headaches, and I see now that that was a mistake. It’s a sure sign that something could be wrong, and today, anyone with some knowledge of stroke risk would tell you to have it checked out!
No one can say for sure, but if I’d changed some of my habits back then, it’s possible I could have avoided the aneurysm. I don’t dwell on the past now, but I have to agree with something that Wayne said, and it’s kind of funny: having that aneurysm probably added years to my life. It forced me to stop smoking, eat properly, look after myself more and stop worrying so much. The fact is, I’m healthier today, all things considered, than I was back then!
Life might have been overly stretched in those days, but I think our kids have lots of happy memories of that time, as I do. In the early years, Phyllis’s sister Sandi and her husband, Marvin, used to spend almost every weekend at our place, and we enjoyed their company. (Kim remains particularly close to her Aunt Sandi.) We also saw my brother Albert and his family, and kept in touch with my sister Jennie, even though she and her family lived in North Carolina. On holidays, we’d sometimes drive down there (and you can imagine what it was like with the Blue Goose loaded with five kids on a fourteen-hour journey—no wonder I had headaches), or Jennie and her husband, Paul, and their three kids, Kenny, Donna and Danny, would come here. Those were good times. The kids had the run of a big country property with their cousins in the south, and, of course, up here there was the old place in Canning, where they could swim and run around outside all day. I really enjoyed those times myself, taking the kids fishing, showing them how to drive a tractor. My nieces and nephews took to calling me “Big Wally,” and I still get that to this day. I know they had a lot of fun playing with my kids.
Kenny, who is just a couple of years older than Wayne, grew up to be a fighter pilot with the U.S. Marine Corps; we were so proud of him when he became a member of the famous Blue Angels flying squad. When he served in the Gulf War back in 1990, Wayne was so concerned about him, he stuck an American flag logo and Kenny’s initials on his L.A. Kings hockey helmet and decided to keep them there until his cousin got home. We all prayed he’d come back safely, and thankfully, he did. He lives in Dallas now, and he and Wayne are still close. We’ve been to visit Kenny a few times. I know Wayne also remains very fond of his Aunt Jennie and sees her home in North Carolina as a place he can go and be himself with his closest relatives, away from all the celebrity limelight, which can be difficult at times. I’m glad he has that, and that all the kids have that place and those people in their memories and in their hearts. This is what really matters in life.
People tell me I could be pretty serious and intense before my stroke, much quieter than I am now. My kids say I expected a lot of them, and that is true; ours was definitely a “wait until your father gets home” kind of household. I didn’t hesitate to let them know when their behaviour or attitude did not measure up. “You didn’t want to disappoint Dad,” is how my daughter, Kim, puts it, though she says in hindsight that that was okay. I don’t think I was too harsh, but I did try to instill in them a sense that working hard is a good thing, and that if you have a talent, it’s almost as though you have a duty to develop it, and not waste it. Also, I very much wanted all of my kids to have a sense of self-respect and to respect others. I think you get that from working to the best of your abilities and helping others, too. That’s how I wanted them to conduct themselves, always.
It boils down to self-discipline. As a parent, I think you have to help your kids develop that. Sometimes they didn’t like the rules we laid down, but I hope the rules helped them achieve goals in the long
-run. For instance, I was strict about proper eating and early bedtimes before important games, and I never wavered from that rule. I remember young Brent being terribly disappointed when I wouldn’t let him attend an important game of Wayne’s one Saturday night at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, because he had a hockey game of his own on Sunday. I just said, “You can’t be up that late, you’ve got a game tomorrow … No, if you want to play hockey, then the night before, you’re in bed early.” There was no question in my mind, and the rule would have been the same if Wayne had a game the next day; he’d be in bed at a decent time. It was a ritual. I taught all the kids to pull their weight and not be a drag on the team.
Another thing I always told them: Listen to your coach! I’d teach them stuff in the backyard, and I might have had my own ideas sometimes about what would be the best thing to do out on the ice, but I was determined not to interfere. I didn’t believe in hanging around during practices. It boils down to respect, once again.
My point, always, was that if you are going to do something, make sure you’re focused, and do it right. I remember Glen coming home one time and saying to me, “Dad, I’m going to be an umpire this summer.” I said, “You’ll get that rule book, and you’ll know every word in it, or you’re not doing a thing.” Well, that started it! Glen would be cocky and say, “Got the book right here, Dad, ask me anything you want.” And I would start asking him all these complicated questions about the rules and what calls he’d have to make in various situations during a game. I really pushed him, and I was serious when I said, “If you don’t know it, you’re not doing it.” Glen mastered that rule book.
On Family, Hockey and Healing Page 4