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Condolences go out to Flyers forward Eric Wellwood and brother Kyle on the loss of their 91-year-old grandfather, Harold. The Windsor Star reports that Mr. Wellwood passed away on Thursday.
According to the Windsor Star's eloquently written obituary by Mary Caton, Mr. Wellwood was the type of grandfather that everyone would love to have.
Both Wellwood brothers, but especially the elder Kyle, were extremely close with their grandpa. Each winter, Harold would make his grandsons a backyard hockey rink, complete with boards. He attended all of their midget and junior hockey games until his health began to falter, and then watched every game on television.
In the summertime, Mr. Wellwood set aside space on the family farm to build a Field of Dreams like baseball diamond for his children and, later, for his grandkids and their friends. He also created a homemade nine-hole mini-golf course.
Mr. Wellwood played hockey and baseball in his own youth, and was later a local youth hockey organizer and board member. He was also a volunteer youth basketball coach and referee, as well as a tennis teacher. Apart from his lifelong passion for sports, he loved dogs, and was a breeder of international show dog collies.
Last Sunday, the extended Wellwood clan -- Harold had seven children (five daughters, two sons), as well as numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren -- assembled in Oddcastle, Ontario, to celebrate the patriach's 91st birthday. On Thursday, he died in sleep.
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FLYERS LANDMARKS: Rexy's Restaurant and Bar, Mt. Ephraim, NJ
No discussion of the Broad Street Bully era Flyers is complete without mentioning their favorite postgame and off-night hangout, Rexy's Restaurant and Bar in Mt. Ephraim. From the time of the team's creation in 1967 until the 1980s, but especially in the mid-1970s, virtually the entire team hung out together at Rexy's whenever they were not playing on the road.
Ask any member of the 1970s-era Flyers their favorite stories from Rexy's and you will get an array of colorful tales -- some unsuitable for print -- that almost sound too wild to be true. While there may have been a bit of creative license taken (i.e. embellishments) over the years, the stories are absolutely true in spirit, if not in exact detail.
Example: One time on a whim, Barry Ashbee lit teammate "Cowboy" Bill Flett's bushy beard on fire with a cigarette lighter as teammates and a reporter sat around. Flett quickly snuffed out the flame, dipped his beard in his mug of beer (apparently to cool off) and then downed the rest of the beer in one long gulp. Impressed that the Cowboy never even flinched, Ashbee announced the next round was on him.
Everyone laughed uproariously except the horrified reporter, who got up and left after telling them they were all insane. That provoked even more laughter. Such was life around the Broad Street Bullies. They could be as rowdy off the ice as they were on the ice, and they had a real good time.
When the Flyers won their first Stanley Cup on the afternoon of May 19, 1974, the overflow crowd of local celebrants waiting for the team at Rexy's was so overwhelming that the joyful situation had the potential to become dangerous in a hurry. Owner Pat Fietto wisely opted to close down for the night.
The Flyers players had to move their Cup-winning postgame get-together to another bar a few miles away, Compton's Log Cabin (which no longer exists).
During the second round of the 1975 Stanley Cup playoffs, the defending champion Flyers played the New York Islanders in the semifinals. Philly built a three-games-to-none lead in the series, only to see the Islanders (who had come back from a 3-0 series deficit in the first round to beat Pittsburgh) come back to win the next three games.
On May 11, 1975, the same night that the Flyers dropped a 2-1 decision in Long Island to force a seventh game of the series, much of Rexy's was destroyed in a fire. Upon learning of the fire, the Flyers were in mourning. The next day at practice, the players wore black armbands on their jerseys. The following night, the Flyers went out and cruised to a 4-1 win at the Spectrum to close out the series.
In the postgame locker room, the players cracked open their beers (it would not be until immediately after the death of Pelle Lindbergh ten years later that the Flyers and other NHL teams stopped providing postgame beer in the locker room). Bob "the Hound" Kelly proposed a toast to Rexy's, and the players clinked cans.
Rexy's was repaired and reopened. The Flyers players returned. But as the years rolled on, a younger generation of Flyers found other preferred hangouts. The young Flyers of the mid-1980s -- the last group of Flyers who often socialized en masse rather than going off their separate ways in small groups -- were regulars Kaminsky's Bar and Grill in Cherry Hill, the after-hours bar at the Coliseum rink in Voorhees and a local Bennigans. Even today, some of the current Flyers are Kaminski's patrons.
Nevertheless, many of the old-time Flyers who settled permanently in South Jersey or the Philadelphia suburbs remained loyal to Rexy's. As the years passed, they would take their families there for Sunday brunches or for the occasional dinner. Once in awhile, the Flyers Alumni would have some get-togethers at the old hangout.
In 2009, after 66 years of family ownership of the business, Pat Fietto sold Rexy's to a new owner. It is still in operation today, at 700 Black Horse Pike in Mt. Ephraim, replete with Flyers memorabilia given to Fietto by members of the team or by longtime Flyers PR man Joe Kadlec.
Named after the lead character, Professor Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin, from a J. E. Preston Muddock novel entitled The Sunless City, the small mining town of Flin Flon, Manitoba was founded in 1927 by Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Company. The town's creation came about as the result of the discovery of exceptionally large deposits of copper and zinc ore in the region.
As legend has it, famed prospector Tom Creighton, who found gold in western Canada, happened upon a discarded copy of the book in the Canadian wilderness and carried it with him on his ultimately successful exploration. He named the site of his discovery "Flin Flon". In the book, Flintabbatey Flonatin, discovers a strange underground world lined with gold.
The dream of riches brought impoverished farmers from Saskatchewan and Manitoba to leave their farms and work in the mines of what grew into a small town (population 5,592 as of 2011). For most of the males in the town, life revolved around two things -- working long hours in the mines and, for recreation, playing hockey.
The local hockey team, the Flin Flon Bombers, was founded in 1927. Now a club in the Junior A-level Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League, the Bombers were once a force in Canadian junior hockey, winning the Memorial Cup in 1957 and remaining a strong team in western Canadian junior hockey for many years.
The Flin Flon team's golden era (pun intended) spanned the late 1960s to early 1970s, when the team won the MJHL title in 1966-67 and then captured the WCHL championship in back-to-back seasons (1968-69 and 1969-70). The coach in those years was the late Pat Ginnell, who later became a scout for the St. Louis Blues.
The star players for the Bombers: A diabetic Flin Flon boy by the name of Bobby Clarke (son of local mine worker, Cliff) and his linemate, a half-Cree teenager from Riverton, Manitoba, by the name of Reggie Leach. In those days, Clarke wore #11 and Leach was #9. Both numbers were later retired by the Bombers.
Whenever the Bombers played a home game in those days, the stands at Whitney Forum would be packed with the players' parents, friends and just about everyone else who lived in or near Flin Flon. Built in 1958, the rink is still in use by the Bombers to this day.
It has often been said that places shape people as much as people shape places, and Clarke has always been a Flin Flon boy at heart, embodying the values his father taught him. Bob Clarke has always been hard-working and unassuming but also fiercely (even sometimes ruthlessly) competitive. He put his team first, and loyalty to one's employer was given unequivocally. It wasn't so much that Clarke loved winning, but he regarded losing as a fate worse than death.
For both Leach and Clarke, hockey was a ticket out of lives of drudgery. Clarke, a bright young man but a poor student who dropped out after the ninth grade, spent every possible hour at Whitney Forum or playing hockey outdoors. He had no use for school and no interest in spending his life working in the mines.
The young Clarke wasn't even especially covetous of playing in the National Hockey League; he only cared about the next game. It wasn't until shortly before the 1969 Draft that he realized he might be able to have a pro hockey career.
Clarke at least came from a stable, working-class home. Leach came from a broken home and a life of poverty. Born in 1950 to unmarried teenage parents, Reggie Leach never really knew his father, who went off to work in the mines before he was born. His Cree mother soon left, too, moving off to start a new life in Edmonton.
Leach was raised by his paternal grandparents, along with twelve of their own children. They were extremely poor and the poverty was exacerbated by rampant drinking. Several members of the household died alcohol-related deaths.
As with Clarke, Leach was a poor student in school and found his salvation in playing hockey. Using borrowed equipment, Leach spent hour after hour playing hockey. When he wasn't in an organized game, he'd go off on his own to skate and shoot.
At the age of 13, Leach was recruited to play with adults on a semi-pro club. News of the talented youngster's abilities spread quickly. Leach soon joined the Bombers, who had become the top junior club in Manitoba by that time. He and Clarke developed a friendship off the ice as well as their incredible chemistry on the ice.
Clarke was drafted seventeenth overall by the Philadelphia Flyers in 1969, while Leach, a year Clarke's junior, went third overall to the Boston Bruins in 1970. Four years later, the defending Stanley Cup champion Flyers acquired Leach from the California Seals and placed him on Clarke's line, along with Bill Barber. The rest was history.
If you want to visit the hockey arena where Clarke and Leach got their start and see the current-day version of the Bombers play, the team's 2012-13 schedule can be accessed by clicking here.
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Speaking of Leach and Hockey Hall of Fame members Clarke and Barber, if you want to meet all three members of the LCB line simultaneously, there will be an opportunity on Sept. 11. The three men will appear together from 6-8 PM at Carl's Cards in Havertown, PA.
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