Although not entirely unexpected, as the news began to quietly circulate in the Flyers' pressbox just before the game with the Los Angels Kings here last night that "Mr. Hockey", Gordie Howe, had suffered a serious stroke it was still shocking news for all of us. I had seen Gordie fairly frequently in recent years as he attended Flyer games from time to time while staying with his son, Mark, a long time friend, a Hall of Famer like Gordie, and Director of Pro Scouting for the Red Wings. In the last several years, however, Gordie, now 86, has been suffering from slowly increasing dementia which had gotten noticeably more pronounced in the past year.
Last August Mark had emailed me a fairly detailed account of Gordie's failing health and what he had been told to expect in the weeks to come. “Dad arrived to NJ July 8th and was not in very good shape physically or mentally compared to last year,” Mark wrote me. “He gets around but barely. Speech and memory have really gotten bad and I am sure the constant back pain and medications don't help the cause. I think this may be Dad’s final stop is what its starting to look like unless there is a remarkable recovery. I am trying to extract a few more decent days out of Dad before it is all gone. Put it this way, he hasn't known my name for over 3 weeks now. This sucks for sure, but it is part of life as we all know. Better days ahead I pray."
Mark and Gordie Howe in 1985
As the new season approached, however, Mark had to go back to work scouting for the Red Wings so Gordie left Mark’s home in Jackson, NJ, for Lubbock, Texas to stay with Mark's sister Cathy, Gordie's only daughter. When I saw Mark briefly on Saturday evening at the Red Wings' game against the Flyers, he told me that he would be back for the Flyers/Kings game here last night and would fill me in on how Gordie was doing. Just a few hours later, however, Gordie suffered his major stroke early on Sunday morning. When Mark didn't show up last night and news of Gordie's stroke began to circulate in the pressbox I figured that he had gone to Texas instead to be with his dad. The rest of the family is joining him there.
Ironically a couple of years ago, Mark asked me to digitally restore almost 200 family photographs that he had found among his mother's possessions when she passed away in 2009 and had scanned which I was thrilled and honored to do. I am now even more humbled to learn that many of these same photographs are now on a memory stick that has been playing on a television for Gordie to watch. "He's watching all these pictures of he and my mom and us when we were little," his son Murray, a physician in Toledo, OH, told the Detroit Free Press yesterday. "Just trying to make it as pleasant as possible for him."
I first saw Gordie Howe play in person at the Spectrum against the Flyers in 1970 while he was a member of the Red Wings. I later watched him play in the WHA with Mark and Marty, and finally with the Hartford Whalers back in the NHL in 1979-80 appearing in all 80 games at age 52. The first time I actually met him was in 1977 while he was with the WHA Whalers before he played in a preseason exhibition game against the NHL Washington Capitals at Hersheypark Arena where the Caps were training. After that I got to know him personally pretty well and he even called me at home once out of the blue just to chat even though I had never given him my number. In the years since I have introduced many others (including Eklund) to Gordie in the Flyers’ pressroom and pressbox and he has not only always been unfailingly gracious and generous with his time, but treats everyone as an equal.
With my long time friends Gordie and Mark Howe in the Flyers’ pressbox in 2012
Three years ago, for instance, I introduced two young friends of mine to Gordie one of whom, a talented young actor named Matt Nadu, had recently been cast as a hockey player in an independent movie. Gordie spent twenty minutes with Matt giving him advice on how to hold and manipulate a hockey stick convincingly. With Matt was also a young hockey blogger friend of mine, Shay Roddy, who I have been mentoring for several years and is now a junior at Arizona State University. The almost half an hour Gordie spent with these two young men whom he had never met before and generosity and graciousness with which he treated Matt and Shay will live with them forever as it has with the countless thousands of others whose lives Gordie has touched except, of course, for opposing players while on the ice who will remember him for other kinds of "treatment".
I last saw Gordie late last season when he was again here at a Flyers game with Mark, and as every time I had been with him in the past I was again struck and reminded by our encounter with what Mark has said many times to me and others: “Dad has always been a much better person than he ever was a hockey player.”
And Gordie was, of course, not only a
spectacular hockey player, but the best of all time.
So all the best to you Gordie, my friend. You have given
so much to
so many for
so long. May your remaining days be comfortable ones in the company of your family. In the meantime your extended world wide hockey family is thinking of you today -- and will continue to do so forever.
ADDED NOTE: I received the following email from Mark a few minutes after posting this blog:
"Thanks Scoop. This will be a challenge for him as he suffered a bad stroke. Some positive signs yesterday but speech and left side of his body are really bad. Trying to keep his spirits up and he was good when we got here last night. Difficult again today. Long road ahead for sure." 
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