From cross-checks to crosswalks
Howie Glover, who played in the NHL with Gordie Howe, is Mr. Hockey to the children he escorts to school every day
KITCHENER— Howie Glover, 82, raised his stop sign with his left hand and grinned.
All around him, cars obediently came to a halt in front of Saint John Paul II Catholic elementary school.
Glover’s lime-green crossing guard’s vest gave him the power he never had as a fresh-faced NHL greenhorn 57 years ago.
Musty memories from the Motor City raced through his mind as school kids walked by and smiled.
The first day of training camp in 1960.
The ice was soft and the lighting was hazy inside the towering Olympia, the Old Red Barn where the Detroit Red Wings wheeled at practice.
Along the boards, the great Gordie Howe was grinding down on Glover, a wannabe Wings winger and former Kitchener Greenshirts junior with only 13 NHL games for Chicago under his belt.
Glover, a Toronto boy from a Don Valley family of 10 kids, was used to heavy traffic.
But Glover had no stop sign to hold up at the corner of Grand River and McGraw Aves. Even if he did, Howe would have driven right through and belted him.
It didn’t matter that Glover’s older brother, Fred, was a former teammate of Howe’s. Howe zeroed in on Howie with No. 9’s trademark ferocity. “He welcomed me with an elbow in the chops,” Glover said with a laugh.
“As soon as I went behind the net, checking with him, all of a sudden — Bang! ‘Oh, jeezus. Gotta be Gordie.’ Howe looked at me and said, ‘Welcome to the league, kid.’ ” And welcome to school, kids. Glover, a school crossing guard in Kitchener, Ont., for 19 years, has left the cross-checks of his goal-scoring youth behind for daily crosswalk duty in his golden years.
He scored 21 goals as a Wings newbie before blowing out his right knee in Toronto the next year. For15 years, he skated as a pro with shorter NHL stops in Chicago, New York and Montreal, before settling down in Ohio.
“You can retire from it, but you don’t forget it,” said Glover, a member of the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame for his six seasons starring with the AHL’s Cleveland Barons.
“The times you played junior, the times you played minor pro, the times you played the big pros — they are totally in your head all the time.”
But memories must submit to reality. Life is not all flying elbows and hat tricks.
After hockey, Glover ran a rink in Parma, Ohio. He worked at a rifle factory, after returning to Kitchener in 1985 with Janet, his wife of 62 years.
A year after retiring from a company that specialized in clean-fuel control systems, he became uneasy with idleness. His kids — Michael, Lynn and Sharon — were grown. He spoke with some crossing guards who liked the gig. So, he signed up. His motivation? It certainly wasn’t the pocket-change pay.
“I wanted to get out of the house,” Glover said.
Two decades later, he still chats up the youngsters just like he talks to his nine grandkids and soon-to-be-four great-grandkids.
What does Glover enjoy about be- ing a crossing guard?
“Getting along with all the kids. Talking to them. Joking with them. If I know they’re playing sports, I ask them how they’re doing.”
The schools change, but Glover’s rapport with kids and their parents is constant.
One of his former crossing-guard kids, David Horne, helped coach high school hockey last season at Huron Heights.
Glover was a regular at those Huron Heights games and even helped coach the team.
But 14 years ago, Horne was a kid with behaviour issues who was befriended by Glover.
“Howie just has a big heart,” said the 26-year-old Horne, now a child and youth worker.
“He wants to reach out to every kid. He could have given me no time of day, but he always made sure that every day he said, ‘Hello, how are you?’ And the eye contact. Not just a simple hello. It was a genuine feeling you get. You shake his hand and you feel this connection, because you feel like he actually cares about who you are. You don’t get that with a lot of people these days.”
For the past few years, Glover’s morning and afternoon crossing-guard duties have been in front of John Paul. Some of the kids he sees there play minor atom hockey for Kitchener.
Since September, Howie and Janet — the St. Mary’s high school girl that Greenshirts teammate Ivan Tennant asked Glover to escort home one day after practice — have gone to their weekend home games to cheer those kids on.
Glover is an Original Six-era guest of honour.
“He’s more than just a smiling face in the morning at the crosswalk,” said Amanda Leite, whose goalie-son Aiden plays for the atom team and crosses Pebblecreek Dr. with Glover’s help each school day. “He’s really become part of our lives.”
Glover is also a living link to hockey’s moth-eaten, wooden-stick past.
These kids only know of players earning $8-million salaries. Glover’s best puck-chasing year made him $8,000. Glover can tell tall tales of Howe and Rocket Richard and Jean Béliveau.
Richard was a “fireball,” but a “hell of a nice guy,” he said.
Béliveau, a “quiet guy,” was once Glover’s training camp pivot in Montreal.
“He could really stickhandle,” Glover said of Béliveau. “He could put the puck in your back pocket and pull it out again.”
And what of Glover? He could put the puck in the net, too.
In the old Montreal Forum nearly six decades ago, he hit 20 goals on his first tour with the Red Wings. Little Charlie Hodge was the goalie. Glover was ragging the puck at centre ice on the penalty kill. No Montreal players approached him.
Howe’s advice echoed in Glover’s ears, the same ones Howe once elbowed.
“You’ve got to loosen up, kid,” Howe had told him. “If you see something, even if you’re not in range of the goal, let it go.” So Glover fired a long slap shot. “Hodge didn’t even move,” Glover said. “It was in the net.”
Janet still works as an office manager. Howie, who turns 83 on Valentine’s Day, aims to carry on as a crossing guard.
“Until I wear out,” he said.