Captain of 1960 gold medal U.S. team dies at 88

John “Jack” Kirrane Jr., the captain of the U.S. hockey team that won the gold medal at the 1960 Winter Olympics, has died. He was 88.

The Brookline, Massachusetts, native died Sunday at a Quincy care facility of complications of Alzheimer’s disease, said his son, John P. Kirrane.

Kirrane first played for the Olympic hockey team in 1948 at age 17. At the 1960 Squaw Valley Games, the 31-year-old defenseman led a squad of mostly college players to upsets of Canada and the Soviet Union before beating Czechoslovakia for the gold.

His son was 5 years old at the time but clearly remembers the excitement as the whole family yelled and screamed around a small black and white television to watch the game.

The gold medal was always somewhere around the house when he was growing up, but the younger Kirrane said his father was forever humble about the achievement.