'Mr. Hockey left the world with no regrets'
— Son Murray Howe, at Wednesday’s funeral
DETROIT— In the hour before Gordie Howe’s funeral on Wednesday, a reporter asked Guy Lafleur, one of the many hall of famers streaming into the mass, if any special measures will be required to preserve Howe’s legacy.
Lafleur surveyed the bubbling scene and laughed a little, as if to say, “Um, no.” A day after thousands had lined up around the block to pay their respects to Mr. Hockey at Joe Louis Arena, the man known as Mr. Hockey was soon to be memorialized in a grand cathedral surrounded by TV trucks and mounted police and mourners who came by the busload. Makeshift TV studios had been erected across the street. Michigan’s governor, Detroit’s mayor, the NHL’s commissioner — they’d all be in attendance. Ditto a phalanx of the game’s greats, among them Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr, Johnny Bower, Steve Yzerman, Chris Chelios and Frank Mahovlich.
So Howe’s legacy as a peerless, fearless competitor — a six-time MVP and a four-time Stanley Cup champion who played in five decades — had certainly been treated with reverence since he died on Friday at age 88. And as for the future? As Murray Howe, one of Gordie’s four children, pointed out in a moving and eloquent eulogy, there will be plenty to remember him by for years to come.
There’ve been books and a TV movie written about Gordie Howe. There are at least two bronze statues depicting him. There are schools, parks and arenas named after him. NHL players, to this day, celebrate a Gordie Howe hat trick — a goal, an assist and a fight — even if Howe is only on record as having two. NHL dressing rooms are still stocked with the occasional roll of Gordie Howe tape — sticky on both sides, as the man preferred it.
Come 2020 it’s expected there’ll be a new bridge linking Howe’s adopted homeland and country of birth — the Gordie Howe International Bridge between Detroit and Windsor.
“Even kids are named after him — half of Saskatoon,” Murray Howe quipped.
If those kids tuned in to Wednesday’s proceedings, they would have heard their namesake remembered by Murray as a doting father and an “eternally positive” human being, always with a smile on his face and a song on his lips.
“I never heard him complain about anything, ever,” Murray said. Though Mr. Hockey embodied Canada, he wouldn’t even partake in the great national tradition of grousing about meteorology.
“He always said there was no such thing as cold weather, only cold clothing,” Murray said.
The picture of Howe as a genteel family man, as a ham around children, as a chivalrous knight who would hold doors for women and shovel neighbours’ driveways — it ran counter to an on-ice reputation for infamous meanness.
"Dad always said, ‘If it’s not fun, it’s time to do something else.’ So we filled his final days, surrounding him with friends and family, and he knew he was loved. Mr. Hockey left the world with no regrets. And although he did not lead the league in church attendance, his life has been the epitome of a faithful servant." FROM MURRAY HOWE’S EULOGY FOR MR. HOCKEY, GORDIE HOWE
As Jim Proudfoot, the great Star columnist who saw Howe in his prime, once wrote, Howe’s latterdays image as a smiling senior citizen made it “difficult to remember what a miserable cuss he used to be.”
“His skills were immense, yes. But he was capable of such violence that most of his opponents feared him,” Proudfoot wrote. “He routinely hurt people. He wasn’t a likable rascal in those days; he was a menace.”
On Wednesday, Lafleur laughed about how, even in a charity oldtimers’ game played many years ago against a team made up of officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Howe found an occasion to deliver a retaliatory elbow to the head of an opponent who’d overstepped some boundary or another. With the Mountie splayed senseless on the ice, Howe turned to his teammates and smiled.
“Gordie said, ‘That’s what all the people came to see tonight,’ ” Lafleur recalled with a smile.
If Howe had an animalistic streak — and if his natural strength was such that he could, by Murray’s recollection, crack lobster claws with his bare fingers — he was a teddy bear away from the rink. When son Mark asked him why he would pre-autograph thousands of photos to prepare for personal appearances, Howe had an answer: “It gives me more time with the people,” he explained.
Gretzky, who once idolized Howe as a hero and grew to become his friend, said he always marvelled at Howe’s easiness amid the adoring throngs.
“He never tried to hide. He never went in back ways. He never sat in the pressbox. He never sat in a suite,” Gretzky said. “He sat in the stands with the fans. He was a genuine person.”
“He was just a nice man,” Yzerman told reporters on Tuesday. “For someone, one of the best athletes in the world at the time — one of the best hockey players, two or three, to ever play — to be that humble and polite and respectful, it was good for us all to learn from.”
If he lived a good example, he occasionally doled out good advice. Lafleur, recalling his time alongside Howe at an NHL all-star game, said he’ll never forget Howe’s words of wisdom, even if they were delivered nearly 40 years ago.
“He said to me, ‘You’ll see. Your career’s going to go by very quick. So better enjoy it now,’ ” Lafleur said.
It goes by quickly, no doubt. Gordie Howe was felled by a stroke in 2014, an illness so grave that Murray felt compelled to write a eulogy. Stemcell treatment and an indomitable will provided what Murray called “a victory lap” that lasted a year and a half, saw Gordie attend a memorable banquet in hometown Saskatoon, saw Gordie slow dance at a granddaughter’s wedding last sum- mer. As dying day approached, Murray Howe said he asked his father what words he’d like said at his funeral.
“I hope there’s a good hockey team in heaven,” was a request.
As the cathedral’s rector suggested before the casket left the church and a giant legacy was left behind, the angels of the hereafter ought to be on the imminent lookout for a wellsharpened elbow coming their way.