Chapter 120
4/24/2006
Ch 120 American Idol Legend Lives
It’s not often that you get to meet your idol and beat his National Championship team at the same time. My Adirondack Silverbacks team did that 3-1 last weekend in Syracuse to Bill Wellington’s Maryland Geri Hatricks. Prior to the game, before the Zamboni had even finished preparing the ice, I was asking his teammates where Captain Bill was. He was already across the ice sitting by himself on the players bench. Meeting this friendly legendary old man, now 84, was a pleasure. I told him my Dad had also been a flyer in WW2 but had passed away a few years back. He seemed genuinely sorry for that. Knowing he’d had both hips replaced, I said I’d try not to knock him down. He said, “Oh, that’s OK”. I guess that succinctly sums up Bill’s approach to living his life. Bill is A Great One. Not a great hockey player, but a great person playing hockey. When I start to think of doing that at 84, or doing anything at 84, I just can’t put it into words….it’s just amazing. I know his memory was good too, as he asked if I was related to the 1950’s NHL Hall of Famer, Bert Olmsted (not that I know of).
My Japanese teammate, Tusukaa Kidachi, who we call Koz, short for his Kamikazi like forechecking, scored our second goal. I didn’t think about it till after but it was the Japanese, who were trying to shoot Bill down over Burma, but Bill would take no offense to that and shakes his hand warmly after the game. Perhaps I was inspired too, as I picked up the other two goals for our team.
Dino BBQ, beer in every locker room and some Polish music helped make this a very memorable event. We also beat the Mass team although we got really drubbed by the undefeated first place Buffalo Old Boys. Our only other scorer this weekend was Quebec native Gilles Gauthier.
Aside: This same week I played in a scrimmage game with a couple of 11 year old boys and an 11 year old girl who had near adult skills. No, it’s not Olympic level competition I play in, but it is a fun and rewarding experience.
Copied below a two year old article from the Catholic University of America website.
The Geri-Hatricks Win it All!
By Warren Duffie
Bill Wellington still remembers his emotions as he received his gold medal in ice hockey at the 2000 National Senior Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y. He was 79 years old at the time, and, then as now, was a captain of his team.
“When I heard the national anthem, I kind of got a lump in my throat,” Wellington says. “To be in that same stadium where the ‘Miracle on Ice’ occurred [in 1980], and to win a gold medal there, sent chills up my spine.”
Standing with his senior-citizen teammates on the winner’s podium, the CUA alumnus recalled how 20 years earlier, in one of the greatest upsets in sports history, an upstart U.S. hockey team defeated the vaunted Soviet team (and later the Finnish team) to win the gold medal in the 1980 Olympics.
Wellington could savor his achievement even more because he had contributed to his team’s triumph in the national senior championship by scoring an important goal. During the gold medal game against a Boston squad, a teammate smashed a shot toward the net. The puck bounced off the rim of the goal, and Wellington sped over and deftly tipped it in for the score. The victory followed wins over teams from New York, Michigan and Massachusetts.
That goal was perhaps his greatest moment as a captain of the Geri-Hatricks, a team of Washington, D.C.-area men aged 60 and older that Wellington founded two decades ago. The team has around 40 members and meets twice a week for three-hour scrimmages at the Ice Gardens rink in Laurel, Md. “The meetings are very informal,” says Wellington, who, as the oldest player at 82, is jokingly called a “great-great-great grandfather.” “Players rotate out of the games whenever they’re tired or too sore.”
Old Guys Getting Rough
Although the skating is slower and the contact gentler than in the pros, it’s still hockey, and injuries occur. Knocked-out teeth, facial scars and black eyes are common. Wellington recalls one incident a couple of years ago when a teammate tripped and landed head first on the ice, shattering his helmet. The man was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where he was diagnosed with a severe concussion. He would have died had a hole not been drilled into his head to relieve cranial pressure.
Wellington himself thought he would have to give up playing in 1995 when he found out he would need both hips replaced.
“All those years of skating had worn down the cartilage in my hips,” he says. “Thankfully, I found [Bethesda, Md., orthopedic surgeon] Dr. J. Patrick Caulfield. He operated on me in 1996 and 1998 and saved my hockey career.” The surgery led to some great press for the team, as it was featured in a national television commercial for the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons.
Wellington, who earned a CUA master’s degree in economics in 1951, formed the team after he turned 62 in 1983. “At first, I was unsure about what to call the team,” he remembers. “Then one day as I was walking my dog, I asked myself, ‘How can I get a bunch of geriatrics to play together?’ That’s when the name hit me.” The team’s name is a combination of “geriatrics” and “hat trick,” the latter term denoting the rare feat of one hockey player scoring three goals in a game. The team logo is similar to the one used by the San Jose Sharks of the National Hockey League, but instead of a fearsome shark biting a hockey stick in two, a pair of dentures does the trick.
Hockey Dreams, Wartime Casualties
Born in 1921, Wellington — who normally plays center or left wing — has followed hockey for more than 75 years. A native of Detroit, he and his friends would glide on frozen ponds and canals near their homes, playing in the biting cold after school and on weekends. This was no-frills hockey. Wellington and his buddies grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood during the Depression. They used hand-me-down skates, padding themselves with layers of bulging sweaters and socks and using thick department store catalogs as shin guards. Hockey sticks also were treasured possessions, the CUA alumnus says. If a stick broke, both halves were taped together or attached to a connecting block of wood.
As they grew up, Wellington and his friends also played in Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, hockey leagues.
One Sunday afternoon in December 1941, Wellington and a group of friends stopped at a gas station on the way to a scrimmage, and the attendant told them that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. Soon, all of Wellington’s friends were in the military. For his part, he entered Army Air Corps pilot training and was sent to Burma to support the British 14th Army fighting the Japanese there. The young pilot’s mission was to fly to the jungle battlefront to retrieve wounded soldiers. Japanese soldiers often shot at his plane as he landed and took off.
“We flew light planes and would land on small grass strips right near the battle lines,” he says. “It got a bit hairy at times, to say the least. But it was the most satisfying thing I’ve ever done because I was helping to save lives. I named my plane ‘Mary’s Mission’ because I figured the Blessed Virgin would bless my missions, which I dedicated to her.”
When World War II ended, Wellington finished up a bachelor’s degree in economics and — having heard of CUA’s excellent economics department — decided to come to Brookland for his master’s. At CUA he also met his future wife, nursing undergraduate Gloria Green. Wellington went on to work as an economist with the CIA for nearly 20 years, and he and Gloria raised six children.
A Passion Renewed
The Silver Spring, Md., resident returned to hockey in the late 1960s when he coached two of his sons. Soon, he and some other coaches formed a local team and in the 1970s formed the Capital Hockey League, which still exists today, fielding six teams of men and women ages 30 and older. Wellington also continues to play in that league two to three times a week. (Massachusetts senator and presidential candidate John Kerry plays in the league as well.)
When Wellington started the Geri-Hatricks, there were no other D.C.-area teams composed of senior citizens (nor are there any now, he believes). So the squad played college teams (men’s and women’s), firehouse teams and local hockey clubs. When the National Senior Olympics began taking place annually in the late 1990s, the team jumped at the chance to compete. Playing against younger squads for so many years had made the team’s game crisp and precise and its shooting powerful and accurate. Aside from the gold and bronze medals in the 2000 and 2002 Senior Olympics, respectively, the team also has finished among the top contenders in state-level tournaments in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware.
“There are probably two people older than Bill who still play ice hockey,” says John Buchleitner, 67, a fellow Geri-Hatrick. “Despite his infirmities, he still plays a very active game and is always trying to improve. He’s respected and admired by the hockey community here and across the country.”
Wellington has no plans to give up hockey. After all, the games make for great times and camaraderie. When asked if he sees the Geri-Hatricks as a way to dispel the notion that the elderly can’t play sports, he drawls out a long “Naaaah. We’re just a bunch of guys who love to play hockey. Playing sports is a great way to stay fit and keep yourself mentally and physically young.”