The Secret’s Out: O’Ree Broke Color Barrier Half Blind

The first black hockey player in NHL history was crushing my hand. He didn’t know his own strength.

Now THAT’S a hockey player’s grip, I thought. Strong. Firm. Bone-crunching, if you didn’t get your hand in there just right.

Willie O’Ree is 72, fit as a fiddle, and prancing around the country, playing pied piper for North America’s disadvantaged youth, hoping they’ll follow him into the world of ice hockey.

And he’s doing it all with one good eye. In fact, he did EVERYTHING in his hockey career with one good eye.

“I had an accident in my late teens, when a slap shot hit me in the right eye. I ended up losing about 95% of the vision in that eye,” O’Ree tells me. We’re sitting in a hotel in Detroit, he and I, in between one of O’Ree’s many appearances in town a few weeks back. It’s another leg of his pied piper tour. And there, in the quiet before the hotel lounge’s evening storm, he regales me with a story that he kept secret from his teammates, his coaches, everyone.

“I was a left winger and a left-handed shot, so because I couldn’t see out of my right eye, I had to completely turn my head to the right. But I decided to concentrate on what I COULD see instead of what I couldn’t see, and I only told two people about my eye: my youngest sister, and my best friend. I swore them to secrecy, because I was afraid if anyone found out they wouldn’t let me play again... the truth was that I was blind in my right eye.”

So there you have it. The “Jackie Robinson of Hockey” played with one good eye. And no one ever knew about it – except his sister and best friend. How could he have kept such a thing hidden?

“I never took an eye exam for any of the eleven professional teams I played for.”

Oh.

Willie O’Ree might be the Jackie Robinson of Hockey – he says the media dubbed him that – but his NHL debut was about as heralded as that of a little-known rookie called up from the Quebec Aces playing in just another regular season game in January. Which is what O’Ree was, and that’s exactly how it went down.

O'Ree, as a Bruin

“On January 18, 1958, the (Boston) Bruins contacted the Aces and said they wanted me to join the team in Montreal for their next game against the Canadiens,” O’Ree recalls. “Prior to that, to the Montreal fans I was just Willie O’Ree of the Quebec Aces. The big write up was that we beat the Canadiens, 3-0 – not that I broke any sort of color barrier or anything. I traveled with the team to Boston and Montreal beat us, 6-2. Then I was returned to Quebec to finish the season.”

O’Ree came back up during the 1960-61 season, when he played 43 games. It was his only NHL season. After that, he played minor league hockey – until 1979, at age 43.

The notion that O’Ree’s entry into the NHL was treated so subtly fascinates me. And he was the only black player until 1974, when Mike Marson suited up for the expansion Washington Capitals. Just because the other NHL teams were slow on the uptake shouldn’t be held against O’Ree, of course. He’s still a trailblazer, even if that trail was overgrown with weeds when Marson joined the fray.

Yet O’Ree didn’t see himself that way – as a trailblazer. Still doesn’t.

“Well, that was my goal, to be a professional hockey player and hopefully one day play in the National Hockey League,” he says with not so much as a tiny shrug.

Surely, I asked him, beyond the racial remarks, there must have been those “Jackie Robinson moments” that come with being a minority of one.

There were. But one stands out in O’Ree’s mind, and I can see why.

“There was a big right winger for the Blackhawks – about 6-foot-4, 230 pounds – named Eric Nesterenko. We got into an altercation (in Chicago); I was behind the net, and was coming out front, and Nesterenko came from my blind side and butt-ended me in the mouth (with his stick). Split my lip, split my nose, knocked my two front teeth out. He made a couple of racial remarks, but what really got me mad was that he was kind of laughing at me, waiting to see what I would do.

“So I hit him over the head with my stick, and we got into a fight. Both benches emptied. I had to remain in the locker room, for my own safety. That was probably the worst fight.

“But I told myself, if I’m going to leave the league, it’s because I don’t have the skill – not because someone’s trying to run me out.”

That, and concentrating on what he COULD see, instead of what he couldn’t, through that blind eye.

It’s easy to understand, when you spend some time with O’Ree, why NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, in a rare fit of foresight, tabbed O’Ree to be the director of the league’s Diversity Program. That was ten years ago.

“We have approximately 39 programs throughout North America,” O’Ree says. “What I do are on and off-ice clinics with these programs, personal appearances, autograph sessions, fundraisers. I speak to about 40 schools a year. I go into the inner cities and try to encourage boys and girls to play hockey. Basically, I’ve had good success trying to let these kids know that there’s another sport out there that they can play. The tough part is getting them on the ice. But once we get them on the ice and they start maneuvering the puck with the stick, we find out that a lot of these boys and girls have a lot of natural talent.”

O'Ree today, instructing

O’Ree was in Detroit last month as part of the NHL’s “Hockey in the Hood” tour. The city was hosting a tournament, featuring youth teams from all over North America. All teams were made up of kids of color and who would never have had the opportunity to lace up a pair of skates if it wasn’t for the Diversity Program’s equipment bank – donated gear that gets recycled.

O’Ree is still wacking away those weeds, 50 years later.

(note: you can read the entire Q&A I had with O'Ree -- a five-part series that will continue throughout the month, at SET-Magazine.com)