I am an ice hockey fan - have been so since I was 10 years old and moved from Texas to Michigan and learned to ice skate, while playing hockey, on a stream in Flat Rock or Rock Wood, Michigan that same winter when I went to the two room school in 1953-54. I love it, I loved to play it, I never played on an organized team until the late 1960s after I had moved to Atlanta, GA. There we had a team called the Atlanta Knights. I had the number 27, somebody else already had 9, which was Gordie's number, but 27 is 9 x 3, and I thought that was close enough. We played in towns like Macon, GA and Huntsville, AL and Charlotte, NC - we played in the coliseum in Charlotte and I was crossed checked in front of the goal and broke my tail bone..... it was a long ride home from Charlotte to Atlanta......... shortly after that I started in the PhD program at Georgia State and gave up playing hockey forever. One of the saddest days of my life.

When I was a boy in Detroit, my friends and I rode the bus from where we lived to downtown to the Olympia where the Detroit Red Wings played. We were allowed to enter, without charge, and watch a practice. After the practice, the greatest hockey player to have ever played the game, Gordie Howe, come out of the locker room and chatted us up (that is what the kids today would say - we actually would have said talked to us). It was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life and I will never (I hope) forget it. We talked about hockey and our ambitions and he was just a normal guy to us., not a super hero, not too good to talk to kids - Berry Bonds, Kobe Bryant, etc, etc..... We didn't ask for autographs we just enjoyed the moment. And the moment has stayed with me for ever.

Well, I was and am and will always be a Detroit Red Wing fan..... and yesterday they won their first round series with the Calgary Flames..... The Calgary Flames were once the Atlanta Flames and they were the only other NHL hockey team that I had seen play besides the Detroit Red Wings.... but Atlanta was not ready for hockey then and the Flames moved to Calgary...... Now there is the Atlanta Thrashers and they lost in 4 games to the New York Rangers.... HIHO!!!

You can click on this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordie_Howe for some information about Gordie Howe.

So the flames move on to the second round..... Go Red Wings and live on, my memory of Gordie Howe (he is still alive), the greatest hockey player to have ever played the game!!!

And so in a time when we think of the 33 deaths at VT and the thousands of deaths and wounded from an unjust Iraq war, let us think about a man who would take the time to talk to kids and make a lasting impression............. and remember, take good care of yourself, so that you can take good care of someone else, love, john