O’Ree, Who Integrated the NHL, Remains an Inspiration

Several years ago on a Boston ice rink, Jose Rojas stood between Bobby Orr and Willie O’Ree, blew up his chest and smiled.

He doesn’t have the photograph, but he remembers what it looks like. He remembers what the moment felt like.

Now 17, and with a fairly recent plan to graduate from Gilbert East High in Anaheim and then attend college, he understands why he was there.

“I believe in myself,” said Rojas, who lives in Anaheim. “I believe I’ll finish school. I’m improving pretty good in school, and I’m getting better in hockey. I think I’m achieving.”

Disney’s GOALS program--Growth Opportunities through Athletics, Learning and Service--didn’t quite grab Rojas off the street and make him skate, but it’s not all that far from the truth, either.

At practically no cost, Rojas, along with 600 others, was given equipment and ice time and coaches and teammates and a whole new set of friends, many of them at the Disney Ice skating facility in Anaheim.

Two years into the program, at the Willie O’Ree All-Star Hockey tournament in Boston, Rojas was introduced to O’Ree. They shook hands. They posed for that photograph. O’Ree told him his story, and Rojas had a new inspiration to go with his used skates and gloves.

“When I met him, it was like, ‘Whoa,’ ” Rojas said. “My first thought was, ‘What if I’m the first Hispanic to play in the NHL?’ ”

Last week, O’Ree, who integrated the NHL, sat in a back booth at Albie’s Beef Inn, an old hockey players’ hangout on San Diego’s hotel circle. A photo of a young O’Ree hung in the lobby.

“When I played in the NHL, there was no diversity in the league,” he said.

Actually, there was. It was him.

A black man from Fredericton, New Brunswick, O’Ree broke hockey’s color barrier on Jan. 18, 1958. He played two games for the Boston Bruins, then did not return to the NHL until the 1960-61 season, when he played 43 more games. The NHL didn’t see its second black player until 1974.

O’Ree played 21 years for 11 professional teams, including those 45 games in the NHL.

After more than 15 years out of hockey, all in San Diego, he is director of the NHL/USA Hockey Diversity Task Force. NHL rosters are 3% black. New Jersey Devil rookie Scott Gomez is the game’s first Latin player.

At 64, and much like Rojas, O’Ree has a new inspiration. Its name is Jose Rojas. And its name is Luis Sanchez, another member of Disney’s program. And its name is Tony Lozano, still another GOALS player.

O’Ree would not recognize them, probably. But he knows them. He knows their lives and the uncertainty of their dreams. He knows how much harder they work, the invisible pounds they carry on their backs.

“These kids are just wanting a chance to play,” O’Ree said. “Some of them have never held a hockey stick before. They’re just hungry to learn.”

O’Ree reaches out to the children. He talks to them. He holds clinics. There is an All-Star weekend for youths in his name, held annually in different cities.

“I just tell them how it was,” O’Ree said. “The doors and the barriers have been down, 42 years ago [last week]. The prejudice and bigotry and ignorance and racism still exist, but it’s a little easier now. I just tell them they have to really believe in themselves, and that they have to like themselves.”

For Rojas, it helps to know that somebody has been there, that that somebody is a kind and generous man, and that he appreciates the hardships.

“Some people don’t think I have a chance,” Rojas said. “I know nothing is promised. But I’m going to give it everything I’ve got.”

Sanchez, 17, is a junior at Loara High. He, too, met O’Ree in Boston. He admitted that in his early teens, “I was one of those little gangster guys.”

Now he wants to be the first in his family to go to college.

“He gave me hopes,” Sanchez said of O’Ree. “He helped turn my life around. After I went to Boston, my life totally turned around. Now, when people say only a certain kind of person can do something, I think, ‘Hey, you never know.’

“I believe in myself. I didn’t. I totally didn’t. Now I do.”

Lozano, a 15-year-old sophomore at Katella High, has been in Disney’s program for nearly six years.

He met O’Ree three years ago in Chicago, and heard him talk about, among other things, “growing up playing hockey, then being pushed around by white people.”

Lozano wants to play college hockey.

“I believe in myself,” he said.

If they sound like O’Ree, it is by design. Of the 600 youths in GOALS, all but a handful are minorities.

O’Ree understands. He left home after two years of high school in order to earn $60 a week playing junior hockey, a salary that bought his parents their first home.

Occasionally, O’Ree will get a telephone call from a parent in Harlem. Or Detroit. Or Chicago. Someone called their son a terrible word. Someone started a fight because of the color of their son’s skin. Someone swung a stick for no reason.

O’Ree, too, suffered for the color of his skin. Lost teeth. A split lip. Hundreds of stitches. Horrible remarks that four decades later make O’Ree’s jaw taut.

“I turned my ears off to all that,” he said. “I had to. I’d have never survived 21 years. I really couldn’t have survived. I’ll tell you, I never dropped my gloves because of a racial remark. But, you have to do what you have to do.

“I tell them that they really have to believe in themselves, to be proud of who they are. That’s the thing with a lot of these players of color, they have to be proud of who they are. They can’t try to change the color of their skin, because they can’t. If people don’t want to accept them for who they are, then that’s their problem.”

They make up a little ground every day, perhaps, at places like Disney Ice, one kid at a time. They make up a little ground at the Disney GOALS office, where a photograph shows Bobby Orr, a white man, with Willie O’Ree, a black man, and Jose Rojas, a Latino and soon to be a man.

“It’s a good picture,” Rojas said.