Loved Ones Remember Kings Scouts’ Joy of Life

Every day, not just once a year when the world pauses in solemn silence, Mike Bavis grieves for the piece of himself that he lost when his identical twin brother died aboard United Airlines Flight 175, the second plane hijacked by terrorists and crashed into the World Trade Center.

Today, it will be five years since what Mike calls “the accident” took the lives of Mark Bavis, fellow Kings scout Ace Bailey and hundreds of others aboard the four commandeered planes. Because anniversaries are convenient times to reminisce, the day will bring many memorial tributes. Politicians will speak, and tears will be shed.

After a few moments’ reflection, most people will resume their normal lives. Mike Bavis can’t. His anguish hasn’t diminished, and he can’t imagine it will subside five, 10 or 50 years from now.

“People talk that this is the fifth anniversary. I don’t think that registers as much with the families,” said Bavis, an assistant hockey coach at Boston University. “For us, on any given day, we can see a picture or a story in the media that brings it back, and that makes it difficult.

“That’s not to say there isn’t healing, and everybody experiences loss at some point. There’s a hole in your life, and you adjust and you adapt and you learn to appreciate life again, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have a hole. Having been a twin, he and I were very close. I’ve got two children he would have spent time with.”

Mark Bavis, 31, was heading from Boston to the Kings’ training camp in El Segundo to begin his second season with the organization. Three months earlier, on his recommendation, the Kings had drafted Mike Cammalleri, whose feistiness echoed Bavis’ tenacity as a college and minor-league player.

“Mark was very professional, very focused, very determined,” said Dave Taylor, then the Kings’ general manager, now involved in player development. “I know he’d attended a lot of leadership conferences and had mentored kids in high school, and also at Boston University.”

Bailey, 53, the Kings’ director of pro scouting, was beginning his eighth season with them and 33rd as an NHL player or scout. He was a splendid storyteller who often made himself the butt of jokes, and he loved to cook. Guests at his home in Lynnfield, Mass., would leave with their belts tighter and spirits looser.

“He was always fun,” said Barbara Pothier, a sister of Bailey’s widow, Katherine. “He had a certain charm.”

No monument could do them justice. Cold marble or steel couldn’t capture Bailey’s sense of fun and how this rugged man turned to mush at the sight of an infant. No plaque or trophy could describe Bavis’ devotion to hockey and his friends.

Instead, their families created foundations that dispense more than money. The organizations dole out hope and love and the precious gift Ace Bailey and Mark Bavis did not have -- time.

The aim of the Ace Bailey Children’s Foundation (www.acebailey.com) is to ease the plight of sick children and their families. It raises funds through parties and golf tournaments and enters a team of sponsored runners in the Boston Marathon. Katherine Bailey ran in 2003 and 2004. “When she finished, she was so joyful,” Pothier said. “She said it felt like Ace carried her through.”

In its first major project, the foundation funded a 3,500-square-foot playroom at Boston’s Floating Hospital. Known as Ace’s Place, the room opened in January.

“It was so wonderful,” Katherine Bailey said. “The first thing you see is a mural. Not a photo of Ace, but a mural done so that as you walk along, he skates up to you and smiles and then skates off. It’s really something.

“Then you walk in there and see sick children with IV poles, some of whom have had transplants, and they’re all in there smiling and happy and they can be kids again for a little while. I say to myself, ‘There’s Ace’s spirit.’ ”

She also feels his presence when she and Pothier cuddle infants in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, where they hope to build a space for families to privately talk with doctors and nurses. “We always laugh and think of Ace,” Katherine Bailey said. “If there was a baby in the house, Ace always wanted to cuddle it. You couldn’t get the baby out of his arms.”

They do it to remember the joy of his life, not the horrifying vision of his death.

“I used to deal with it by turning the TV off,” Katherine Bailey said. “Ace and Mike went in one of the biggest incidents the American people have experienced, and it won’t go away. It was too huge. You just learn to face any issue.

“I don’t turn the TV off now, if someone is talking about it. It’s part of my life. Sometimes, I put it in the recesses of my mind. Sometimes I take it out and I’m sad, but I say to myself, ‘I’ve got to go forward.’ ”

The Bavis family oversees the awarding of scholarships to 25 Massachusetts high school seniors based on applications sent to the foundation’s website, www.markbavisleadershipfoundation.org. Winners need not be top scholars or athletes, just youngsters who embrace community and volunteer work in keeping with Mark’s generous spirit.

“When everything happened, we heard from so many kids who said how my brother had been a mentor or a sounding board for them,” said Mike Bavis, who praised the Kings and the hockey community for supporting the family and foundation. “It’s not about always having the most need. It’s based on impact.”

The day Mark died, Mike was driving through western Canada on a scouting trip, a route he was retracing during a recent phone interview. He has since watched only one Sept. 11-related movie, the Court TV documentary “On Native Soil,” and has seen images of Flight 175 careening into the tower. “That was tough,” he said, softly.

“The government and groups like you to focus on memorials, and there’s no question we appreciate that. But there would be no better way to honor my brother than for officials in Washington to do their job well and not allow money and politics to come into play when it comes to airline safety.”

The extended Bailey and Bavis families have become close, supporting each other emotionally and at foundation fundraisers. They’ll reunite at an anniversary memorial today at Boston’s State House.

“I think we both understand the impact of tragedy on our lives,” Katherine Bailey said.

Better yet, they understand the impact of hope, and of the difference a man can make.

*

Helene Elliott can be reached at helene.elliott@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Elliott, go to latimes.com/elliott.