Five Minutes with Bobby Orr

Published in the book Chicken Soup for the Soul: Hooked on Hockey, October 2012

Five Minutes with Bobby Orr

It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.

 ~Author Unknown

         To hockey fans, Bobby Orr is a legend. To our family, he’s a gentleman.

         The Sports Museum of New England, founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts and now located in Boston’s iconic “Gah-den,” home of the Bruins and Celtics, has always held impressive attractions, including sports artist Armand LaMontagne’s life-sized wooden sculptures of some of Boston’s greatest athletes. Bobby Orr is one of those LaMontagne immortalized in basswood.

         My sister-in-law Denise worked for the company that commissioned the Sports Museum Orr sculpture, and to celebrate the work's completion the firm hosted an unveiling for its employees at a hotel ballroom. Retired Bruins defenseman Bobby Orr would be on hand to pose for pictures beside his wooden look-alike. As her guest, Denise brought her mom Bertie, a huge fan of the Bruins in general and Bobby Orr in particular.

         My mother-in-law had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis years earlier and by the time of the sports museum gala she was largely confined to a wheelchair. Neither MS nor the chair stopped Bertie from living with grace and gusto, and she dressed to the nines, complete with earrings and pearls, for the evening with Bobby Orr.

         When Denise and Bertie arrived, a long line already stretched from the hockey great and his chiseled likeness. It would be a while, it appeared, before they’d be able to shake Orr’s hand. Then Bobby looked up and saw them. Excusing himself, he walked to the back of the line, introduced himself to Bertie and asked permission to take her for a spin.

         As people watched, Orr wheeled a smiling, delighted Bertie through the venue and to the statue. For a full five minutes -- or at least what felt to Bertie like five amazing minutes -- he focused solely on her. They talked, laughed and admired the artist’s work. Bobby Orr conducted a private showing in a crowded room, just for Bertie.

         A few years after Bertie died my husband Mike attended a business dinner that included a charity fundraising auction. Mike zeroed in on one item: an 8x10 color photo of a young Boston Bruins’ #4 in action on the ice, autographed, “Best of Luck, Bobby Orr.”

         Mike put in bid after bid, but another man, in the interest of raising as much as possible for the charity, kept outbidding him. Finally, when the man’s bid reached a level bordering on too rich for Mike’s wallet, Mike approached the man and told him about his mom’s evening with the gracious former Bruin.

         “That’s an incredible story,” said the bidder. “You can have the picture. And not only that, but I’m going to buy it for you!”

         It hangs on our wall today, and when we look at it, we see more than a hockey player. We see a caring human being who brought joy to another through a simple act of kindness. And we also remember that kind man at the auction who carried on in the same tradition.

~Lori Hein

The Universal Language of Pigeon

Published in HCI Books' The Ultimate Bird Lover. Book publication date February 2010

Arming your kids with corn and sending them into a flock of pigeons is a surefire way to connect with locals when you travel. Pigeons swoop, crowds gather, international relations ensue. You may not speak the locals’ language, but if they’ve got pigeons and you’ve got kids, you’ve got a lingua franca.

Some of my family’s favorite travel memories involve pigeons. In cities all over the world we’ve used the birds to make connections with people.

Like the bevy of Italian models who interrupted a photo shoot in Venice’s Piazza San Marco to marvel at my then nine-year-old son, Adam, who, by throwing the corn straight up but not out, made the top of his head the site of multiple pigeon landings. The models called him “PEE-jin boy” and took pictures before giving him corn-throwing advice. Italians speak with their hands, and it was interesting to watch a half-dozen drop-dead gorgeous women mime effective grain-tossing techniques to a little boy.

Nearby, our daughter, Dana, then six and already a skilled animal whisperer, had attracted her own fans. She laid a trail of corn and, by repeatedly cooing, “Yo, whitey, my man,” coaxed San Marco’s sole albino pigeon to walk a straight line, pecking each piece as he went, right into her hands.

The summer before he started school I took Adam to Bolivia. He liked the boat ride across Lake Titicaca and thought “Andy’s mountains” were cool. But what he most enjoyed was just hanging out in the capital, La Paz. He liked having his shoes shined by teenage boys who nodded earnestly while he explained the powers of the action figures he carried in his pockets, and he liked eating cotton candy in Plaza Murillo, a popular public space and heart of the city.

One sunny Sunday in the plaza, anchored by grand government buildings and a neo-classical cathedral, Adam spied a boy about his age sitting on a bench with his parents watching the pigeons gathered in the center of the square. We knew what to do.

I bought seven bags of corn from a vendor, gave Adam one, and sent him into the flock. He threw a handful into the air and the pigeons went loco, whirling to get the grain. As they swarmed around Adam’s feet, the little boy stood up and clapped.

I called Adam over and gave him two bags of corn. He went to the boy and offered him one. Then they ventured, the little American in a Pokemon windbreaker and the little Bolivian in a sweatsuit of red, yellow and green, the colors of the Bolivian flag, into the middle of the plaza, where they threw corn, dodged dive-bombing pigeons and laughed together from the bottom of their bellies.

After four more bags of corn had been happily tossed and consumed, the boy ran to his parents’ bench and returned to Adam with a soccer ball. The parents motioned to me to join them and asked if Adam could play for a while.

While the new friends kicked the ball for an hour, the parents and I, mixing simple Spanish and English, talked about life in our respective countries and about the joys and challenges of raising a family. There was little difference between their experiences and hopes and my own.

And, looking at our sons, running and grinning and enjoying the day and each other, we knew there wasn’t much difference between them, either.

Family/inspiration/parenting/running: A Can of Peas

This story was last published in Radish Magazine in September 2008



A Can of Peas


One summer day a dozen years ago, I stood at my living room window and watched two women walk by on the sidewalk. They were both young mothers, and each pushed a stroller holding a toddler about the same size as Dana, my then two-year-old daughter. It struck me how alike the women looked – heavy and slow, with untucked, oversized T-shirts covering ample butts and bellies. Then my window became a mirror, and I saw myself. I looked just like them.

In that instant, as I stood there in my untucked, oversized T-shirt and elastic waist shorts, I knew I had to make some changes. God was hitting me over the head with a giant foam hammer: "This is an epiphany, Lori. Run with it." And that, more or less, is what I did.

I’d always been a tiny person, able to exercise never, eat whatever whenever, and remain trim and petite. I’d even come out the other end of my first pregnancy smaller than when I went into it. I’d had a hard time just holding onto my first child, a boy. After seven months of nausea, projectile rejection of almost all food save Cheerios and Dannon yogurt, and a stint in the hospital hooked to a nasogastric tube that delivered protein drink through my nostrils to my stomach, my Adam greeted the world two months early. Four pounds and able to fit in the palm of my husband’s hand. When we took our tiny fighter home after his stay in intensive care, I weighed five pounds less than I’d weighed in high school.

Dana stayed in the womb a week beyond the due date. While I carried Dana, she and I ate. About every 20 minutes. With Adam, I felt sick if I ate. With Dana, I felt sick if I didn’t. I embarked on a nine-month, nonstop eating orgy. Steak, peanut butter, baked potatoes with sour cream, hot fudge sundaes. Deli meat, frozen pizza, Cheez-Its by the boxful. Oreos, burritos, chocolate and butterscotch pudding smothered in Redi-Whip. I slept with a loaf of bread next to the bed.

When Dana was born, healthy and beautiful, I was big. And stayed big. And pretended I wasn’t. Had God sent the two strolling mothers any earlier, I wouldn’t have been ready to receive the message. Being in denial awhile had allowed me to keep eating donuts, corned beef hash and bacon while rationalizing the weight gain as a normal, perfectly acceptable stage of motherhood.

Upon my epiphany, I resolved to effect a wholesale, cold turkey conversion. I knew exactly what I had to do: eat less, eat well, move more. Forever. And it’s the forever part that made the whole thing easier to swallow.

Were I to put myself "on a diet," I knew I would fail, ultimately if not right away. I needed to replace "diet," a short term, emergency-infused concept, with "life," hopefully long and good. I would never be on a diet. I’d be on life.

A diet would address only what I took in. But life offered the chance to play with energy, experiment with taking it in and burning it off. A diet held no challenge: Here, eat this measured thing. Life said, "Have some fun. See what happens when you eat a little and burn a little. Or eat a lot and burn a little. Or eat a little and burn a lot. Or eat a lot and burn a lot." What fun! Like being a scientist.

So I banished "diet" from my mindset and lexicon and focused on life. I resolved to do three things: center my meals around plants; choose healthy calories over bad or empty ones; move for at least 20 minutes a day.When time came for my first post-conversion meal, I opened the fridge. I wanted to plant-center my plate, but there wasn’t a fresh fruit or vegetable in that whole Kenmore. I opened the cupboard and took down a can of peas. I found an onion, sautéed it in olive oil, threw in some chopped garlic and lemon juice, and folded the mix into the peas. I poured a tall glass of OJ, sat down on my deck, and tucked into this humble, healthy lunch that would change my life.

The next morning, I dug out an old pair of sneakers, pulled on my elastic waist shorts and oversized T-shirt, and went outside to move. I started out walking, but soon found myself lifting my feet high enough off the ground to approximate a rude form of entry level shuffle-jogging. That first day, I made it once around the block. I felt like I was going to die, but I knew I’d run the race of my life.

Now, after years of salads, fruit, fish, chicken, whole grains and the occasional Oreo or Dairy Queen cone, I wear high school-size jeans and have long since given away my elastic waist shorts.

And that energy experiment? My favorite take in-burn off combination is "eat a lot and burn a lot." That’s what I do when I train for a marathon. I’m preparing for my ninth.

Essay/Inspiration: United we ran

Published widely in newspapers and magazines nationwide and online, fall to winter 2001

November 7, 2001

United we ran

By LORI HEIN
GUEST COLUMNIST

I know where hope lives. I know where strength, endurance, passion and pride live. They live in New York City. On Nov. 4, I ran through 26 miles of these affirmations of our humanity.

This New York City Marathon was not about athletes turning in impressive times. It was only about going the distance — the distance from profound sadness and loss to a point where collective human goodness and hope carry us toward a finish line we still can’t see. In a city pierced through its core by hate and pain, hope is alive and well. There is no doubt it will triumph.

Thirty thousand runners came to New York to fuel that hope. We came from all over the globe to tell New York it doesn’t stand alone. Runners from Kansas and Denmark and Japan and Algeria and California and Scotland and Venezuela came to show the people of Brooklyn and the Bronx and Long Island and New Jersey and Staten Island and Manhattan and Queens and Yonkers and White Plains and southern Connecticut that their pain is shared. When pain is shared, it is eased.

In turn, the 2 million spectators who lined the 26.2 mile five-borough route fueled the runners with something far more nourishing to a spent body and mind than any energy drink or quick-acting carbohydrate. They carried us through the neighborhoods, up the hills, over the bridges, past the buildings, down the avenues, around the corners and into Central Park with their humanity. To say we connected is to understate the pure human goodness that permeated every inch of every borough. When we slapped palms with kids in Brooklyn and exchanged high-fives with teenagers in the Bronx and looked into the eyes of young mothers in Queens and smiled at old men on kitchen chairs waving flags and raised defiantly clenched fists to the firefighters watching from their engines and station houses, we said, together and loudly with no words, " We cannot be beaten. We will overcome. We are united. "

Go to New York if you can. You will hear occasional sirens and see a few haz-mat trucks roaring down the street. You will likely make the unspeakably painful pilgrimage to Ground Zero to try and take in the enormity of the loss and grief. You won’t be able to and you will walk away numb. You will see billboards and walls with the faces of young people gone forever. You will see the tired eyes of cops operating on adrenaline and resolve. You will see fire stations wreathed in purple bunting and covered with drawings from school kids in Lubbock, Texas and Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

But keep walking and looking and you will find hope. You will check into your hotel and be given both a key and a smile that thanks you for coming. You will ask an elevator attendant how he’s doing and he’ll thank you for asking. You will eat dinner in a Turkish restaurant with an American flag painted on its window. You will see the Christmas lights strung across Mulberry Street in Little Italy, lighting the hopeful faces of waiters beckoning you to try their pasta tonight. You will see the pulsing neon of Times Square and the lacy spires of St. Patrick’s and the holiday window dressers already at work on Fifth Avenue. You will look from the Chrysler Building’s gleaming art deco cap to the Empire State Building, doing justice to its role as New York’s tallest building by beaming its red, white and blue floodlit top like a beacon to the city and the world.

I know where hope lives. It lives in New York City. And it lives in all of us.

Essay/Inspiration: Bumps in the road

Originally published in MetroSports Boston (now New England Sports), June 2002:

Bumps in the road
by Lori Hein

I answered the phone, lost my job, and in one swift, silver lining moment, realized my recent string of running injuries and layoffs had been a gift.

When my boss called to say the company I’d worked at for 20 years was downsizing and my last check was in the mail, I discovered, as I stood there in the kitchen with the phone to my ear, that I was oddly and confidently prepared to handle this news and, in that instant, saw my running setbacks for what they really were – strengthening exercises. Lessons that could help me navigate the bumps in the road that is my life.

As I listened to my job evaporate, I got it. I suddenly knew what all the effort, discipline and disappointment had been about. “You’ve been an asset,” said the telephone voice. As the platitude pile grew, so did my epiphany. Those injuries and training heartaches had made me stronger. They’d tested and toughened me, and they’d taught me how to take the long view.

I'd been running a long time. For years I'd go out and do my four miles, often feeling I could go on forever. One day I did, turning in a joy-filled, lactic acid-laden thirteen. I mentioned that outing to my son's basketball coach, an avid runner. "So, you did a half marathon,” he said and, with that m-word, planted a 26 mile-long seed in my head. Before a week had passed, I was contemplating the possibility of going the whole distance and visualizing myself in a marathon t-shirt.

I signed up for a fall race and trained hard. Too hard. After a month of living by the training schedule hanging on the fridge, tendinitis got me.

I found out what a physical therapist does and made a mental note to always have one on my holiday card list. I learned the art and science of proper stretching, strengthening and buildup. My therapist healed me fast and got me back out there with seven weeks to go before the race. I'd cross-trained through rehab and had maintained a decent level of fitness. With work and a little luck, I could be ready.

On the first run of my resuscitated training program, I fell off a curb and suffered a third-degree ankle sprain that looked like a ripe eggplant. My family iced the elevated lump while I cried.

Before the end of this new layoff, I’d registered for a May marathon. With physical therapy, my ankle healed just in time to start training. A bitter winter set in, but I savored every crystalline run. I used an indoor track on icy days and spent one 20-miler running for three hours in a circle, direction changes the only relief.

Spring came. The long runs turned from frigid tests of will to sun-soaked communions with nature. I was mentally and physically ready. On my last truly long run, three weeks before the marathon, my left leg caved in. The physical pain was intense. The emotional pain of knowing it was over, again, was unbearable. I didn't need the official diagnosis of stress fracture to realize I wouldn’t see the starting line.

When my daughter came home from school, she found me, leg propped on pillows, sobbing. Having seen variations on this theme, she knew what it meant and what it meant to me. She hugged me, took my hand, and said, “Don’t worry. There are other marathons. You'll just try again, right mommy?"

Perspective is a wonderful thing. My thwarted efforts to make it to a marathon had taught my daughter something about persistence, patience, focus. And faith. The busted leg didn't hurt so much anymore, and the wounded psyche felt a little hope massaging its sore spots.

I healed and started over. Six months later, I finished my first marathon. While finishing was euphoric, just being there was life-changing. Toeing that start line was a personal best that will never be trumped.

Fast forward to my kitchen. Phone in hand, I let my boss finish telling me how sorry he was about the job loss.

But I was already thinking about the future. I knew I’d land on my feet and toe the start line of some new challenge. As there are other marathons, there are other jobs.

The world brims with possibility. Once you're confident about your potential, there's no race you can’t run.

Inspirational/Human interest: Art and optimism

Published in the Easton Journal (MA), Dec. 2004:

Art and optimism

By Lori Hein/ Correspondent
Friday, December 10, 2004

It was the afternoon of game three of the 100th World Series, and the Red Sox would face the St. Louis Cardinals in a few hours. Easton's Bob Coe was dressed for his interview in a Red Sox jacket, and his dog sported a bright red Sox t-shirt. Positive, optimistic members of the Red Sox nation.

Positive attitudes and optimism are part of the fabric of Coe family life, and 28-year-old Coe, who has Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), has so much of both that he uses art canvases to catch what spills over.

This year, his painting Sun Plasma became part of the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) Art Collection. The work, a beautiful burst of blue, black and yellow, is on permanent display at MDA national headquarters in Tucson, Arizona.

Founded in 1992, the MDA Art Collection highlights the achievements of artists with disabilities and shows that creativity transcends physical barriers. More than 1.6 million people have viewed the collection, which travels periodically to host locations beyond Tucson. Pieces from the collection have been exhibited in major museums and galleries nationwide.

Coe attended the Massachusetts Hospital School for the physically challenged until he was 22. He played football and motor soccer in his wheelchair. He taught himself to play the dulcimer. And he discovered art.

" I had a great art teacher," he said. "She really made you like it."

But it wasn't until he was about 25 that Coe began painting regularly.

" About three years ago," he recalled, "I was sick a lot during the winter. I don't like to sit still. I looked around my room and said, 'I want to do something different in here. I want to have the whole room filled with Caribbean colors to brighten it up for the winter.' "

So he started painting.

DMD is a genetic, degenerative muscular disease that primarily affects boys. Diagnosed at age 5 and able to walk with braces until 14, Coe now has use of only his head and right thumb, which he uses to drive his microchip-controlled wheelchair. Most artists have an idea, then pick up a brush and put paint to canvas. When Coe has an idea, he has to figure out how to get the paint to the canvas (or Plexiglas or vinyl tablecloth).

"Bobby improvises so much," his mother, Paula said. Sometimes he holds the brush in his teeth. Sometimes he lets his chair do the painting, rolling his tires through paint and approaching the canvas, spread flat on his driveway. "I drive my wheels over it and design a painting through the tires," he said. Sometimes his personal care assistants hold the canvas and apply the paint as Coe directs.

Of the muse that inspires him, Coe said, "I'll either have a painting where the whole image will pop up in my head all at once, sometimes in the middle of the night, or sometimes I sit and think about it for a while. You just really have to let yourself go. You go on a feeling. Sometimes I'll paint every day for a couple weeks in a row, and sometimes I'll paint once every three weeks or so."

It takes Coe five to six hours to complete a painting, and he works perhaps 10 minutes at a time. "I have to break it up," he said. "It takes me longer now to finish one."

Much of Coe's day revolves around keeping his lungs clear and checking that his heart isn't racing. His wheelchair holds machines that help him breathe. "Every day there are a lot of treatments," he said. His team of some 12 personal care assistants rotates shifts and spends about 10 hours a day with him. "You have to be proactive with your treatments and take care of yourself. Then, you can help other people," Coe said. And when he's not painting or tending to his treatments, Coe helps other people.

Since 1998, he's been a student liaison in the Massachusetts Hospital School performing arts program, helping physically challenged kids and young adults feel their worth and accomplish things they thought impossible. He coaches the students in music, dance and drama. "I guide them into it," said Coe.

Each spring, the students put on a musical that also serves as a fund-raiser. The show raises money for the Canton school, but it also raises the confidence and self-esteem of the young performers, and Coe's guidance and inspiration play a key role.

"The thing is, (the kids) see him. He's a role model," Paula said. "(The Massachusetts Hospital School) wanted him because they wanted someone to show these kids what's possible. He never had any barriers. He wouldn't let anything stop him. The younger kids needed him."

For three years, Coe's been a volunteer greeter at Caritas Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton. He works at the front desk, talking with patients and visitors and helping them find their way around the hospital.

And he goes to college and runs a business. Coe's enrolled in Massasoit Community College's art program, "to enhance my art skills," he said. He's learning strategies that will help him market his work. "I'm going there to be an exhibition artist," he said.

Coe has begun marketing his work through Creative Endeavors, a business he runs with his girlfriend, Nicole Warren. Coe and Warren met while students at Massachusetts Hospital School. They've been together for five years and started Creative Endeavors a year ago. They sell original works and copies of their art made into greeting cards, plaques, t-shirts and other items.

Coe noted that many of his favorite works have already found new homes. He gives paintings - "the real nice ones" - to family members. "And Nicole has two or three."

To contact Creative Endeavors, call Coe at 508-238-4125. Locally, Sara Petipas' On The Cusp Gallery has carried the couple's greeting cards. Coe read about the gallery in an Easton Journal article and contacted Petipas. "It was very generous of her," said Coe, of Petipas' support.

In September, Coe was a guest on WCVB-TV's broadcast of the 2004 Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon. Natalie Jacobson asked about his inventive nature and artistic talent. He responded with characteristic optimism: "Sometimes with MD, you're not that strong physically, so you want to be strong in other ways... Sometimes, when you can't do something, you have to figure out a new way to do it... I think of having MD as a positive thing because if I didn't have it, I might not have been as creative. Because I have it, it's actually a blessing."

If there's a guy in this world who sees the glass half full, it's Bob Coe.

"He fights the battle every day," said Paula. "He's the most positive person in the world."

Many of Coe's paintings hang on the walls of his room. Some pieces were covered by full-page newspaper clippings showing jubilant Red Sox trouncing Yankees and Cardinals. Priorities.

A red and black abstract full of action and form seemed to leap off the wall. "I had a great time making that one," said Coe. Rain Splash, a large blue, green and aqua work, is his personal favorite, and he related its genesis: "It was on a rainy day, and it was to give the impression that, as soon as the raindrop hit, it splashed... "

Muscular dystrophy is not for the weak. And there's no stronger advocate for living a rich, full life with MD than Coe. " (MD) sort of forced me to come up with new ways of doing things, " he said. "There's no sense in giving up. Maybe things will be a little harder, but you have to keep trying new things and not sitting around feeling bad for yourself. That's a waste of time. I always think of the positive."