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

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.

Sports/Human interest: Hawaii Ironman

Published in Easton Journal, Mansfield News, Norton Mirror, November 2003:

Easton man earns ironman status

By Lori Hein / Correspondent
Friday, November 21, 2003

Kelley competes in Hawaii triathlon

Let's say you're going to run a marathon. You've trained for months and hope you're ready. If you go the distance, at the end of the day you can call yourself a marathoner.

Now, let's say you're going to run a marathon, but not until you've first swum 2.4 miles in open water and raced 112 miles on a bike. Then, you lace up your shoes and run 26.2 miles. If you go the distance, at the end of the day you can call yourself an ironman.

Easton's Steve Kelley, 34, first became an ironman at the 2000 Ironman USA in Lake Placid, NY. (Capital "I" denotes trademarked races sponsored by the World Triathlon Corporation (WTC), while lower-case "i" refers to ironman distance in general and non-WTC events.) On Oct. 18, after 140.6 miles in 13 hours, 5 minutes and 4 seconds, Kelley crossed the finish line at Hawaii Ironman, granddaddy of all ironman-distance triathlons and holy grail of any triathlete who competes at that distance.

Many athletes spend years trying to snare one of Hawaii's 1,500 coveted slots. There are two ways to get one. You can race another Ironman to which slots have been allocated, and finish at or near the top of your age group. (If your time doesn't have an 8, 9 or 10 in the hours column, you won't.)

Or, you can enter your name in a lottery whose 150 winners are drawn in mid-April. If your number comes up, you then "validate" your entry by completing a triathlon of at least half-ironman distance. That done, you can buy your plane ticket to the Big Island.

Kelley had his name in the lottery for years and, this April, finally got lucky. His daughter, Ava, was born on May 2 and right after he and wife Kati brought their new baby home, Kelley started training for Hawaii. He did his validation race in June.

Ironman training is an average 18-hour weekly commitment to swimming, cycling and running. Kelley spent three mornings a week lapping for one-and-a-half hours in the Brockton High School pool. Wednesdays and Sundays meant four to six-hour bike rides. He'd ride "toward the coast," to Duxbury or Plymouth, where his parents live. His parents' house was a good place to fill his water bottle and hook up with riders who wanted to go out for a short leg.

"There were rides where I'd have ridden with four or five different people before the ride was over," Kelley said.

Occasionally, he'd hook up with his neighbor and brother-in-law, Easton's Mark McCormack. McCormack, the 2003 US Pro Road Race Champion, out on his own five to six-hour training ride, might call Kelley on a cell phone and the two would join up for an hour or two. On running days, Kelley stayed closer to home, doing loops around Sheep Pasture, Stonehill and Borderland. For long runs, he entered local road races.

Kelley, who has a law degree but left that field "for a balanced lifestyle, the general happiness factor," teaches U.S. history at Southeastern Regional. But triathlon is a major part of his life, and he is not only a serious competitor, but also an experienced coach and active multi-sport promoter.

His athletic resume is long. Kelley's been a triathlete for 15 years, is a certified triathlon and cycling coach, was assistant coach of last year's Wheaton College swim team, heads USA Triathlon's New England Region, is a six-time Boston Marathon finisher (marathon legend Johnny Kelley is his great uncle). USA Triathlon and the U.S. Olympic Committee recently named him Triathlon Development Coach of the Year in recognition of his work with young athletes.

In 1998, Kelley co-founded the Baystate Triathlon Team (www.baystatetri.com), an adult team whose 125 members compete in races ranging in distance from sprint through Olympic to ironman.

From this team sprouted a junior team for athletes ages 14 through 23. Kelley channels much of the money he earns from private coaching into the JuniorTri.com Development Team (www.juniortri.com).

Said Kelley, "Our hope is to graduate some of them into the ranks of professional triathletes."

One of their kids just turned pro.

Now to the Big Island. Ironman begins and ends in the tiny town of Kailua-Kona. In a day that puts human beings through extreme physical and mental challenges, one of the toughest is the bike stretch through the stark, searing lava fields of the Kona coast. But Kelley turned the landscape into a source of strength. As his plane was landing in Kona, Kelley "caught glimpses of the lava field. It was exciting. I could feel the energy of the island."

His hotel room faced the swim start, and in the days before the race, he would swim part of the water course, gauging currents, temperature, sun position, buoy placement, and cementing the hotel as a visual to keep himself on course in what would be a mayhem of thrashing arms and legs come Ironman morning.

Kelley wasn't alone at the swim site.

"The athletes strut around all week long," he said, and people sit on the pier and the seawall to watch the superfit bodies. The ritual flexing and gawking has earned this spit of sand the nickname "Dig Me Beach."

Race day. Fifteen-hundred athletes assemble for the 7 a.m. swim start. Fifteen-hundred athletes' worth of accumulated hopes, dreams, fears, prayers, focus, energy, training, determination, and sheer will.

Kelley described Hawaii as "definitely the most memorable swim start" he's ever done.

"There was intense energy at the start of the race. Thousands of people watching on the seawall and pier, loudspeakers blaring native drumming and chants in Hawaiian."

Helicopters hovered above the water, rotors stirring up the sea. He talked of the countdown. "Five minutes, three minutes, one minute. Then, a cannon goes off - an actual cannon- and 1,500 people get into the water trying to find a comfortable place to swim."

Kelley did the swim comfortably and in good time. He felt relaxed, saw "colorful fish," and described the experience as "enjoyable, tropical, sunny." After swimming for an hour and 19 minutes, Kelley ran up the beach to the transition area, where a volunteer handed him his bike bag. After he'd changed into riding gear, he grabbed his bike, and, eight and-a-half minutes after leaving the water, Steve Kelley took off for 112-miles in the saddle.

He felt good on the bike, and expected to, having put most of his training emphasis on cycling.

"The goal of any ironman is to come off the bike in one piece," he said. "If you come off the bike comfortable, not dehydrated, and with enough energy, then you're in good shape for the run." (Remember, there's a marathon at the end of all this.)

Steady headwinds at about 80 miles slowed him down, but he decided not to fight them, and to conserve energy for the marathon.

"I've learned, from 15 years in triathlon," he said, "that you have to be patient."

So, he spent more time on the bike than he'd planned.

"The worst part of the bike was wanting to get off it."

A five-minute bike-to-run transition put Kelley, after eight hours and nearly 115 miles, at the start of a marathon. It was about 3 p.m. He had leg cramps, but worked through them over the marathon's first 10 miles. By mile 18, he was running in pitch darkness.

It is crucial to keep eating and drinking all day, and Kelley's moveable feast included energy bars, pretzels, electrolyte tablets, water, Gatorade, and Coke. (When it was all over, he ate a pizza.)

Kelley described the finish on Alii Drive as "one of the most spectacular race finishes in the world. Complete darkness. Then, all these floodlights, illumination, the crowd. The finish is pretty intense. A really profound sense of accomplishment."

Kelley keeps an old poster of an Ironman finish, blurry, the way it looks to a depleted athlete seeing it within reach. The caption reads, "If you have to ask why, you'll never understand."

Kelley brought some people who understand to Hawaii with him, including wife Kati, a vice president at Community Bank and a runner.

"She's beat me in every marathon we've done together," Kelley said.

In addition, he brought six-month-old Ava. "Ava was a real hit in Hawaii."

Kati had dressed her in leis and a hat, and "she was in lots of photos and got lots of attention." Ava did well on the long trip, too.

"Not a peep on the plane. An excellent traveler," reported her dad.

On Dec. 6, Ironman comes to NBC. A show commemorating its 25th anniversary airs from 5 to 6 p.m.. Highlights of the 2003 Hawaii race air from 8 to 9 p.m. Keep your eyes peeled for bib number 196.

Lori Hein can be reached at 508-634-7563 or easton@cnc.com.