by Bob Herpen
If you believe that words can hurt, that certain phrases once processed can leave a lasting psychic imprint, I have six of them which are certain to haunt me for the rest of my life, even though they really shouldn’t:
Pelle Brain-Dead
Lindbergh: No Hope
The front-and-back-page headlines of the Philadelphia Daily News on Monday, Nov, 11, 1985, the day after Pelle Lindbergh – the first European-trained player to win the Vezina Trophy as the NHL’s best goaltender – made a series of confounding decisions which led to him crashing his Porsche into the wall of an elementary school in South Jersey, killing himself and injuring two passengers.
What followed over the next 120 hours was nothing short of a Greek tragedy, played out minute by minute, day by day, by those closest to him and thousands of fans worldwide, until Lindbergh was publicly memorialized ahead of his burial in his native Stockholm.
What can you say about a 26-year-old goaltender who’s been dead far longer than he was alive, and gone infinitely longer than his presence and impact was felt in this city? All of us who were alive to witness his on-ice greatness and the Flyers’ greatness, were made fans for life. Not everyone on the border between Generations X and Y were lucky enough to see a winner their first time introduced to the team and the sport.
Flyers broadcaster and future Hockey Hall of Fame member Gene Hart produced the best speech of his career as Master of Ceremonies for Pelle’s remembrance on Nov. 14, 1985, ahead of a Stanley Cup Finals rematch between the Flyers and visiting Edmonton Oilers. In six minutes he did better than anyone else dared:
I don’t care who you are.
Nobody at 7 years old should have to face the grim reality of loss. No parent or guardian or relative or community leader or doctor should have to discuss in detail to their child medical terms like traumatic brain injury, blood-alcohol content, or the finality of death.
Not for a friend, a neighbor, a classmate, favorite teacher, grandparent, parent, sibling or sports hero.
It should be part of the enduring social contract that young, impressionable, innocent minds should get a pass. I wasn’t so lucky, and neither were hundreds of new Flyers fans, children like me.
I wonder if it’s a common phenomenon among other impressionable kids firmly situated in middle age, for the sense and scope of the tragedy to be magnified as the years progress as it is for me. The Butterfly effect is a real bitch when you start to look at the fullness in the arc of time.
Still, the resilience of children is amazing. Their capacity to absorb bad news and then go right back into their board games, cartoon watching or learning multiplication tables and discovering the mysteries of the Mesozoic Era should be something genetic and retained well into adulthood.
Even if I never succeeded in covering hockey at multiple levels, even if I did have a family of my own, the events of those five days are embedded in my DNA because they occurred at a formative time in life and hockey fandom, so they have to be reckoned with.
It’s better done on the fives and zeros, but how much longer?
Five years ago, upon the 40th anniversary of John Lennon’s murder and the point at which he had been dead as long as he was alive, Paul McCartney admitted to Stephen Colbert that he still dreams of John. But he also said he celebrates October 9 – John’s birthday – instead of mourning December 8.
That’s a tough sell. John had 8 years in the Beatles and another 10 as a solo artist and counterculture icon. Pelle had exactly 4 years and 9 days from his first NHL start until the day he drew his final breath. He would have been 66 years old on May 24.
It is difficult to fathom celebrating a birthday of someone who, even if he had miraculously survived the accident, may not even be here today. Such is the fate of those who pack a tremendous amount of living into a short period of time.
It’s not all grim. Sometimes I have a demented laugh to myself thinking that Pelle never got to know a world where the Miami Vice Theme wasn’t the no. 1 song on the pop charts in the US. Or that he never knew about Rick Astley. Or Milli Vanilli. Harlem Shake. Gangnam Style. He’d probably be the first goof on the dance floor at a relative or former teammate’s wedding lip synching and dancing to “Who Let the Dogs Out?”
As with all lasting grief, there are repeated rituals.
I haven’t lived in New Jersey but worked there at different periods of my life, so I’ve driven by the site of the former Somerdale Elementary School on multiple occasions. Stood out in the pre-dawn warmth and haze on the 20th. Huddled in the bleakness and pouring rain on the 30th. Stood stone still in the silent predawn at 40.
On the major anniversaries since the book was published in the United States, I flip open “Behind the White Mask” and start reading from random chapters at random intervals until I’m satisfied I’ve read enough.
Each November 14th, I watch the entire ceremony of remembrance and if I have time, break up the interlude into another portion of the day to watch the whole game itself.
The VHS was liberated from Long-time WIP radio host and St. Joe’s Prep classmate Joe DeCamara’s parents’ house in June of 1996 and I’m never giving it back; it is simply safer with me than anywhere else on this planet. Joe knows this. If he’s forgotten, I have no problem retelling. The quality of the recording still holds up decades later as I watch on one of the last surviving Toshiba combo VHS/DVD televisions.
We mourn in our own ways. Some drop pucks. Others drop knowledge.
I'm dropping a 40-year anvil off my shoulders here.
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| Courtesy of Tony Catona |
Every Flyers alumni I talked to over the years admitted that, although they’ve lived a majority of their life since that moment and have gone on to varied levels of success inside and outside the game, they all take some kind of action to pause and remember. Dave Poulin is on record as saying he retains very little from his past as he moves through the seasons of his life, but keeps a picture as a treasured memento.
I’m not on board with this minor online movement to have Pelle’s number retired on Jan. 31 when the Flyers host the Los Angeles Kings. Why then?
1 = Bernie Parent’s number
31 = Pelle Lindbergh’s number
26 = Pelle’s age at the time of his death.
Talk about reading too much into things. Bernie’s gone and the shock still lingers. He’ll have his own night of remembrance next Saturday night. He said all he needed to say when he was tasked with following Hart.
One passage in the heartbroken mentor’s speech still strikes a chord then and now: “When death defeats greatness, we all mourn. But when death defeats youth, we mourn even more.”
The English poet A.E. Houseman wishes he had the brevity and soul of a working-class Montrealer.
Maybe it’s time we all let it go. Even Pelle himself, in a summer 1985 interview from a boat that aired on Hockey Night in Canada 40 years ago, wondered if he would be worth remembering 20 years on.
Pelle’s number was last worn on the sleeve of his teammates in the Spring of 1986, taken out of circulation permanently. It will never be worn and maybe we have to be satisfied with that and move along.
This is nothing you can blame on the corporate restructuring of the franchise. After all, the sainted Mister Snider, his son Jay and others had more than a hand in the decision to handle things quietly. If he wanted to do something different about it, all he had to do was say the word and it would be so. Think about that for more than a second.
It’s sad how longtime fans of this team are constantly sucked into the swirling vortex of nostalgia.
Sam Carchidi won’t stop posting daily pics from the 1970s on social media to sell his book about the 1970s. Key figures on those Cup teams such as Bob Kelly, Don Saleski and Orest Kindrachuk have told me in conversation more than a decade ago when I roamed the press box they desperately hope another Flyers team wins it soon because it’s not healthy to fixate on the distant past.
Those flashy, gritty clubs that caught my attention from the 1980s are four decades past. The Legion of Doom’s peak was 30 years ago, the year I graduated high school. The years before the NHL crashed out in 2004 are, effectively, ancient history.
And if complaining about how the current team skirts the line between the good and bad side of mediocre, so be it. We can sit at the dinner table for the holidays and teach the youngsters. We’ll swap stories -- the good, the great, the bad and the ugly -- including but not limited to this smiling Swede who crossed into our lives, lit it up dramatically, then left us way too soon.
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