Hall of Fame trailblazer Willie O’Ree has put his heart and soul into a lifetime of hockey
The Full 60 with Craig Custance
The Athletic
4.8 • 595 Ratings
🗓️ 22 October 2020
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Willie O'Ree, the first black hockey player in the NHL, joins Craig to promote his new book, Willie: The Game Changing story of the NHL's first black hockey player.
Willie shares many fascinating stories with Craig, including meeting Jackie Robinson twice, once as a kid, and later on when he was in professional hockey and trying out for the Milwaukee Braves baseball club. Plus Willie tells the story of how he came to be involved with the NHL's diversity program, he re-lives his first NHL game and goal for the Bruins vs the Habs, and how he didn't realize he broke the NHL's color barrier, until he read it in the newspaper the next ay. Plus Willie pays tribute to the great Herb Carnegie and his family, which has kept him going, for 85 years and counting!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Full 60 featuring Craig Custins and presented by The Athletic. |
| 0:10.7 | Each week we'll dive into the biggest stories in hockey while bringing in unique voices to entertain and explain all aspects of the game. |
| 0:19.3 | Hey, this is Craig and welcome to this week's episode of |
| 0:22.3 | The Full 60. It is an absolute honor to introduce our guests this week. It is Willie O'Ree, |
| 0:29.7 | who is author of a book that I finished this week, fantastic book called Willie, the game-changing |
| 0:36.9 | story of the NHL's first black player. |
| 0:40.4 | Mr. O'Re, thank you so much for doing this. I am so excited to have you on the show today. |
| 0:45.2 | Oh, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. |
| 0:48.2 | Oh, where to start. This book, I mean, it's a lifetime of stories, but how did the idea come together? |
| 0:55.9 | When did you first kind of get the inkling? |
| 0:57.9 | This was something you wanted to do. |
| 0:59.6 | Well, Michael McKinley, who was the author, and we were involved in a children's book, the autobiography of Willie O'Rea, small children's |
| 1:15.6 | book. |
| 1:16.6 | The ages 8 to 12, 8 to 13. |
| 1:18.6 | And then Michael asked me if I ever thought of giving thought to another adult book, you know, |
| 1:26.6 | which would go in detail with your life and |
| 1:32.0 | your hockey career and everything else that had been going on. And I said, well, I, yeah, |
| 1:40.3 | yeah, it'd be nice. So it kind of went in one ear and out the other. |
| 1:45.0 | And then he finally got back to me and said, yeah, well, he said, let's do it. |
| 1:51.0 | So then I got together with my agent, Eustace King, and said that Michael McKinney is interested in doing this book. |
| 2:00.0 | So we got it going and we started talking on the phone for hours and, you know, a lot of |
| 2:05.1 | questions and and I'd sent them material. |
... |
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