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Great One mourns 'Ace' Bailey touched the life of Gretzky, among others
Updated: Thursday September 13, 2001 2:43 AM
By Terry Jones, SLAM! Sports EDMONTON -- Wayne Gretzky's voice broke as he spoke. "Ace Bailey always used to laugh at me on the plane. We became great friends. We traveled to Europe together. He was always making fun of me on the planes. My biggest nightmare just came true. To him." Keith Weaver and his wife Betty were in Lloydminster, Sask., watching the stunning footage from New York of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center. Not long after their phone rang. Garnet "Ace" Bailey, they were told, had been on that plane. "We got a call from Ace's wife, Kathy," said Weaver, one of the Edmonton Oilers owners who married the sister of Bailey, a former Edmonton Oil Kings junior, WHA Edmonton Oiler and NHL Oiler scout. "My wife is just devastated. We're all just devastated. We were devastated watching, thinking that this could happen in our world without any thought of it hitting home like it has." Bailey, 53, is survived by two other sisters, Melissa Kay of Calgary and Sheila Young of England. Weaver said everybody who knew Bailey knew the way he approached life. "He was one of those guys you have a hard time fathoming getting old," he said. "Now he's not going to." Bailey, the director of pro scouting for the Los Angeles Kings, was a passenger on United Airlines Flight 175 along with his protege, U.S. scout Mark Bavis.
Bailey played a part in Gretzky's development, basically adopting him in the one year they both spent in the WHA. "He was such a great guy," Gretzky said. "I'm still in shock. I talked to his son, Todd. It was tough. Ace was very close to his son. He was his only child." Gretzky said he was affected on several fronts by what happened in New York. "Ace was always bragging to me what a good young scout Mark Bavis had become. I know he idolized Ace." But it went beyond that. "Mark Janssens, who used to play for New York, Hartford and Anaheim, was supposed to start work in the Trade Center [yesterday]. My wife and I are friends with Mark and his wife. The first thing we did was phone them. He'd taken the subway. He was walking out of the subway when he saw the plane hit the building." Gretzky said he has a friend who owns a business with 400 employees in the building. Bailey lived in a north Boston suburb, having remained there after starting his NHL career in 1968-69 with the Bruins, winning two Stanley Cups. In an 11-year, 568-game career in the NHL, he scored 107 goals and 171 assists with 633 penalty minutes. He was in his eighth year with the Kings after 13 years with the Oilers organization as a scout and coach. Bailey was with the Oilers for their five Stanley Cups and his move to Los Angeles followed Gretzky. "He meant so much to all of us," Oilers general manager Kevin Lowe said. "You will be hard-pressed to find anyone who hasn't been touched by his incredible personality. But he meant the most to Wayne. He was the one guy on that WHA team Wayne really embraced." So much of Bailey's career revolved around Edmonton. "It was a bad day," said Bill Hunter, who has been having some of those lately, battling cancer. "I lost one of my players today." Bailey played for Hunter's Oil Kings in their Memorial Cup days from 1964-65 to 1966-67. "He was highly volatile," Hunter said. "He took some penalties and sometimes you were reluctant to put him on the ice in the last three or four minutes of a game. But so many times, he'd take one of those penalties and come back and score you the winning goal so you'd forgive him. "He was a beautiful skater. He was built like an ice cream cone. Big shoulders. Small waist. And the gals loved him. It's so hard to sit in this hospital bed and watch that plane fly into that building and find out one of your old players was on the plane." Gretzky was asked how he will remember Bailey, given the numbing video of that plane crashing into the World Trade Center. "I'm going to imagine Ace up out of his seat fighting those guys," Gretzky said. "I'm going to imagine Ace fighting to the end."
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