Tales of the Komets

© 2007 Blake Sebring. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 3/20/2007

ISBN: 978-1-4343-0187-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4678-2466-8 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2007902129

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

Dedication

Foreward

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Dedication

To Douglas and E.J. Sebring – I couldn’t have asked for better parents.

To all the Komets who always remembered they were playing a game, and that it was supposed to be fun.

Thanks to Linda Austin, Chuck Bailey, Steve Beier, Rick Bireley, Dave Benson, Tom Berry, Natalia Bethea, Ellie Bogue, Richard Brosal, Randy Brown, Bob and Murph Chase, Jerry Clark, Ashley Combs, Don Converset, Dan Cortez, Tony Davis, Don Detter, Pete DiPrimio, Steve Doherty, Shawn Dundon, Ken Dutton, Tony Engelberg, Bill Franke, David Franke, Joe Franke, Michael Franke, Stephen Franke, Bud Gallmeier, Don Graham, Jim Grant, Jody Grantham, Rich Griffis, Connie Haas-Zuber, Nancy Halabruda, Carl Hartup, Reggie Hayes, Brett Hess, Keith Hitchens, Kent Hormann, Kerry Hubartt, Kent Kasey, Sheryl Kreig, Brad Jones, Linda Leslie, Steve Linsenmayer, Colin Lister, Gayle and Eddie Long, Randi Marcom, Andy McGowan, Mandy Miller, Jerry Nuerge, Matt Pallister, Terry Pembroke, Jack Prindle, Rick Rimelspach, Ted Rolf, Win Rood and the off-ice officials, Ed Rose, Chad Ryan, Brad Saleik, Brendan Savage, Larry Schmitt, Melody Schmitt-Foreman, Duane Schuman, Bill Scott, Pam Shebest, Joe Sheibley, Argil Shock, Scott Sproat, Elbert Starks, John Stearns, Betty Stein, Tammy Steinforth, Mike Stuckey, Wade Stuckey, Don Tanner, Ryan Taylor, Sue Tilbury, Mitzi Toepfer, Brian Tombaugh, Darrell Tomlinson, Rick Tomlinson, Ken and Vi Ullyot, Barb Wachtman, Steve Warden, Brian Werger, Laura Weston-Elchert, Ken Wiegmann, Ruth Wiegmann, Mark Wilkins, Steve Wissman and Dick and Flossie Zimmerman. And The News-Sentinel copy desk which has saved my bacon more than I care to admit.

Also to my brother Brad and Trever, Keaton, Lars, Preston and Gabe for providing inspiration.

Foreward

Terry Pembroke played 864 games for Fort Wayne, the most of any Komet. Bud Gallmeier covered almost all of them for The News-Sentinel during his 35-year tenure.

When the author asked me to write the foreword to this book, I, being cursed with the need to be cute and cool, thought of many ways to extract a smile from the reader. Instead, I chose to relay this story as it happened.

The flamboyant sportswriter Bud Gallmeier and I were making a huge dent in the inventory of a local beer joint one evening when he offered this observation:

"Pembroke, you know I have finally come to the conclusion that I am mortal.

Who will be here to aggravate when I’m gone?  With the exception of a few in my profession, the product has become generic. Reed (Bob Reed), Weigman

(Carl) and I came up in a different era. This generation seems to lack the compassion, the drive and basically the guts to write what they see, and what they believe. Having said that, there is a kid coming that is capable of picking up the torch."

That kid was Blake Sebring.

Blake, from that moment on you became a journalist in my mind. Good enough for Gallmeier, blessed for all time.

Looking over your career to date, I am sure he would be proud.

Terry Pembroke

Dec. 5, 2006

Introduction

As the commissioner of the United Hockey League for the past 10 years, it is an honor to write an introduction for Blake Sebring’s book on the Fort Wayne Komets. Those who have followed the unprecedented history of professional hockey in Fort Wayne will undoubtedly find this book to be as riveting as anything you have ever read about this great game.

The Fort Wayne Komets have helped the great city of Fort Wayne be recognized by people across the nation. When Fort Wayne is brought up in any conversation, you know almost immediately someone will say, "That’s where the Fort Wayne Komets play, isn’t it?’’ 

We all know about basketball in Indiana, but when it comes to hockey there is only one team that ever comes to mind, the Fort Wayne Komets. The fact is there will never be another city in North America that can come close to the great tradition Fort Wayne has with the Komets. The United Hockey League is a far better league with the Komets as a part of it. Yes, it may be minor professional hockey but in Fort Wayne there is nothing minor about what this great hockey team and it’s ownership mean to Fort Wayne and the fans.

So sit down and spend some time reflecting and enjoying what this great book stands for and relish what Komets hockey has done for the city of Fort Wayne and the entire region. I know this wonderful book will help you understand what I have come to realize in a very short time compared to the 55 years the Komets have been playing hockey in Fort Wayne.

Richard Brosal

President/CEO

United Hockey Leauge

Jan. 23, 2007

Chapter 1

Coming to Fort Wayne

The biggest bluff

The Fort Wayne Komets have lasted 55 years, but they almost didn’t last five minutes.

When plans for the new Allen County War Memorial Coliseum were announced, Ernie Berg, Harold Van Orman and Ramon Perry figured maybe a hockey team would work in Fort Wayne, even though the building was to be used primarily for the NBA’s Fort Wayne Pistons. Berg and Van Orman met with the International Hockey League’s Board of Governors in Toledo.

At the end of the Fort Wayne presentation, some board members inquired about the Fort Wayne group’s financial status. Van Orman assured the board that was no problem, pulling his wallet out and putting it on the table, backed with the bold statement, ``Do you want a fee now?’’

The cost for an expansion team was $2,500.

``Fortunately,’’ Van Orman would say later, ``they didn’t ask to see our money. I think I had about $11 in my wallet. If they had asked to see our money, we were done.’’

That bluff turned out pretty well. Since 1952, Fort Wayne has the third-most consecutive seasons of minor-league hockey in the country. Hershey, Pa., has had a minor-league team since 1938, Springfield, Mass., since 1940. Rochester, N.Y., is fourth in minor-league tenure with a team since 1956; Muskegon is fifth with hockey since 1960. 

The Komets have always been the one team everyone in the Summit City roots for, passing 250,000 in attendance in each of the last 15 seasons, something only Hershey, Rochester and Milwaukee have accomplished. Maybe that’s because the Komets have always been Fort Wayne’s own team, a franchise we didn’t have to share with everyone else, the one team that has lasted. It’s also because of players who came back year after year and built continuity, and the more than 80 who made Fort Wayne their permanent home when they retired. The Komets became a part of the community and the community adopted them.

The Komets’ first star

When the Komets started in 1952, the first player who caught everyone’s attention was 18-year-old rookie Eddie Long. The Ottawa native’s hustle, speed and toughness made him a threat all over the ice. That doesn’t mean there weren’t a few problems getting started.

``I got $95 a week, and for the first month I had headaches after every game and they didn’t know what was wrong with me,’’ Long said. ``This was the first time I had played in a heated rink, and it took me a while to adjust.’’

A smoking good deal

When Ken Ullyot first came to Fort Wayne in the summer of 1958, the Komets were on the brink of going out of business. They had lost $87,000 the season before, a tremendous amount of money in minor league hockey at that time.

Ullyot quickly turned things around, taking the Komets to the playoffs in 1958-59 and to the Turner Cup Finals in 1959-60 with the best record in Fort Wayne history. He later coached the team to a pair of Turner Cup titles and was the general manager on another championship team.

You’re probably thinking that must have been a heck of a contract that Ullyot signed during that 1958 meeting with Komets’ owners Harold Van Orman and Ray Perry. The contract was actually the back of a pack of cigarettes, signed by Ullyot and Van Orman who was a constant smoker. There were no monetary terms or even the length of the contract mentioned.

``He said to me, `We’ll shake hands on it,’ so we shook,’’ Ullyot said. ``They were two of the most honest men I ever met. They kept their word on everything.’’

It also turned out to be the only contract Ullyot ever signed with the Komets.

How did I end up here?

Terry Pembroke played 864 games in a Fort Wayne uniform, the most by any player ever. He won Turner Cups in 1965 and 1973, played in a team-record eight all-star games, and his No. 5 jersey now hangs from the rafters.

But how his Fort Wayne career started is quite a story.

``I had been a discipline problem with the Rangers, and they threatened to send me out. I really thought I was going to Fort Worth, and never really paid much attention. I was just happy to be out of New York. I step off the plane and it’s the middle of a December blizzard. I remember thinking, `How in the Hell can it snow this much in Texas?’ ’’

Ironically, Pembroke lived in Fort Worth for a while after he retired. He continues to live in Texas, now in La Grange, infamous home of the Chicken Ranch from the play and movie ``Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.’’

He’s not sure how he ended up there, either.

Retired Komets numbers

5 Terry Pembroke

6 Lionel Repka

11 Len Thornson

12 Reggie Primeau

16 Eddie Long

18 Robbie Laird

26 Colin Chin

30 Robbie Irons

40 Bob Chase

58 Ken Ullyot

59 Colin Lister

77 Steve Fletcher

No number Bud Gallmeier

Live from Radio Rinkside

Though Bob Chase may be the most famous person in Fort Wayne, how he came to the Summit City and WOWO is a story that will surprise most people who know him only as the voice of the Komets for more than five decades. It sure surprised him.

``This friend of mine was getting married, and I was in his wedding party,’’ Chase recalled. "I had to run back and do a Noon news schedule for the Northern Michigan student station, and his aunt from Fort Wayne heard me. She was a personal friend of the general manager of the time, and when she came back to Fort Wayne she recommended he take a look at me.’’

When Chase arrived for his interview in July 1953, it was to be a general on-air announcer, not a sportscaster. WOWO already had a hockey play-by-play man in Ernie Ashley. Because Ashley was from Minnesota, Chase assumed he was a hockey guy, but Ashley was more of a basketball fan so the two worked side-by-side for the Komets’ second season in 1953-54.

``Basically I was his color man,’’ Chase said. ``He was doing IU football at the time so in the fall when the season started, I would do the games and Ernie would race back from Bloomington, run into the coliseum and just flat grab the mike from me and start going. He felt threatened, I guess.’’

Maybe Ashley knew what was coming as he took a job as a station manager in Columbus, Ohio, in January 1954.

A few years after that, WOWO and Chase almost lost the Komets’ broadcasting rights. With the team facing financial problems, WKJG’s Hilliard Gates offered the Komets $50 per game.

``We just finally prevailed when we proved to them that the signal WKJG had would not have served their market,’’ Chase said.

At 55 seasons, only Foster Hewitt with the Toronto Maple Leafs and Vince Scully with the Los Angeles Dodgers can top Chase’s 54-season tenure with the Komets. Neither of those two has meant nearly as much to his city as Chase.

How times have changed

After playing with the Detroit Red Wings, Hartley McLeod was on his way back down through the minors when he suffered a leg injury in Buffalo.

``I was 29 or 30, and as soon as you get injured they send you down,’’ McLeod said. ``I wanted to head as far South as I could get, and this was the furthest South they had a hockey team in those days.’’

McLeod played four seasons with the Komets before finding another job in hockey, as a linesmen and referee. You’d think a former Komet might get a little respect as an official in Fort Wayne, wouldn’t you?

``They hung me in effigy,’’ he said. ``Ken Ullyot did that. They had a big dummer and put my referee uniform on it and hung is from the ceiling. He didn’t like referees, so that’s how he treated you.

``We had a lot of fun and I never got offended. You have to take your beating when you are refereeing. I don’t know why he did it. I guess he thought I was refereeing bad. Now we laugh and joke about it.’’

``Miracle’’ memories

Before they came to the Komets, Mark Wells and Steve Janaszak were members of the 1980 United States hockey team that won the Olympic Gold Medal in Lake Placid, the ``Miracle on Ice’’ story that was made into a movie in 2004.

``I know the ending, we all know the ending, but even more than that I know the process,’’ said Janaszak, the team’s back-up goaltender to Jim Craig. ``I lived through how that was all put together, and they take this story and in two hours pull all those emotions out of me.’’

The movie was particularly moving for Wells, a defenseman who was shipped out to minor league teams several times before being recalled a week before the Olympics. He scored two goals and played a vital defensive role during the tournament, but the movie helped him find peace with how he was treated by Olympic coach Herb Brooks.

``The movie was so accurate that it made me feel like I got a monkey off my back,’’ he said. ``I understand him now more than I ever did, even though I talked to him for years. Once you see the movie, you’ll understand where I come from and what we went through as players. He tried to push us to a level beyond what we knew, and the results show what happened.’’

Wells played 17 games for the Komets during the 1981-82 season which turned out to be his last as a player. Janaszak was a goaltender with the Komets during the 1980-81 season.

``I got goose bumps watching (the movie), and some tears, too,’’ Wells said.

Just the way the fans felt when it happened.

Komet Olympians

2006: Konstantin Shafranov, Kazakhstan

2002: Igor Bondarev, Latvia; Konstantin Simchuck, Andrei Srubko, Igor Chibirev, Ukraine; Len Soccio, Germany; Vladimir Tsyplakov, Oleg Mikulchik, Andrei Mezin, Sergei Stas, Belarus.

1998: Konstantin Shafranov, Kazakhstan; Vladimir Tsyplakov, Sergei Stas, Belarus.

1994: Wally Schreiber, Canada; Jim Burton, Rob Doyle, Austria.

1992: Dan Ratushny, Canada; Wally Schreiber, Canada; Viacheslav Butsayev, Unified Team; David Tretowicz, Ray Leblanc, United States.

1988: John Blue, United States; Dan Ratushny, Wally Schreiber; Todd Strueby, Serge Roy, Chris Felix, Bob Joyce, Canada.

1984: David Jensen, Bob Mason, United States.

1980: Mark Wells, Steve Janaszak, United States.

Wells and Janaszak won gold medals in 1980, Ratushny won silver in 1992, Schreiber won silver in 1992 and 1994, and Butsayev won a gold medal in 1992.

You’re my best friend

When Keli Corpse and Brent Gretzky played for the Komets in 2000-01, they were fast friends who created trouble together on the ice and often doubled up on the drive to the rink. How they met was a much different story.

Gretzky was 20 and Corpse was 19 in 1992 when they squared off with Gretzky representing Belleville and Corpse playing for Kingston in the Ontario Hockey League. Located only 40 miles apart, Belleville-Kingston is one of the biggest rivalries in Canada, and the future teammates heated it up a bit.

``He was always trying to stir the pot,’’ Gretzky said. ``He was a little smart a—on the ice, and he had a target on his back. Ask him about the big brawl he started in Belleville.’’

Corpse was quick to protest his innocence.

``I thought he was being a little too cocky so I started calling him Wayne,’’ Corpse said, after Gretzky’s famous brother who also happened to be Corpse’s favorite player. ``I called it to him for two periods. At the start of the third period, there was a face-off in our zone, and I go, `You going to try to win this one, Wayne?’ He said, `You’re not getting out of this game alive. Coach says so.’ I was like, `Whatever.’ ’’

The game went to overtime which is when Gretzky lost his cool, charging the Kingston bench and spearing someone to spark the brawl – according to Corpse.

``I look over across the ice and their whole bench is coming after me,’’ Corpse said. ``They’ve got like Darren McCarty and guys like that, and we’ve got a pretty little team. A big brawl breaks out. I didn’t see where Larry (Gretzky, as in Larry Loser) went. He probably went to the dressing room and had a coffee.’’

Ten years later, as Corpse was telling the story, Gretzky was laughing so hard he almost hurt himself. He also wasn’t denying it.

As to who won the fight? Whom would you believe? It would just start another argument.

Step on it, Buddy

Long before John Torchetti came to coach the Fort Wayne Komets in 1997, he started his coaching career as an intern with the East Coast Hockey League’s Greensboro Monarchs in 1992. The internship paid nothing so Torchetti needed a job so he could keep his young coaching career alive.

He bought a taxi cab and drove 22 miles to Winston-Salem to search for customers.

``That was the only job I could find that would work around my coaching hours,’’ he said. ``One day I’d leave after the morning skate and work until about 5 p.m., and hustle back to the rink by 5:20 p.m. Then after the game I’d drive back at about 11:15 p.m. and work until 3 or 4 in the morning. I stayed out until I made X number of dollars each night. I always thought if I wanted to be a coach, this was a test I had to pass.’’

It was a tough job. Torchetti developed a reputation as a driver who would go anywhere in the city to find customers, even into the places most drivers would not go. There were often arguments and fights taking place in his back seat. One time a customer pulled a knife on him.

``That’s a mark in my life where you played eight years pro and now you’re driving a cab,’’ Torchetti said. ``I just look at it as you do what you have to do to get by.’’

One time Torchetti was driving two men in the back seat when one fired a shot through the window at a man walking down the