Bomber greats return to huddle

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/04/2010 (5752 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

They gather regularly around restaurant tables the way other older Winnipeg guys with things in common tend to do, even if it’s only being retired.

Except these men have been lunching together every week for 20 years at the Assiniboine Hotel.

And these guys were once the men that almost every boy in the city wanted to be.

Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

So there they were again last Tuesday at the Assiniboine Hotel.

And there I was, the 12th man sitting with 11 of the Boys of Autumn. They are — with playing years in parenthesis — Paul Cholakis (1949-50), Bill Todd (1951-53), Buddy Tinsley (1950-60), Steve Patrick (1952-64), Nick Miller (1953-64), Gordie Rowland (1954-63), Ron Meadmore (1955-61) Ken Ploen (1957-67), Henry Janzen (1959-65), Roger Hamelin (1961-69) and Noel Dunford (1963-68).

Unlike the here-one-season, gone-the-next Bombers of recent decades, I didn’t need a program to remember what numbers a lot of them wore even though it’s been decades since they played.

Ken Ploen, wore 89 when he first arrived, and later, of course, 11. Henry Janzen was 32, Nick Miller was 24, Gordie Rowland was 27. And Steve Patrick, the lunch’s ringleader, was 63. If they were appreciative that I still remembered after all those years, they were too shy to say so.

"What do you usually talk about?" I asked the table collectively.

"Whatever’s the topic of the day," one of them said.

The topic that day — or at least the one I introduced — was the signing of quarterback Buck Pierce, the fiercely competitive but injury-prone former B.C. Lion who is already a symbol of hope for the new season.

Miller seemed to speak for the table when he said Pierce’s grit impressed him. What I had intended to ask was what they thought about the controversy surrounding the building of a new stadium.

We didn’t get around to that, though. I didn’t want to interrupt all the storytelling, all the kidding and the laughter that went with it.

Stories like the time Tinsley got mad at his teammate, Charlie Shepherd, and dangled him out a hotel window in Vancouver.

Then there was the time Rowland got his bell rung so loudly in a game in Montreal and ended up sitting on the Alouettes’ bench.

Then, in a quiet moment, Gordie changed the mood.

He showed me a team photo of the Grey Cup champion Winnipeg Blue Bombers he’d brought along, and began pointing out the eight players who will never laugh and do lunch again with the guys again.

Later, it was Roger Hamelin who suggested why the old Bombers are still close among themselves and with the people who watched them play.

It was an era when guys who played for the Bombers usually had day jobs, too, and played here season after season. That’s why I never forgot their numbers.

There was something else, though.

The core of the Canadians on the team were Winnipeg boys. As are most of the guys who still gather each Tuesday to break bread and keep the Bomber faith.

But it’s only in relatively recent years that the football club has embraced its alumni and the tradition and spirit it evokes in its fans.

Last week, the importance of the Boys of Autumn was underscored at a pre-season fan forum when the room gave Ploen a standing ovation.

And they played a Bomber website video of Miller’s inspiring salute to the fans and how important they are to the players.

There is a new front office, a new head coach, a new quarterback and a new sense of hope in Bomberland this year and the Boys of Autumn seem to sense that.

I think that hope is personified in Pierce, a young man who plays football the way these old men used to.

Full speed and for the fun of it.

What’s more — and this is me talking again — there’s also a sense of purpose and professionalism with the people who operate the team that we haven’t had in years, maybe decades.

That’s what I find encouraging anyway.

But that’s not the only thing that gives the Boys of Autumn hope.

Before I left them Tuesday, I noticed there was a pile of coins on the table.

I asked about it.

"That’s more money than everyone made when we were playing," one of them quipped.

Actually, it turned out that every Tuesday the guys all plunk down a couple of bucks to buy a joint chance at winning the lottery.

That’s also what gives them hope.

And that’s what gives them another reason to show up every week.

Winning big one more time.

As a team.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca