A civic treasure

 I was in Seattle the day Eddie Long died.

I was in a city with a hockey team so fresh it still had that new-hockey-team smell, a hockey team that jumped right up and got itself in the playoff mix in just its second season. Kinda like Eddie jumped right up that night when he got his head cracked open, and came out to lead the Komets to victory with his dome all swaddled in bandages like a --

Ah, but isn't that just the way it goes with icons, local and otherwise. You're in another city half a continent away, and you hear one of those icons has passed, and that gets you thinking of hockey. And right off you think of something the icon did a thousand misty years ago,

At some point, see, Eddie became that icon, and then he stayed to become a civic treasure, and somewhere along the line he became Mr. Komet. Maybe it was because of that one aforementioned night that earned him that honorary title; maybe it was just all those years he spent churning up and down his wing on winter nights in the Fort, helping turn a minor-league hockey team into part of the city's very identity.

We had Anthony Wayne and Johnny Appleseed and Komets-With-A-K, Bob Chase spreading the word all up and down the eastern seaboard on WOWO's 50,000 watts.  We had Lenny Thornson and Reg Primeau and Lionel Repka; Merv Dubchak and John Goodwin and Chuck Adamson. And, yes, we had Mr. Komet himself, Eddie Long.

Who was one of the original Komets, and who played 801 games for them between 1952 to 1966, and who scored 425 goals and 852 points for them in all that time. Those were forever numbers in an era when guys got their heads cracked open because they didn't wear helmets, and for whom dropping the gloves was like breathing air, and who played through injuries that shortened their careers with every turn of the blade.

Eddie played a hell of a long time, given all that. He became as permanent a fixture in the Komets lineup, and in Fort Wayne, as the three rivers. And then he stayed, as so many of them did back then, to become literally a permanent fixture in his adopted city, and an ambassador for the franchise he helped build.

So many of those men, those civic treasures, have left us now. Lenny Thornson passed a year-and-a-half ago. Six months ago, Dubchak left us. Lionel Repka, T erry Pembroke, Cal Purinton, George Drysdale: All gone since 2015.

And now Eddie Long, at the age of 90.

So long, Mr. Komet. Thanks for the memories, and the legacy.