BOSTON, Mass. — Ace Bailey was one of those unstoppable characters with a huge heart and a quick sense of humour.
So when word came that the former NHL hockey player was on board the flight that hit the south tower on Sept. 11, his friends and his wife couldn’t believe it.
“I still haven’t really come to grips with it,” said Bailey’s widow, Katherine.
His real name was Garnet, but everyone called him Ace. Raised in Lloydminster, Saskatchewan, Ace played for the Boston Bruins in the 1970s.
He eventually ended up with the Edmonton Oilers, where he took a young a young Wayne Gretzky under his wing.
“He always worried for me, he treated me like his own son and yet he treated me like a best friend. So I was really lucky, I had a great mentor,” Gretzky says.
Ace was the kind of guy who made a difference on and off the ice, and made a special effort to reach out the sick kids, visiting many children’s hospital through his career.
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“He just had a personality that made them feel welcome and they always went to Ace. He was a kid magnet,” his wife recalls.
Ace was a big kid himself and so his family knew the best way to honour him was to keep helping kids.
In the months after Ace died, Katherine and her sister Barbara started the Ace Bailey Children’s Foundation.
The goal of the foundation was to achieve one of Ace’s dreams – to make the hospital environment friendlier for children and their families.
There are few kid-friendlier things than a jacked up playground like “Ace’s Place” in Floating Children’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.
It’s a million-dollar playroom, free of medical intrusion — a place where kids can retreat, relax and forget for a moment where they are.
One of those kids is Stephanie Spinale, who’s mother Eleanor says Ace’s Place has been a welcome distraction .
“She’s had seven surgeries already, so she knew what to expect,” she said, adding that the playroom helped both her and Stephanie keep their minds on other things.
Money raised by the foundation has also paid for renovations to the neo-natal intensive care unit.
“It’s so fitting that he has a place like this because he’d love to see kids smile, even at the worst of times,” says Gretzky.
The Bailey family hopes to build many more Ace’s Places in order to help kids heal, and to heal themselves.
“I come in here. He here. His spirit is here,” says Katherine, as she remembers a life lived, lost, but never forgotten.
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