50 Years of Hawkey – Team Historian Andy Kemper
Around the time of the Neely Cup training camp in late August/early September, I met with Josh Critzer at a Starbucks to discuss the team’s plans for celebrating the 50th Anniversary Season of the Portland Winterhawks and what I could do to help. There were some grand plans being discussed, some materialized, and some didn’t, but it was the groundwork for what I feel turned out to be a very successful marketing effort executed to do proper homage to the occasion.
One of the things we discussed was me putting in writing what 50 years of Winterhawks hockey means to me. I have a unique perspective on the organization, having been around since day one, and have progressed from fan to broadcaster to historian, and for the most part these days, back to fan.
We talked about this a few times during the season but there was so much going on with the Top 50 players and other events, this fell to the back burner. The main culprit for the procrastination falls on me, not knowing how to broach the topic, as accepting the team has played 50 seasons meant that I had to accept that the 10-year-old kid who got obsessed with the team, junior hockey, and everything about it, was approaching, if my math is correct, his 60th birthday.
I don’t feel 60, I don’t act 60, and most people (perhaps out of kindness) say that I don’t look 60. But time is still the infinite jest.
Now that we are closing in on about a month since Ryan Miller scored the final goal of the 50th season in the closing seconds of a first round playoff defeat, I have had some time to reflect on what the 50 years mean to me and I finally feel that I can do proper justice to detail what has truly been a staple in my life, a cornerstone of who I am and what I am.
This is not going to focus on the players or the on-ice product much, as those are ancillary to the discussion. That is the backdrop to what, in the end, revolves around the primary theme of five decades – family.
It starts with my parents, two hard-working, middle-class individuals who were working in the early stages of the high-tech boom in Oregon at Tektronix. I was born and raised in Cornelius as the youngest of five children, four boys and one girl. My parents involved us in everything – camping, hunting, fishing, and sports. When I was very young, hockey was not a huge part of my life. I was exposed to the sport, having gone to Portland Buckaroo games with my family, and with my sister being involved in a relationship and eventually marrying a guy who played with the Junior Buckaroos in the early 70’s. My father was a baseball guy, having pitched and coached at the Semi-Pro level. Baseball is still a passion of mine – Go Cubs!
When the Winter Hawks (two words) moved to Portland in 1976, my parents bought tickets for opening night and brought the three youngest kids (ages 10-12) with them. The Hawks won that night 7-5 over the New Westminster Bruins for their first victory as the new franchise after losing their first seven road games. That game was played on October 10, 1976, my parents’ 23rd wedding anniversary.
We were hooked.
In those days, the upper level of the VMC was General Admission seating, and fans would get in line early to race to get to their preferred seat as soon as the doors opened. For my family, it was Section 54, Row E, right above the rail. There was another family who also liked that row, and whichever family got there first would make sure that both families’ seats were held. That family was the Ickes family. Don Ickes would become a huge contributor to the Hawks Booster Club, and the Most Popular Player award presented by the Boosters is named in his honor.
After the first season, the Ickes and Kemper families approached the Winter Hawks office and convinced them to reserve the first two rows in Section 54 to be sold as reserved seats with the commitment to buy season tickets for the seats we wanted. They agreed, and a 49-year (and counting) stretch of season tickets for my family began. Eventually, they made the first 10 rows of the upper-level reserved and later the entire upper-level, and my family moved to what were my parents’ permanent seats in Section 52 Row E.
The first decade of 1976-1986 was incredibly formative for me as I was maturing from a 10-year-old through my teens, and going to hockey games had a huge impact on who I became. Living in rural Washington County meant that not a lot of my friends and classmates knew or cared much about hockey. My family got more involved with the team, getting to know some of the players away from the rink and billeting for a couple of seasons from 79-82.
As a person not much younger than the players, it opened doors for me to grow closer to the team and the sport, and the VMC is where I grew up. Watching the games, often doing my own play-by-play in my seat, and then spending the intermissions roaming the concourse. The concourse was like a playground – concessions, kids playing mini-sticks in the corners, and as I grew older, lots of cute girls.
Starting about 1984, I kept seeing one of those cute girls at nearly every game. She would pass me on the concourse with her friends but never interacting. It was early in the 1985-86 season when I finally summoned the courage to speak with her, the then Vicki Mitchell. That grew into a relationship that eventually led to two young kids tying the knot in August of 1987. Vicki’s parents were also season-ticket holders, and when we got engaged, our parents thought it would be fun for us to marry at center ice before a game…but it never worked out. Vicki and I are quickly approaching our 39th anniversary, and I can’t imagine what my life would be like if we hadn’t met at a Winterhawks game.
Once married, Vicki and I got our own season tickets in the lower Northwest corner of the VMC, Section 10. This was equidistant between my parents in Section 52 and her parents in Section 15, not wanting to show favoritism. We didn’t have a lot of money, but that was an expense that we just couldn’t give up. From that seat, I could still hear my father voicing his displeasure after a bad call…his voice resonating over others.
My father passed away from complications caused by cancer in 1992 at the age of 61. My Mother kept attending games with us, my brother, and my sister after his passing. She passed away last summer at the age of 89, and while she stopped attending games a few years earlier, she would still follow her boys via online streaming.
The family theme would be continued through their grandchildren. My daughter Aiden was born in September 2000 and attended her first Winterhawks game three weeks later. She, even more so than me, has grown up with this organization. Her cousin, Keegan, was born four months later, and his sister, McKenna, two years after that. Those three grew up in the VMC and Rose Garden, sharing games with their Grandma Barb. Grandma taught them the game as much as anyone, and they always marveled at her ability to wish a shorty into a reality, as it happened a lot. She would say, “c’mon boys, we need a shorty” and the team would deliver. Aiden and I still point to the sky and thank Grandma after the Hawks score a much-needed shorthanded goal.
When Aiden was just four, I was given the opportunity to join Dean Vrooman in the broadcast booth, and with both Vicki and Aiden’s blessings, this introduced me to a new family – the broadcasting family. Working with Dean, and later, his son, Todd, John Kirby, Kevin Flink, Larry Lester, and so many others was like giving me the golden ticket to the Hawkey chocolate factory.
Having access and nurturing relationships within the hockey community not only with the Winterhawks staff and players, but the WHL league office, opposing teams’ broadcasters and staff, the players families, NHL scouts, and fans from across the WHL are enduring memories that I will always have and have resulted in lifelong friendships.
When Scooter stepped away, and I moved into the play-by-play seat, I had the opportunity of filling a young fan’s dream in Section 52 of being the voice of the franchise. Unfortunately, those first two to three seasons behind the mic coincided with the lowest point of the team in both on-ice and off-ice results. It was a struggle – juggling the game calls with a full-time job and a young family – and there were a lot of days I felt like walking away, but I couldn’t do it.
I felt a commitment and responsibility to the Winterhawks family to stay, as I knew, eventually, the team would recover and return to its former glory. They did…and the stretch of seasons from 2009-2015 made my decision to remain a happy one. Being as close as I was to those teams and working with Todd Vrooman was special, as I think we delivered a broadcast quality that matched the team’s results on the ice. Building relationships with Mike Johnston, Travis Green, Kyle Gustafson, Rich Campbell, Rob Gagne, Matt Bardsley, Graham Kendrick, Lisa Hollenbeck, Lesley Dawson, Jeremy Imig, Kelley Robinett, Doug Piper, and so many others solidified even more the Hawkey family for me.
Having those years made it easier for me to step away from the booth in 2019. It was time to watch hockey with my family, and I am glad that I was able to be with them in our seats in Section 66, especially the last few years with my mom.
When I talked with the front office about leaving, they could have easily said “thank you” and let me walk away. Instead, they gave me an opportunity to continue to be a small part of the organization in the Team Historian role and have done more than they should for me, Vicki, and Aiden. I am forever grateful for what they have done and continue to do.
If you have made it this far, dear readers, I commend you.
Let me close by saying that without family, I wouldn’t be where I am today in relation to the Winterhawks organization. Had my parents not decided to go to the first game or decided not to include their children in going, my life would have been drastically different. My family would be drastically different.
I’m ready for the next 50 years.
I’ll close with some words written by Neil Peart, the drummer for my other life passion – the band Rush, from the song “Headlong Flight”:
All the journeys of this great adventure
It didn’t always feel that way
I wouldn’t trade them because I made them
The best I could, and that’s enough to say
Some days were dark
I wish that I could live them all again
Some nights were bright
I wish that I could live them all again
All the highlights of that headlong flight
Holding on with all my might
To what I felt back then
I wish that I could live it all again
–
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