newsminer.com

FAIRBANKS — Patrick O’Neill has seen a lot in his 93 years — growing up in Cordova, mining in McCarthy, attending the University of Alaska, being a distinguished pilot in World War II and going on to a distinguished career in the mining industry.

But one of his fondest memories is a barnstorming hockey trip he and his buddies from Fairbanks made through the Lower 48 in the 1930s.

As the athletic manager at the University of Alaska back in the 1930s, O’Neill wore a number of hats. He was responsible for organizing teams, ordering uniforms, scheduling games and maintaining equipment.

“Another of my tasks was keeping the ice rink on campus in good shape,” he said. Every time it snowed, I had a heckuva time finding people to help shovel. Once it was cleared off, there were lots of people who were happy to skate.”

The college hockey squad played against teams from in town.

“Those games were played on the Chena River just downstream from the bridge,” O’Neill said. “I recall lots of games when it was really cold.”

The team also played a few games in Anchorage.

“The temperatures were always warmer, which made it more comfortable for both fans and players,” he recalled. “In addition, the ice seemed faster.”

O’Neill’s exemplary performance with the university squad earned him an invitation to accompany a local hockey team on a barnstorming tour of the Lower 48 during the winter of 1936-37.

“I wasn’t a good enough player to keep up with those guys,” O’Neill said. “Besides my duties as athletic manager, I also handled publicity on the trip.”

That meant O’Neill had to be one town ahead of where the team was playing for much of the trip.

“I didn’t have any experience or training at this sort of thing, however, I found that it came pretty easy for me,” he said. “In addition, the local newspapers in these towns were usually very helpful.”

The trip received no funding from the university, so each player was on his own to either pay his way or raise the money in town.

“That became a problem almost from the start and plagued us throughout the trip,” O’Neill recalled.

A few of those who made the tirp had never been outside of Alaska.

“Everything was new to us — traffic jams and skyscrapers ...,” he said. “One of the big things for me was the elevators.

“We stayed on the 12th floor of the Davenport Hotel in Spokane. At first, I was afraid to take the elevator, but that didn’t last long,” O’Neill continued. “After walking up 12 flights of stairs a couple times, I decided that taking the elevator was worth the risk.”

The players also discovered that there was more to life than just hockey.

“One of the tough things about attending the college back in those days is that the student body was almost all men,” O’Neill said.

“When we got down to the states, there were girls everywhere,” O’Neill said. “We kinda lost focus.”

Coach Doc Hufman tried to get them back on track.

“I remember him saying that ‘if we spent as much time on hockey as we did chasing girls that our won-loss record would be better,’” O Neill said.

Players did anything they could to generate publicity for the team

“We all had fur parkas, which the fans liked a lot,” O’Neill said. “They wanted to see and touch those parkas. We would walk out in the middle of intersections and stop traffic wearing our parkas. They were one of our best publicity tools.”

The team was running low on funds when it reached Minneapolis, where O’Neill had arranged a newspaper interview.

“It dragged on longer than expected,” O’Neill said. “The rest of the team got tired of waiting and told the bus driver to take them back to the hotel in St. Paul.

It took some creativity for O’Neill to get back to the rest of the group.

“I walked into a sporting goods store and struck up a conversation with the guys behind the counter,” O’Neill said. “They eventually gave me a quarter for the bus fare back to the hotel.”

Another adventure was getting home. O’Neill wound up getting $50 sent his way from the Chena Bar in Fairbanks, where he was once employed.

“George Karabelnikoff and I arranged to drive cars from Chicago to Los Angeles. That got us part of the way home, but we were out of money again,” O’Neill said. “I remember adding ketchup to hot water to make ‘tomato soup.’”

The players eventually made their way back to Fairbanks.

“I lost two years of school to go on that trip — the year of 1936-37 for the hockey tour and then the next year to pay off all my debts,” he said.

He doesn’t regret it one bit.

“That trip was a great experience for all of us, but especially for those of us who had never been out of Alaska,” he said.

O’Neill grew up in Cordova in the 1920s. From an early age, he learned that hard work was a simple fact of life. O’Neill worked in his father’s store after school and on weekends. When he was 15, he got a job at a mine in the McCarthy area.

O’Neill recognized that an education could open doors to a life that would be better than 10 hours a day and seven days a week on the ‘business end’ of a pick and shovel.

“I told my Dad that I wanted to go to college,” O’Neill said. “He said that he could not help me because it was the depth of the Great Depression and he was about to lose the store.

“He suggested that I contact his old friend, Charles Bunnell, who had recently started a college in Fairbanks,” O’Neill remembered.

Bunnell said that if I could make enough money in the mines during the summers to cover books and other expenses, I could work as a janitor for my room and board,” O’Neill added. “It was a hand-to-mouth operation, but it worked.”

O’Neill graduated from the university in 1941. He served as a distinguished pilot during World War II and went on to a long and successful career in mining administration.

He celebrated his 93rd birthday in August and resides in Connecticut with his wife, Sandra.

Interested readers can learn more about O’Neill’s life by picking up a copy of his autobiography — “From Snowshoes to Wingtips” — which was published by the University of Alaska Press in 2007.