Ackles' love of game ran deep
Chances are that each of us who heard the news of Bob Ackles death last Sunday reacted in a different way. For those of the written press, the least surprising detail of his last moments, is that the President of the BC Lions has docked his boat on Bowen Island this morning to pick up a newspaper and coffee.
Whatever else, it was May, Ackles is an inveterate reader, someone who loved the craft and has responded enthusiastically to the impact of words. When these words are not to his liking, Ackles let you know. It would be on the phone to the editor, or approaching a journalist during a pre-game step by step and correct the offending party. It May were the president, as Harry Truman, but the buck stopped at his office, he took care of business unpleasant itself. "That's how it used to be: Bob rapport with the media," said Lui Passaglia, 25 years Lion and the team of the former director of community relations. "He was picking up the phone and a journalist immediately say he agreed or disagreed with him. That's how much he loved the franchise and organization. If he felt the club was not represented in the good way, he would take it upon himself to deal with the matter. " The report cut both ways, however. Ackles not only a store of information in his head, he had a memory full of it to the team offices in downtown Vancouver and Surrey. His work space is like entering a sports museum - signed footballs, jerseys, photographs, paintings. A journalist can get so diverted and fascinated by the reflection on the amount of Emmitt Smith, signed jersey or Dan Marino autographed football could command on eBay than I could forget why he went to the office of president in the first place. If you have trouble coming with biological material on an old lion who had just passed, Ackles withdraw from a program, for example, 1961, leaves through it and find relevant information. In 2006, he hired Simon Fraser communications Rosalyn young trainee to go through some of box and catalogue of materials for posterity. It took a year to deal with things in Ackles office. It is still a memory waiting to be opened. He kept all the letters written importance to him on its 55-year career in football, programs, ticket stubs, pennants, mounds of scrapbooks and clippings. There are probably a little under the byline of the Vancouver Sun, circled in screaming red ink. "I do all of this paper, a great mountain, piles of it sitting on the ground," said Young. "It was the easiest way to do so. It would be fair and laughing at the scene. It was an amazing collection, and it was an amazing man, because he always had respect for everyone, even the smallest trainee. This is a show of respect, I'll take with me in my life. " When Ackles returned to Vancouver in 2002 after 16 years of absence, he was appalled that most of the team's history was simply thrown into the dustbin, during years of neglect under the ownership Murray Pezim, Bill Comire and Nelson Skalbania. Equipment man Ken (Kato) Kasuya would pick up the phone and long-time BC high school football coordinator Larry Reda, who perform a rescue operation and go through the trash to treasure. "We have maybe 30 per cent of what should be there, of historic importance, after all these [55] years of the BC Lions," Passaglia figures. Reda, another rat pack football whose collection is nothing but a Ackles, has recently met with the President Lions to outline the idea of a place where men, women and children can look with big eyes on a football field of evolutionary process in the province - Annis Stukus's whistle, by Bailey's cleats, Passaglia of kicking start. The exhibition will be on display at B.C. Football Hall of Fame, a concept landless, a building or construction funds but a dream that Ackles set in motion with the first meeting of a board of directors just three days before his death. The room, always on the horizon, celebrate the achievements of football immortal, amateur and professional. It is a last legacy left by the little man who was a giant in our history of sport. |
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