Orange County Secret Clown Dick Gordon refuses to take another loss to heart–playing the game is about building community. Photo by Isaac Sandlin
By Taylor Sisk
Staff Writer
Whether Dick Gordon is a different guy when outfitted in hockey gear seems to be a matter of debate. According to at least one associate, in everyday life he never shies away from contact and is ever a competitive guy. That’s certainly reflected on the ice. By his own assessment, though, he is different: “Yeah, I’m even slower and less coordinated than I imagine.”
Granted, Gordon isn’t quite as graceful on the ice as he is on the air. And his aggressiveness in the hockey rink might seem at odds with the nice-guy image that’s enticed so many of his guests to lay before him their often very personal stories.
Gordon is the host of “The Story,” which has been broadcasting from WUNC-91.5 in Chapel Hill for right at a year now. “The Story” is an hour-long interview show in which ordinary people tell their extraordinary stories. Among his guests this week was a long-haul trucker who lived in the cab of his truck for six years. Last week he conducted a intensely moving interview with an 84-year-old Korean woman who endured seven years of sexual enslavement by the Japanese Army during World War II, one of perhaps as many as 200,000 so-called “comfort women.” Other guests have included a man who chases solar eclipses and another whose job it is to deliver to family members the news of a soldier’s death.
“The Story” is co-produced by WUNC and American Public Media. It now airs on XM Satellite Radio and is carried by Minnesota Public Radio and New York’s North Country Public Radio network. According to Chris Kohtz, director of national program distribution for American Public Media, the show is now heard on 40 stations in nine states.
Gordon moved to the Triangle in November of 2005. He and his wife, Barbara, live in Chapel Hill (they have two grown daughters).
Of North Carolina, Gordon says, “I’m still learning my way around. I’ve been a couple of times to Asheville, a couple of times to the coast; I’m making my way around the Triangle.” He speaks glowingly of his neighbors and of a general outgoingness.
Further cultivating a sense of belonging are these Sunday nights in Hillsborough, at the Triangle Sportsplex, hitting the ice for the Triangle Adult Hockey League’s Orange County Secret Clowns, a team sponsored by the Orange County Social Club in Carrboro.
Growing up on skates
It’s only 15 minutes till game time, but the Zamboni and its operator are the only things stirring on ice.
A few minutes later, a ref shows. The scoreboard reads 10-3 from the afternoon game, a score better suited for football.
This is hockey in the Triangle, an early-spring Sunday evening, hardly glamorous. A significant other wanders in. A couple of kids and their mother. A half dozen or so total spectators. Apparently it’s a big TV night. No matter.
Five minutes till game time, the Clowns arrive on the ice, loosening up, zagging this way and zigging the other, a few practice shots, ready to stick it to the Beer Nuts, their opponents for this evening. The Nuts do likewise at the other end. Everything seems more deliberate on skates.
“Most of these guys,” Gordon says later, glancing around the post-game locker room, “have played since they were kids; a lot of them come from up North.”
Gordon is himself an Ontario native.
“That guy over there,” Gordon says, motioning to goalie Steve Leonard, age 53, “he was our MVP tonight.” Leonard had fielded god-knows-how-many shots on goal, had hung in like a champ, even mixing it up a bit with some younger, larger Beer Nut no-goodnik.
“He’s the one who got me into this,” Gordon says. Leonard is a political science professor at UNC and was a guest on “The Story.” While there, he asked if Gordon and Greg Kelly, the show’s senior producer, played hockey. Kelly now sits across the room, resting against his locker, half dressed and semi-spent.
“Steve said, ‘Come on out and play with us,'” Gordon continues. “And we went, ‘Hey, right,’ and forgot all about it. But he kept bugging us. And so Greg and I started playing about two or three months ago.
“We grew up on skates, Greg and I. You wouldn’t know it to look at us playing tonight. We played organized hockey from about age 8 on, but up until that time it’s just all frozen ponds — you know, you just grab your sticks and your skates and you go out and play. That was the kind of hockey we played as kids. And we have these NHL dreams all our lives, and here I am 50 and I haven’t quite let go of it yet. I’m hoping a scout will find me.”
Making contact
Though not yet living that dream, Gordon has nonetheless made a pretty nice career for himself.
He covered Canada as a reporter for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for some 20 years, with postings from the Arctic to Ottawa. He then spent three years in Moscow and another three in Delhi as a foreign correspondent.
“I would cover Bosnia out of Moscow,” he says, “and worked in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
I went back to Toronto in ’97 and started doing some hosting there.” Then came his gig as host of “The Connection,” produced at WBUR in Boston and broadcast on more than 60 National Public Radio stations across the country. “I sat down in the chair at ‘The Connection’ in September 2001, like a week after 9/11.”
Then came “The Story.”
WUNC station manager Joan Siefert Rose says the Triangle was ready for a show like “The Story,” and that Gordon was the perfect fit. Why so?
“It’s probably that he’s spent so much of his career as a reporter in the field,” says Rose. “He’s reported from all over the world.” Rose says the stories Gordon seemed to most enjoy were vignettes that illustrated larger issues. “When we [initially] talked with him, we decided on this idea of people whose lives are affected by the news.” Rose says one of Gordon’s greatest strengths is his ability to draw people out.
“He’s a very focused person.”
“I have a job where each day is different,” Gordon says, “but every day I meet amazing and interesting people and I get to ask them questions about their lives.
“What’s more, this is the first time I’ve ever worked on a radio program where we don’t measure our own success by the ‘celebrity rating’ of the guest, but rather by the quality of their stories and their ability to tell those stories.
“I’m also working with a small group of people who are all committed to the same thing, and that means coming to work in the morning never fells like coming to work.”
Rose is aware of Gordon’s love of hockey. “I think the fact that we have an NHL team was a contributing factor in him coming here.”
And, Gordon’s protestations of clumsiness not withstanding, Rose sees, in his everyday life, the hockey player within. “There’s competitiveness in him.” And she’s been told he doesn’t “shy away from contact” on the ice.
Moscow’s Dean Dome
Late in the first period, Gordon languishes a long moment in the penalty box–the first to be so exiled of the evening–nailed by the ref for tripping. At the end of the second period, the Clowns find themselves down by one, but have been playing ever more aggressively.
Middle age comes to call in the third. The Beer Nuts take back control. The final score is a respectable 7-5.
Back in front of his locker, Gordon talks of having played hockey in Moscow while based there in the early ’90s: “We’d go into the Red Army rink, [home of] CSKA [Moscow], which is the national Red Army team, which produced all of the amazing Russian hockey players. And it’s like being in a temple–it is to hockey what the Dean Dome is to college basketball. And we would play there.”
But hockey’s hockey, he says. The guys in Hillsborough play a pretty decent game. For Gordon, though, these evenings seem to be more about building community.
“I’m just getting to know the rest of the guys on the team, but there’s something very familiar about a locker room and a group of guys teasing each other about shots missed and goals scored. I suspect it’s no different from the locker room in any other team sport, but it helps keep me young to know that I can still do what I did when I was 5 years old.
“I’m still getting used to one thing that’s new. This is the first time I’ve ever played on a hockey team where some of the guys will excuse themselves from a game so they can watch basketball on TV.
“But, hey, this is North Carolina not North Bay.”