Do You Believe in Miracles? Featuring Jack O'Callahan

Greg Dowling (00:07): Welcome to the FEG Insight Bridge. This is Greg Dowling, head of research and CIO at FEG. This show spans global markets and institutional investments through conversations with some of the world's leading investment, economic, and philanthropic minds to provide insight on how institutional investors can survive and even thrive in the world of markets and finance.

Do you believe in miracles? Today on the FEG Insight Bridge, we will have Jack O'Callahan, member of the 1980 Miracle on Ice team. He is in town to help support the FEG Hockey Classic, and we dragged him into our podcast studio. He is going to share his hockey journey, from a boy growing up in Boston to being part of one of sports' greatest upsets. We will hear how a group of individuals formed a team that beat the intimidating and seemingly invincible Red Army team. Jack will also share some memories of coaching legend Herb Brooks. We'll talk about his involvement in the movie "The Miracle." We'll talk about his transition from the Olympics to the NHL and finally running an investment business. And, of course, we'll get a bunch of great stories and some lessons learned along the way. Jack, welcome to the FEG Insight Bridge.

Jack O'Callahan (01:20): Well, thanks, Greg. It's a pleasure to be here in Cincinnati, and I'm pretty excited, looking forward to the next couple of days with everyone here. And it's going to be a great event supporting the IceBreakers and the sled hockey program here in Cincinnati.

Greg Dowling (01:31): We appreciate you supporting them and making the trip up. And we're going to talk a lot of hockey, and we're going to talk a lot about probably the game, the Miracle on Ice. But before we get there, can we talk a little bit about just what was your experience kind of leading up to the Miracle? What was hockey like for you?

Jack O'Callahan (01:48): So you're talking about in the weeks before the Olympics? So you're talking about when I started playing hockey in Boston as a 9-year --

Greg Dowling (01:53): Yeah, just from 9 to 19 and in 2 minutes.

Jack O'Callahan (01:57): Well, I grew up in a little town in Boston, in the city, Charlestown, and it's a half a mile from Boston Garden. So we're giant Bruins fans and love sports. One Square Mile, they call it the Irish Square Mile. I've been to Ireland a few times. When I go there, I think I'm running into all my neighbors, and they're actually native Irishman. But we all love sports, played a lot of street hockey. I did not skate. I was a little embarrassed because my friends, some of them were playing organized peewee hockey, and I just was not a good skater. But I got really good at ball hockey. And eventually Bobby Orr came to town, and everybody wanted to be Bobby Orr, and I was just included. But I think part of it with me was, I was a little bit of a late starter. My neighborhood gave me a little motivation to catch up. And my parents were always very supportive, and my dad was very supportive. And I would break my skates, I was over my ankles so much. We kept having to go back to Lechmere and trade them in. I'd just get on the ice. And there was a priest in town, in St. Catherine's where I was an altar boy. The way he connected with the neighborhood was through hockey. He rented the ice in an MDC rink, which was a state-owned rink. He would be out there with Dad, and every Sunday night, and eventually I got to go and play with the kids that were learning how to skate. I got better at it. I was always very competitive, still am. And I think that's what helped drive me through as a youth hockey player in Charlestown, growing up through peewees and bantams and midgets. And then in high school, I played at Boston Latin School City League against South Boston, Charlestown. and all these city schools, all public schools. Yeah, and all of a sudden, I was going to school to be a be an academic person, to go to an Ivy League school and be a lawyer or get into business or something like that. And next thing you know, I started getting recruited. And before you know it, I'm playing hockey at BU, and we're winning everything. And I'm like the man, and I'm getting all these awards and all this recognition. And I get drafted, and next thing you know, I'm playing on the Olympic team, in the NHL. And all of a sudden, I'm 32 years old. So it's because, in a quick two minutes, I think that's kind of how it all happened for me.

Greg Dowling (03:41): Thank you for clarifying. We would have never known you were from Boston.

Jack O'Callahan (03:44): Yeah, I know. I haven't lived there since I was 25. But everybody says to me -- I get five words out. They're like, "You're from Boston." I was like -- I don't know, man. I don't understand it. I'll tell you a quick funny story. I was -- I'd be transitioning from living in Chicago and going back to Boston in the summers. And I was trying to figure out how to communicate with people because I am right from the city, and I had a tremendous Boston accent. And my friends in Boston would give me a hard time because I was talking like I'm from Chicago. My Chicago buddies were saying, "What did you say?" So I was getting very frustrated. So I was out one night after a golf thing in Chicago, and a bunch of hockey guys and Blackhawk guys. And I said something, and everybody started laughing. And I was getting a little aggravated. So I said, "You guys are crazy. I don't have a Boston accent," while my friends in Boston would give me trouble about it. I'm talking from Chicago, back and forth. I was getting frustrated. They said, "You don't have a Boston accent, huh?" And they all start laughing. Now, I'm getting more frustrated. And so Dale Tallon said to me, "You don't think you have a Boston accent anymore?" I said, "No." He said, great, say this word, L-A-N-T-E-R-N. And I said, "Lanten," and they all started laughing.

Greg Dowling (04:45): That is great.

Jack O'Callahan (04:46): Not lantern, yeah.

Greg Dowling (04:47): Yeah, you can't take the Boston out.

Jack O'Callahan (04:50): No, you can't. It's still here, at this point in my life.

Greg Dowling (04:52): So you're at BU. Great hockey program, right? And you had a lot of success there. How do you get an invite to the tryouts?

Jack O'Callahan (04:59): I graduated in 1979. We all knew there was an Olympics in 1980. It was going to be in Lake Placid. And that was sort of my goal was to, even when I was a freshman, I was thinking like, look, if I do well here and things go well, maybe I could have a chance to try out for that team. Just thinking about it because I -- even though I had been drafted by the Blackhawks at the end of my sophomore year, I never thought I was going to play in the National Hockey League. Americans just didn't play in the league. And I didn't want to be a minor league guy riding buses and -- So I just was focused on maybe playing in the Olympics, trying out a college career that got me into that situation, and then being done. Then just, like I said, going into a graduate school program and moving on in my life. The way it kind of turns out is that Herb Brooks was the coach. And it was a 2-year process, right? So it's a long story. There's something called the World Cup, and it's basically in May or so, mid-April to mid-May every year, and it's in Europe. Back in those days, it was the European Stanley Cup, right, because there were no Europeans in the National Hockey League. So that was their big thing, the Russians, the Swedes, the Finns, the Czechs, all of them were -- They focused on the World Cup. Now, the Canadians and, for the most part, the Americans that were -- some of them were playing professionally, most of them in the minors. They would send players over there from teams that did not make the playoffs. And then they would always sprinkle in a couple of college kids. Now, I played in '78. We won the national championships at BU, and I was the captain of the team, and I had a great year. So I went to Prague and played most of the preseason part. And then I was like, I'm not staying here for the whole thing because you're not paying me, because I was an amateur. And I got to get back to school. I don't want to be gone for a month. So I left that one. And then, the next year, when I was a senior, we're the number one team in the country, but we finished with a thud in our last few games. We didn't make the final four, and I was a little frustrated. But that year, in the spring of '79 -- so Herb Brooks was the coach of that team, someone who I -- didn't have any run-ins with him, but I had some run-ins with his team when I was a freshman. And so I had this open wound. I really didn't like the guy, but Herbie was coaching that team. So he took a lot of college guys. Normally, they would take, say, 75 percent pros and 25 percent college kids. This year, it was almost inverted, and he took a lot of college kids. Most of the guys ended up on the Olympic team. So that was my first experience with Herb, going to Moscow, which was really cool, because I'm a history guy. And I really enjoyed being in Moscow for a month in 1979, pre-Cold War, behind the Iron Curtain and all that. So it was pretty neat. I mean, Brezhnev came to all the Russian games. It was pretty awesome to be around there and just experience the whole Russian culture. And I thought I played okay, but not great. I was thinking, I don't know. He's probably not going to pick me anyway because he hates Boston guys. But when I came back, I had an agent at the time because I was getting out of college, and my agent was actually my defense coach at BU. He got his law degree while I was getting my undergrad degree, Bob Murray. We're still close friends to this day. And I remember talking to Bobby. And he said, "Yeah, Herbie was really impressed with you," and this, that, and the other. And so, yeah, I ended up having a spot on the team. I was going to be on the team. I knew that. But I could also lose it if I didn't go out there and work my butt off once the training camp and our 55-game schedule started.

Greg Dowling (07:50): We'll talk a little bit about this East-West divide, right?

Jack O'Callahan (07:52): Yeah.

Greg Dowling (07:53): We'll talk about the Miracle later.

Jack O'Callahan (07:54): Sure, sure.

Greg Dowling (07:54): But the movie really kind of makes --

Jack O'Callahan (07:56): Yeah.

Greg Dowling (07:56): -- a big deal of it. I think in one of the early scenes, you just take out one of the Minnesota players.

Jack O'Callahan (08:01): I got to know the director pretty well, Gavin O'Connor. He was an Irish guy from New York, Staten Island. He grew up surrounded by cops and firemen and electricians and plumbers, like I did in Boston. We had a lot in common. He had played football at UPenn. And my character was in the script, so I got to go to some of the early planning and this and that, and I was involved in the negotiations of the deal that we made with Disney. I kind of was around it right on the early part, and he had to try to show that there was the animosity. Now, the animosity between the BU guys and the Eastern guys and the West and the Minnesota guys really went back to our freshman year in 1976 at the Final Four out in Denver, when we were the number one team in the country. And they kind of went after our best player, and the benches cleared. The benches don't clear at college hockey games, but in 1976, in Denver, the benches cleared with BU in Minnesota. And there's a picture of me, I -- This guy, Tommy Youngins, who I got to know in one of those World Cups eventually, he was a little older than me. But there's a picture of me, and I got him by the throat, and I ripped his helmet off, and I was cracking him over the head with it. And so it was really ugly, very ugly. And they ended up winning the game and winning the Nationals. So we took that -- I took that away, as a freshman, I just hated those guys. And we never really played them because we played out East and they played out West. And the only time we had a chance to get back at them was in the summer of '78, out in Colorado Springs, and this was a US National Sports Festival. So the New England team played the Minnesota team, and it just devolved into just a massive brawl. And that's what happened. And so you got a 2-hour movie, and Gavin was telling me like, "I got to show it somehow. And McClanahan's in the movie a lot. His character's in the script. Your character's in the script." So he had me fighting Robbie, and Robbie and I are really good friends. And Robbie's not that guy. He's just a great hockey player, but he wasn't like me. I was like a penalty-a-minute guy and a physical guy. And so in the movie, he showed my character fighting Robbie. And my character threw a punch at Robbie and cut his lip. So, at the time, Robbie was living in Chicago, and we were both getting divorced together. So we were kind of living together while our wives threw us out of the house. It was pretty funny. And when it came out, and people would ask Robbie, like, "Did you really fight Jack?" And he's like, "I would never fight that guy. You know where he's from? He's from The Town." I was like, that's okay, though. But it was funny because he's also in the investment business. He just retired, but we had a lot of mutual friends in the business. And they would give him a hard time about how his character got the crap kicked out of him by me, but it never really happened.

Greg Dowling (10:10): Got you. That's great.

Jack O'Callahan (10:11) Yeah.

Greg Dowling (10:12): It does talk a little bit about how you have this great team of individuals, but not necessarily a great team, right? It's not that cohesive yet. How did Herb Brooks kind of get that over that schedule?

Jack O'Callahan (10:23): It's just a great question. Let's kind of go back to that Moscow thing, right? So we played over there in the fall -- in the spring of '79. Again, I thought I played okay, but not great. I wasn't sure if Herbie was going to take me. I didn't really trust him anyway, but he was pretty fair with me over there. But I just didn't think I -- I thought I could have played much better. It's a big rink, and I wasn't this pure skater. I was a good skater, but I wasn't a pure skater, and I had all this self-doubt. And so when I came back, I met with Bob Murray, my agent. And he said, "I want to talk to you. I had a conversation with Herbie." And that's when he told me that, "Hey, Herbie, he's going to guarantee you a spot on the team." It was me and five or six other guys that he guaranteed spots to. And I was like, wow. That's pretty -- it surprised me. And I said, "Well, what did he say? Did he like the way I pass the puck, how I skated, how I make plays? What did he think, I'm tough, what?" He goes, "We never really talked about that. He just talked about you as a person. He just -- He likes your competitiveness, your team-first attitude. He said he liked your attitude. He likes the way you never quit. You're always encouraging people, and you're a real leader, a natural leader." So I was saying, "Well, what about my abilities as a hockey player?" He's like, "he doesn't care about that." So Herbie really made sure that he brought -- He got to know the people on the team. Now, he knew the Minnesota guys because he had recruited them all, and he'd coached them for the past many years, so that was easy. He ended up with 12 Minnesota guys on that Olympic team. For him to reach out to Boston and to grab four of us from Boston University, he had to take time to understand who we were as people to make sure that we would put team first. Gave us all psychological tests so he could understand that -- how to motivate guys. I'm not the kind of guy you could just yell and scream at. That doesn't motivate me. That just aggravates me. And so I'm going to drop the gloves with the coach, if that's the way he's going to treat me. So Herbie never really yelled at me. He would talk to me. He would engage me, and he would involve me in the leadership sort of component of the team, and he would talk to me. And he had this thing where if -- he even told me he wanted me to be one of his whipping boys. "If I yell O'Callahan this, O'Callahan that during practice, that's me talking to the team through you, and I need you to work a lot harder." And he says, "But if I say, hey, Jack, you better get your butt moving," he goes, "that's me talking to you." So anyway, it happened several times during the year. By doing that, it gave me some sense of ownership of the team. And he knew I needed that because he got to know me, what drives me. And he did that with every guy on that team. And he also knew that he wanted guys that were team-first guys because he knew we had to have a cohesive team. One of things I say when I talk to people, and even when any -- whether it's young groups or teams or whatever, is players don't win championships. Teams win championships, right? So even when you're talking to an individual player, a figure skater or someone like that, you'll hear them talk about it, too. As much as they're out there alone doing what they're doing by themselves, they have a team behind them. And, yes, they have to go out and perform. We all have to go out and perform, but you do need the support. You need the team behind you, and you need the support. And you need everybody around you working together, and that's how you create success.

Greg Dowling (13:12): So Coach Brooks had a reputation as being very tough. And there's a story where you guys are in the lead-up to the Olympics. You're playing a bunch of exhibition games. You're in Norway. You tie Norway, and he wasn't happy with it. What happened?

Jack O'Callahan (13:25): No, he wasn't happy with it. So the way our season started, we went to the National Sports Festival. So that was, say, in the early part of July of '79, and then he picked the team after us being out there for 2 weeks. So we had 26 guys. He said, "Go home for 2 weeks, get your lives together. You'll be back in Lake Placid in August, first part of August." And he put us through this 2-week intense training camp. And Lake Placid's in the mountains, so we're sprinting up and down this hill, and then we're on the ice, and he's beating us like dogs. And after 2 weeks, we get on a plane. We went to Europe. We played 10 games over there. We ended up playing 55 games between early August and, say, early February of 1980. But in those 10 games, we did really well over there. I think we were in Finland. We were in Norway. We were -- We played different teams. We went to the northern part of Oulu, Finland, which is up by the Arctic Circle. It was just a great experience. But our last two games were against Norway. We were getting towards the end of a 2 1/2, 3-week grind, and we're just kind of worn out. We're lugging our bags all around Scandinavia. We had -- because we had three goalies and sort of four sets of defensemen. So we had -- What is that? We had eight defensemen. We had three extra, four, so every night six guys sat out, right, one goalie, two D, and three forwards. And it wasn't like if you played well one night, you didn't sit out. It wasn't like that. We knew the games you weren't going to be playing, right, because it was early in the year. And so that first game against Norway, I was not in the lineup. And so anyhow, I'm up in the stands. We tied them 3-3, and the place was all excited because Norway obviously wasn't in our class as a team, but we just kind of laid an egg. And so six of us came down after the game, and we're in suits or whatever. We're wearing street clothes. And Craig Patrick's there, and he's telling the guys, "Yeah, yeah, you got to stay on the ice." And so, well, I'm there in my street clothes. And I go, "Hey, Craig, what's up?" And he says, "He's not happy, man. He wants them to stay on the ice. He's going to skate them." And the first thing I said to him was like, "Okay, we'll go put our equipment on." Because, again, we're a team, right? That's sort of who I am, right, as far as my leadership and as far as my team-first program. And I was like, "Okay, we're going to go put our stuff on. If our team's skating, we're skating with them, right?" So he said, "Jack, don't bother. Just go stand on the bench. If he wants you to put you -- he'll tell you. Just stay away from him, but just so he knows you're there, and he'll tell you." So I'm like -- I went over and stood on the bench next to him, so I saw the whole thing. And it was unbelievable, man. He gets these guys on the line, and we used to do the -- he had this -- his favorite drill was, he'd line the team up on the goal line. And you'd have to skate goal line to first blue line, sprint, stop, back, red line, back, blue line, far blue line, back, all the way down and back. You had to do it inside of 45 seconds. It's a challenge.

Greg Dowling (15:52): Oh, yeah.

Jack O'Callahan (15:53): Yeah. The Minnesota kids called them Herbies.

Greg Dowling (15:55): Herbies.

Jack O'Callahan (15:55): Yeah. So he had these guys doing Herbies for like 40 minutes, and I'm on the bench watching it. And this guy came over, and who had rent -- the rink manager. Well, first of all, people were sticking in the stands, and they were watching us. They thought we were putting on an exhibition or something like that. And then they realized that we were just getting -- we were just skated into the ground, and so then they all left. And so then the rink manager come over, and I heard him talk to the doctor. This guy, George Nagabod, is an amazing doctor. He was one of Herbie's advisors in a way, but he was a doctor, team doctor. He could speak like seven languages. And so this guy came over and started talking in Norwegian, and Doc can communicate with him. And he comes to Herbie. He goes, "Hey, the guy wants to go home. His wife's at home with his kids. He's got a guy." And Herbie didn't even look at Doc. And I was standing right next to him. He just said, "Tell him to leave me the keys. I'll lock up." So this guy stormed away and turned the lights out. And so all the guys thought they were done. And he starts screaming at them, "We're not done, get on that line!" I'm like, wow. So now they're skating in the dark, but now Herbie can't really see them. So now, all of a sudden, guys, they get courage, right?

Greg Dowling (16:52): They're coasting a little bit.

Jack O'Callahan (16:53): No, no, they get courage. They start yelling at him like, "Ah!" Banging their sticks, and he's screaming at them, "You bang one more stick, bah!" So I'm just laughing, going, "Oh, I'm so glad I'm not out there." So anyhow, I told the director all about it in the movie, and it wasn't even in the original script. It ended up in the movie because I told him what happened. It became one of the greatest scenes in the movie.

Greg Dowling (17:11): Absolutely, yeah.

Jack O'Callahan (17:11): Yeah. And these youth hockey players, they would watch the movie, and coaches would tell me. He's like, "Jack, I got 8-year-olds begging us that we could turn the lights out and make them skate and do Herbies. They're 8 years old, but they want to do what you guys did in the movie." I was like, "Oh, my God, that is not a great legacy.

Greg Dowling (17:27): I've done Herbies before.

Jack O'Callahan (17:28): Yeah, yeah, 45 seconds, man. That was hard.

Greg Dowling (17:31):  Your legs burn.

Jack O'Callahan (17:32): I'd be doing 30 of them.

Greg Dowling (17:33): Any other great Brooks stories like that?

Jack O'Callahan (17:34): Well, here's the other thing. The night after that game, I'm in my room. And I get a knock on the door, and it's Craig Patrick. This is 10 o'clock at night. He goes, "Jack, Herbie wants to see you." So I think immediately I'm in trouble. I'm like, what did I do wrong? I didn't even play. And that was the night he took me down to his room, and he said how he was -- he has whipping boys, and he explained the whole thing to me, how it was going to be O'Callahan or Jack. And was then like, "You can't tell anybody. You can't tell anybody. You can't tell anybody." I was like, "All right. All right." So I didn't tell anybody, but the year went on. But it was funny, the next day -- Herbie had all these sayings, things -- I don't know. One of his favorite lines was, "You're playing worse and worse every day, and today you're playing like it's next week." Or he -- And so I remember after that Norway game, the second day when we played them -- because we played them and tied them 3-3. The next day, we played them, and we beat them 9-1. So we were sitting in the locker room going, "Oh, my God, now he thinks that if he skates us in the dark, that's going to be good for us. So we just might have screwed ourselves." But anyhow, one of the guys, John Harrington, was like, "Hey, did you hear what he said? He said something like -- I don't know. You look like an octopus setting up a lounge chair or something." He's like, "Yeah." So he wrote it down on a piece of tape, and he rolled it in a ball. And he would carry -- And as the season went on, every time Herbie would come in and say something like -- one of Herbie's little lines, we'd be looking around the locker room. We'd wait until he walked out. We'd be like, "Put that down! Put it down!" He'd write it. And by the end of the year, the ball was as big as a soccer ball, right? It was a ball of tape, and he would always carry it around in his bag. And he'd always have it in the locker room. So it kind of did become a little bit like us against him. But we kept the -- We kept it light and loose and funny. We all listened. We listened to the guy because he controlled our fate. It helped us grow together as a team because we had this thing of a little bit us against them. And I think that's how Herbie wanted it. Craig Patrick became the conduit more. We could talk to Craig. We could go to his house after practice and have a few beers with him. He actually let me use his car all year because we were living in apartments out in Burnsville, Minnesota. But the interesting thing is, in the year 2000, we had a 20-year reunion down at this golf club where I belong, down in South Carolina. So all the guys came down. We had a bunch -- some other people came down. The whole team wasn't there. We had about 16 guys, maybe 18 out of 26. Plus, I invited Herbie and some other guys, too, but -- so one night we're out on the porch. We're all sitting around having a few pops, smoking some cigars, just telling stories, and there's other members around. It was a really great night. And so I actually said, "How about that O'Callahan and Jack thing, whipping boy stuff?" I go, "He told me never to tell anybody." So it took me 20 years to tell people on my team that it was going on. And when I told them, three or four other guys go, "He was doing that to you, too?" So when you think about it, when he set me up for that program of his, and he told me, "You can't tell anybody," I didn't tell anybody. And he was doing it with four or five other guys, and they didn't tell anybody. It took us 20 years to actually share that with each other. So that's how much we respected him and cared for him and cared for his methodology. We just would not violate his confidence.

Greg Dowling (20:14): Oh, that's great. All right. So let's talk about the Red Army team. Try to explain it to folks who maybe they know the story, but they're not hockey fans. How good was this team?

Jack O'Callahan (20:24): Well, the first time we saw them was in the Canadian game in '72, when they had the Challenge Cup or whatever. They played eight games, I think. And they played like four in Moscow, and they played four across Canada. The guy that gave me the lantern story, Dale Tallon, he was actually on that team. Bobby Orr was on that team, and they had great players on that team, like the greatest players, Bobby Clark, Phil Esposito, on and on. The Russians, who we had never heard of, we were thinking, "Oh, the Russians, who are they? They're going to get killed. These are the best NHL players in the world." And they came over, won the first three games or something in Canada, and it was unbelievable. It really was a shock to the system, this system of hockey in North America, that these Russians could come over and play the kind of game they played, this puck possession game. And they were so strong and fast and could move the puck, and they were so skilled. And it was amazing. Now, they ended up winning the series, I think. They won some games in Moscow. It really devolved into the North American players just started getting really physical because the Russians didn't fight. And the North Americans, they knew -- The Russians, don't get me wrong, they were kind of dirty in places, but they didn't fight. The refs and everything else favored the Canadians, the NHL guys. But it was a real wake-up call to see the Russians play the best team players in the world and basically manhandle them. And this guy, Tretiak, in goal was insanely great. So that was our first experience as a North American hockey player, which was 1972. And then, they won the '72 Olympics, right, which was in Sapporo, Japan. They won '76 in Innsbruck. They're going to win 1980 as well. And we saw them -- We didn't play them when we were in Moscow for the World Cup in '79. But believe me, we saw them. They barely gave up a goal in seven or eight games that they played in that tournament. Brezhnev was at every game. And there were Russian soldiers around the rink with AK-47s and full gear. It was all part of the experience, the Russian experience. But they were great. They were the premier global sort of exposition of communism and Russian way of life, right? It's like, we have the best way of life. Look how great our hockey team is, right? So it really was. As much as they had great gymnasts and all that, Russians love hockey, right? Love it. It's probably their national sport. They were just great, right, great-great. We played 55 games, obviously. We played all through the minor leagues, AAA baseball, basically, like the American Hockey League, Central League, so one step down from the NHL. We played five NHL teams. We played some college teams over the course of this, from August all the way through February. And our last game was in Madison Square Garden against the real Russian team, like the real Russians, like Mikhailov and Tretiak and Kharlamov and all those guys, right? The real Russians, the Red Army team, and they just destroyed us. And they beat us.

Greg Dowling (22:55): And you got hurt.

Jack O'Callahan (22:56): And I hurt my knee, yeah. So that was another -- That's a whole other story. We could talk about this for hours. Anyhow, they just beat us up. Al Michael, I think it was Al Michael said, "Yeah, they beat them 10-3. And I hate to say this, but it wasn't that close." And it wasn't. It really wasn't. And they, yeah, they beat us up, and they banged us up, and they banged me up really good. That was our first experience with them. So then, we had to lick our wounds a little bit, and we were already checked into Lake Placid at that point. We had checked into Lake Placid, say, on a Thursday. And then Saturday, we go down to play the Russians. And then the rosters have to be finalized Monday at 5 or 6 o'clock p.m. And our first game is against Sweden on Tuesday, right? So they had beaten us up on Saturday, demoralized us, you would think. But the Olympics start in three days. So we got to get our stuff together, right? So it was very interesting. We just took it. We were like, "Oh, well, now we know what can happen if we try to play their game," right? So we just kind of took it, and we kept our stuff together. Herbie kept me on the team. I somehow worked really hard on my rehab over the course of 2 or 3 days. I missed the first two games. I didn't play as much as I had normally played. I was leading scorer and defenseman on the team. I was most penalty minutes, and I played all the time. And all of a sudden, I had a lesser role. But it allowed Davey Christian to step into a bigger role as a defenseman, not a forward. So in a way, it worked out great because Davey played great. Then we go into the Olympics. We tie Sweden. We beat the Czechs. And then we win the next three games.

Greg Dowling (24:18): Hold on for a second.

Jack O'Callahan (24:18): Okay. I won't jump ahead.

Greg Dowling (24:20) The Swedes were pretty good, right?

Jack O'Callahan (24:21): The Swedes were great.

Greg Dowling (24:22): And you were down.

Jack O'Callahan (24:23): Well, we were down, and played seven Olympics games. We started every game down 1-nothing.

Greg Dowling (24:26): That one you came back right at the end.

Jack O'Callahan (24:28): Forty-three seconds, yeah. Yeah, we pulled the goalie. And Billy Baker scored late in the game and tied it 2-2, and it really energized us. They had guys like -- Pelle Lindbergh was their goalie. They had guys that ended up in the NHL, many guys on that team. And then we played the Czechs. The Stastnys were on that. They had great, great players, and --

Greg Dowling (24:43): The Czechs were probably the second best --

Jack O'Callahan (24:45): They were the second-best team in the world. The problem with that year is that the Czechs -- Pelle Lindbergh, Swedish goalie, Tretiak, Russian goalie. The Czechs did not have a good goalie. It was maybe 6 years before Dominik Hasek showed up. He wasn't there in that series. So their goalie was weak, and we filled the net on them. I think we beat them 7-2, which was crazy, to beat the Czechs like that, because they were the second-best team in the world, without a doubt. And then we end up -- we cruise through and we win the rest. Now, we're playing the Russians.

Greg Dowling (25:09): You have this great run.

Jack O'Callahan (25:10): Yeah, over 2 weeks, every other night. So that was the thing. The country just got really excited about it because we played Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Monday, Wednesday. It was awesome.

Greg Dowling (25:18): The problem with the Olympics, oftentimes, is that they're in foreign countries. Time is weird. This was in the US.

Jack O'Callahan (25:24): Yeah, it was awesome.

Greg Dowling (25:25): Everybody's watching it.

Jack O'Callahan (25:25): Yeah.

Greg Dowling (25:26): But you have this great run, and your reward is playing the Russians.

Jack O'Callahan (25:29): Well, that's okay. We -- look, we knew it was -- Believe me, we were hoping we'd have a chance to play them because that meant that we were in the medal round. You're gonna have to beat them eventually.

Greg Dowling (25:36): Eventually, yeah.

Jack O'Callahan (25:37): Yeah. We didn't really care about them. We were playing our own schedule that was predetermined. It was preset 2 years prior to the Olympics. They were not in our pool. So Russians were in the pool with Finland and Canada. We were in the pool with the Czechs and the Swedes. And so we had to basically finish top two. So it was us and Sweden. And over there, Canada was really good. They had a really good team. They lost to the Finns. Because they lost to the Finns, Finland and Russia went to the finals with US and Sweden. The Czechs and the Canadians were out. So, yeah, we got to play the Russians. Yeah, so I can dig into that if you want me to. I can tell you how that all worked out.

Greg Dowling (26:10): And maybe even before that, right? Because you talked about being in Moscow and feeling the political propaganda. Now, I'm thinking 1980.

Jack O'Callahan (26:19): Yeah.

Greg Dowling (26:19): I'm a kid back then. As Americans, feeling great about ourselves.

Jack O'Callahan (26:22): Yeah.

Greg Dowling (26:22): There was a lot going on, losing our auto industry.

Jack O'Callahan (26:25): Social unrest.

Greg Dowling (26:26): Social unrest.

Jack O'Callahan (26:27): Kennedy had been shot, Martin Luther King. There was all this turmoil going on in the country with the hippies and women's rights. There's all kinds of stuff going on through the '70s, crazy.

Greg Dowling (26:39): Did you feel that pressure?

Jack O'Callahan (26:40): It wasn't like -- You had to know what was going on because, look, we're all college guys, right? So we're all going to school with these people. So we're experiencing that aspect of the culture change. Campus protests and racial stuff going on, civil rights and all that going on, and the South crazy and schools, everything. So there was so much going on, right? It was a turmoil. And even when Gavin O'Connor said to me -- Again, I worked with Gavin, and he kept asking me questions. We hung out when they were very early stages of the movie. And he said to me -- like I said, he played football at UPenn. He says, "Jack, I got to know how you guys came together as a team." And he goes, "I don't like this script. I'm going to rewrite the whole thing." And I said, "Gavin, look, I already cut the deal for our team with Disney, and we're done. Just" -- He goes, "Jack, I know how teams come together. This script's terrible." He goes, "I have to know how you guys came together, and usually that happens off the ice. What happened off the ice?" And I said, "Email me a question, and I'll reply. I'll tell you about it." He'd email me one question, and I'd reply like six pages of Word doc, giving him context and background. In my answer, he found skating in the dark. I mentioned skating -- He goes, "What's that all about?" So six or seven things ended up in the movie. But one thing he asked me at the end was, "I have to understand how when people say this was much more than a hockey game, what does that mean to you?" And I basically said to him, I go, "You really want to know? It goes back to World War II." And the World War II generation and their children were the Vietnam generation. In the World War II, and when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, everybody dropped everything and enlisted and took off. And my mother-in-law was a Curtiss-Wright cadet. They took her and they trained her as an engineer. She was building rockets and jets, okay, in 1940, '42, okay? And that's what's going on. The whole country said, "We have to defend our country," and boom. Now, their children are the Vietnam generation, right, protesting, and there's this disconnect between these heroic World War II guys and then their children, who are basically looking for more, right? They want equality, and they want a different country, and they want to change the country. And there was this real disconnect over that time frame. And then you look at everything else that was going on that we mentioned, with the oil embargoes and the hostages and dah, dah, dah. And it was like eventually, I told Gavin, I said -- and that's how we started the movie. He started the movie with Hiroshima, and he went through all of that, and that sort of got you to when we were -- during trials, and that's how we started the movie, and that's him and I talking about it. The crazy thing about it was, it was more than a hockey game, right? And so our team was the catalyst that brought those generations back together. It really was. And believe me, I've had 45 years of stories, right? I've heard it from these Vietnam vets. It's like, "Jack, I didn't talk to my dad for 20 years, just disconnected because we were on different sort of social pathways. Their way was just put your head down and do what you're told. Our way was like, no, I want to discuss it, right? And all of a sudden, the one thing that we could agree on was what you guys did, and it really -- It brought my family back together." And I've heard that story 5,000 times in 45 years. To be part of that, to be part of that catalyst to bring the country back together and to see how the country came back together and how strong we can be when we are together and not split, it was lightning in a bottle. It really was for a lot of reasons.

Greg Dowling (29:45): So let's talk about the game. What do you remember about the game?

Jack O'Callahan (29:47): The Russian game. I remember when Eruzione scored, and there were exactly 10 minutes left in the game. We were up 4-3, and I remember looking up and seeing exactly, 1-0 colon 0-0. And I looked up at 10 minutes, and I looked down the other end, and it was the Russians. And I was like, "That's a long time against these guys, 10 minutes, man." We were prepared mentally a lot better than when we played them in Madison Square Garden. It was great for us to play them in Madison Square Garden because we know what they could do if we got a little wayward. I was talking to Mark Johnson throughout the week, and he's like, "Jack." I go, "Mark, we can beat these guys. We could." And he's like, "I know we can." He goes -- and Mark knew the Russians better than anybody because his dad, Bob Johnson, had coached the '76 Olympic team in Innsbruck. And Bob was a big fan of the Russian style of play and all this, and Herbie, too. Herbie loved the way they played, but he loved the way they trained. Back in those days, North Americans, they did bench presses and curls, and they worked their arms and their shoulders. They just didn't -- They never did squats. So they looked like, I don't know, upside-down pyramids. The Russians, they trained their lower bodies. All the Europeans did. That's why they were so strong on their feet and their skates. We would say they had bodies like pears. Herbie trained us so that we could become pears. So we were so fit, incredibly fit, talented, obviously. We knew we had to keep it close with the Russians. You get down two or three against those guys, and they could just blow your doors off. So we had to keep it close. And even Mark and I were talking about it during the week. We were like, "If we go another third period down a goal or tied" -- He goes, "We got a shot." And that's what happened. Davey Christian scored a tie, a 2-2 at the end of the first period. I remember even though -- It was right when the buzzer went off. So the Russians, the whole team went off the ice, and then they had to come back on because you can't end the game like that -- I mean, end a period. It has to end with a face-off. The ref drops the puck, boom, period's over. So the Russians only sent five guys and a goalie out, right? And I was on the bench, and I noticed that they sent Myshkin out with five players. So I said to Craig Patrick, I go, "They just sent Myshkin out." And he's like, "Yeah, well, maybe Tretiak already took his skates off." I go, "I don't think so." You don't do that. Tretiak's the goalie. He goes back out, even if it's just for half a second. I go, "I think they're pulling Tretiak." And he's like, "They can't do" -- I'm like, "Well, I don't know. We'll see." And then Myshkin came out. I think their coach, Tikhonov, really had an idea that there was something going on that he didn't like. And you're pulling the greatest goalie in the world, one of the greatest goalies in the history of the world. I think that was his way to let his team know, "We better wake up here or something bad's going to happen." And, of course, in the second period, they came out and they just attacked us. I think they outshot us, I don't know, maybe 14, 16-3, or something like that. Jimmy Craig had a great period. And we sustained it. We just gave up one goal. So when we went into the third period, we were only down a goal. And I remember talking to Mark. I said, "Hey, we got these guys right where we want them." He's like, "We do." So we were excited about it, that we had that chance, that we put ourselves where we had to play a 20-minute hockey game and try to win 20 minutes. And, yeah, it was just awesome. But more importantly than that, we went and beat the Russians and this and that. And Herbie -- We hadn't talked to the press in 2 weeks. Herbie wouldn't let anybody talk to the press. He wouldn't let the press near anybody. It was interesting. But he had to let Craig and Eruzione talk to people that night. And then the next day, on Saturday, he just put us through the hardest practice of the year. It was the hardest practice of the year.

Greg Dowling (32:51): I was going to ask because for the casual fan, they think that was the gold medal game, and it wasn't.

Jack O'Callahan (32:55): Well, everybody says that. But the fact that so many people have said, "Hey, trivia question, everybody thinks you won the gold medal when you beat the Russians." But it was really feeling like, yeah, but everybody says that to me, so maybe it's not such a secret anymore.

Greg Dowling (33:07): I don't know.

Jack O'Callahan (33:08): I don't know, maybe.

Greg Dowling (33:08): I still think most people think --

Jack O'Callahan (33:10): Maybe. Yeah, possibly.

Greg Dowling (33:11): Every hockey fan knows that.

Jack O'Callahan (33:13): They know, yeah.

Greg Dowling (33:13): But the casual non-hockey fan, they don't know.

Jack O'Callahan (33:15) No.

Greg Dowling (33:16): That has to be so emotional, like, "Wow, we beat them." How do you get back and beat the defense?

Jack O'Callahan (33:21): There's so much stuff going around that game, right? So because of the way -- again, the schedule was set up 2 years in advance. So it was like the first place team into Pool A plays the second place team in Pool B. Well, that meant that we play the Russians at 4 in the afternoon. And so, now all of a sudden, ABC is like, "Holy cow, we got to have this game on national TV." So they offered millions of dollars to the Russian Federation. But again, Carter had already said, "We're not sending teams to Moscow for the summer games," which was coming up in July in Moscow. We thought for a while that the Russians were not going to come to the '80 Winter Olympics. It was nip and tuck there for a while. But again, they're like, "Well, we're going to send the jewel of our empire, our Russian hockey team, over there. We're going to show them how great it is to be Russian." And then we ended up beating them, so that was pretty awesome. But they tried to get -- ABC did everything they could to get that game on primetime. And we all know that the game was on -- They didn't show the game live at 4 o'clock because they thought we were going to probably lose, 15-nothing again. And when we ended up beating them, it was insane. So it was one of the most watched sporting events in the history of sporting events. It might still be, for all I know. But it was so funny that we played the game, it wasn't on TV. And then everybody's like -- They're announcing on TV and radio. "We can't tell you the score, but you're probably going to want to tune in at 7." And so our parents were all up there, and the Holiday Inn was up the hill from where the rink was. And they had -- The Holiday Inn had set up this giant screen. It's 1980 technology, but it was this giant projection screen. And our parents are all up there, and some people had family up there so -- and there were like 3,000 people in this big, giant, expanded conference room. And so we went up there after our game at 7 -- 6:30. The game starts at 7. We sat around with our parents with 3,000 fans and had dinner and watched the game. And it was phenomenal. And then, we all go back to -- Bobby Suter and I actually stuck around for a little while, went out and had a few pops. We just wanted to go experience what was going on in downtown Lake Placid. Everybody else went back to the village. Bobby and I stuck around for about an hour. Then we went back. But the next morning, I think it was 11 o'clock, we had practice. And I'll tell you what, Herbie came in with a snarl, man. He was not in a good mood. And we're all -- We're a little happy, but he was not. And he made sure that we understood the importance of the next game and the importance to stay in your -- play your game and stay focused. And he beat our brains in. It was probably the hardest practice we had, was the day before the Finland game. And everybody's going, "What is he doing? He's going to kill us." But we were in such incredible, incredible physical shape that we could take it. And we got the message. And then, of course, we start the Finland game on Sunday morning down 1-nothing once again.

Greg Dowling (35:51): Of course.

Jack O'Callahan (35:52): Of course. And then, we go into the third period down 2-1. And we came in after the second period, losing to the Finns. And we're like -- And we weren't going like, "I don't know what's going to happen." I didn't sit down. I was pacing around that locker room. And I was like, "There's no way, no" -- saying not those words, a little bit more aggressive. Guys were standing up, and Herbie kind of came in to say something. And we were like, "Get out of here." It was so amazing that he had done such a great job as that in the last period of our life together as a hockey team, we didn't need him in the locker room. His job was done. He had put us together. He had assembled us. And at that point, we would pace around that locker room. It was like, when that buzzer goes off, we're going to go out there. And I'll tell you what, it was the greatest 20 minutes of hockey we played in 9 months. And we went out and beat the Finns 3-0 in the third period. And I'll tell you, they were looking at us like, "Who are these guys?" We were like the Russians against the Finns in that third period. We just beat those guys like dogs and winning the gold medal and just -- It was as much fun as beating the Russians. It was -- I don't want to say it was a disappointment. But the emotion against the Russians was so intense. The way we just took Finland apart in that third period, it was almost like, "Ah, well, wasn't such a big deal after all." But it was pretty exciting stuff. Yeah, and, look, it's 45 years ago, still talking about it, and I've been talking about it for 45 years. So that's pretty great stuff.

Greg Dowling (37:12): We're going to talk about the NHL. You go to the NHL. But before that, what's it like? You're a gold medalist. All of a sudden, you're famous. You're still a young kid. What was life like?

Jack O'Callahan (37:21): So, it's pretty interesting, right? Again, we beat Finland, right? We're in Lake Placid, it's over. I got a gold medal around my neck. There's snow on the ground, had seen my parents, had got my gold medal. That all happened before 3 o'clock or 4 o'clock in the afternoon, right? So we went back to the village. And when I get back there, they're like, "hey, man, you got to pack your stuff up. We're going to the White House tomorrow." What? White House? It's 11 o'clock at night. What time? You got to be on the bus at 7 or something, be ready to go, and everything's got to be packed because we're not coming back. We're going to the White House. Then you're going home. And it was the first time in history a sports team had ever been invited to the White House. The ride in was insane. People were pulling off the road, getting out of their cars, and it's February 25th, a Monday. And people are lining the highways, waving flags, and everybody was really happy to be an American and so proud of us. And we were proud to be an American. We were just so proud of having that jersey on and winning and whatever, man. It was just awesome feeling, and the whole country felt it. It was just special, really special. And then we go and have lunch. And I remember standing there, some guy goes, "Hey, how you doing?" I was like, "Oh, hey. Hi, I'm Jack O'Callahan." He goes, "Oh, yeah, you're one of the hockey players?" "Yeah," I go, "yeah." He goes, "Hi, I'm Ben Civiletti. I'm the Attorney General." I was like, "Oh, wow, nice to meet you in this setting." But it's stuff like that, right? We have lunch with the president and take pictures, and it was really, really great. And the entire Olympic team was there, which was really cool because we are one country and one team. And it was just terrific. But the hard part was, all of a sudden, then we had to leave, right? So we had made a deal in November. So Mark Johnson and Leslie, his girlfriend at the time, from Madison, Wisconsin, they were getting married July 12th, 1980. And so made a deal back in October or November that he proposed to her, and they set a date. We're like, "Listen, win, lose or draw, everybody go to Mark and Leslie's wedding." So we made a plan. When it's over, we're going to be scattered. We all went to Mark and Leslie's wedding, which again, the 300-person -- people turned into a 2,500-person wedding with all the newscasters and crazy -- the wedding just got out of control. And then the receiving line, I don't think they ever get out of it, actually. So I went home and peeling off to play hockey and for different teams.

Greg Dowling (39:30): Well, you were telling me at dinner last night basically didn't even know you were drafted.

Jack O'Callahan (39:33): Didn't even -- didn't know I was drafted, yeah.

Greg Dowling (39:34): They drafted, then didn't call you for --

Jack O'Callahan (39:36): A year.

Greg Dowling (39:37): A year.

Jack O'Callahan (39:37): And that's how it was, especially when you're an American, right? But all of a sudden, NHL GMs are all Canadians. And they're like, "Oh, these American guys, they play 30 games a year in college. They can't hold up to an 80-game NHL schedule," or whatever it was back then. I think it was 80 games, yeah. Anyhow, but there were some guys in the league that were pretty tough guys. Paul Holmgren, Chris Nilan, they were leading the league in penalty minutes. And basically, Americans had to fight their way into that NHL. It was happening throughout the latter part of the '70s. But when we won that gold medal with talented players and also talented European players, Canadian general managers were like, "We got to start paying attention." Because it was great hockey not just to the American kids, but also to the Europeans. Now, they couldn't get the Russians or the Czechs out from behind the Iron Curtain, but the Swedes and the Finns, they could. They started wheeling some guys over from there over the course of the decade of the '80s. Americans started playing. And I think one of our greatest accomplishments as a team was really breaking that glass ceiling and paving the way for guys like Jeremy Roenick and Chris Chelios and Keith Tkachuk and Tony Amante and Mike Modano and Bobby Carpenter, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All these great American hockey players that had the opportunities as professionals that we never had. But the fact that we helped establish that pathway for them was one of the things we're very proud of.

Greg Dowling (40:47): You played for the Blackhawks for the majority and then also for the Devils?

Jack O'Callahan (40:51): New Jersey Devils, yeah. It was great. I ended up spending 2 years in the minors, which is how they did it in Chicago. I was 22, 23, 24 in the minors by the time I made it to Chicago. The guys out there were great to me. Tons of friends, tons of great relationships out there. I lived out there for 35 years. I went out there when I was 22, and I didn't leave until I was -- 6 years ago when I moved to Florida. Yeah, it was terrific, won a call to come up in the minors, had three times, twice with the Blackhawks, once with the Devils. Got to the semifinals of the Stanley Cup. Didn't win one, but really close, would have loved to have won one. And then, '89 came, and I could have kept playing. But I had bought a membership with the Chicago Merc, and I was really ready to move on in my life. I was 32, and I was kind of getting sideways with my wife at the time. So I went back to Chicago. I kind of wrapped it up. Didn't really want to stay in the game, I wanted to move on. I wanted to run my own deal and started trading. And could have stayed in the game probably in the management level, either as a coach or get in the GM pathway, things like that, didn't want to be a scout. I think I could have had a pretty good career had I wanted to continue moving all over the place and chasing the game. But I really just wanted to raise my kids and get into the financial business, which is -- I bought the membership in 1984, so you think about that. I've been in this financial business for 41 years.

Greg Dowling (41:57): I wanted to ask. You had two careers, basically.

Jack O'Callahan (41:59): Yeah. This one I'm in now, I've had it longer.

Greg Dowling (42:02): That's true. That's true. And you've been successful at both. What -- from hockey, any lessons that you've been able to be like, you know what? That works in the investment industry, that attitude, that rule, whatever it is. I'm sure in the pits, being a tough hockey player helps.

Jack O'Callahan (42:18): Well, when I first started down there, was a runner in the summer of '84, I think it was. The guy I met, he said to me, he's like, "Listen, man, this is a great environment," and this and that. He goes, "But it's capitalism at its finest, right?" And he said, "The most important thing down here is integrity and your word." He says, "If you violate either of those," he says, "people will know that right away, and you'll be drummed out of this business. No one will trade with you. No one will trust you." That hit home to me because that was always important to me as a kid growing up, things like loyalty, integrity, honesty, accountability. And then, I recognized that when I was in the pit trading. Sometimes you make a trade, and it's a bad trade. You get your butt kicked. You lose a lot of money. Depending on the kind of guy you are, maybe you want to rip up that trading card or something like that. That would never cross my mind. Take your lumps, right? You win, you lose. You take your lumps and you move on. That was part of my psychology anyway, and it was reinforced by this guy. I never forgot it when he said that to me because it crystallized what I already believed. As I've been in this business, as a pit trader, as an off-the-floor trader, running an institutional commodities business, I was president of a broker/dealer, and I've got all these licenses and certifications and all these experiences with banking and always in the institutional space. Once I get on the client side, I will never negotiate my integrity. And I think that's something that has really served me well in this industry. I'll never lie to a client. I'm always going to be honest and straightforward. My integrity is inviolable. So that's that, and I think that's something that I learned as an athlete, as a kid growing up. There's accountability. There's integrity. There's honesty. You're going to take your lumps along the way. But you dust yourself off. You get back up, and you just get back on it. And sports is a great metaphor for that, right? Because I remember having a conversation with an orthopedic surgeon in Chicago, the guy that did the Blackhawks orthopedics, Dr. Kolb. And he was asking me about how I manage mistakes. And when you make a mistake on the ice, what do you do? I go, "Doc, you can't dwell on it. You just make a mistake. And what are you going to do? You just dust yourself off. You were wrong. You did something wrong. And you know what? It's like, get back on the bench, get yourself together, and go out and do better." He goes, "Yeah, I just don't have that mindset." I go, "Well, you're an orthopedic surgeon. You make a mistake, people die. I make a mistake, we're down 1-nothing."

Greg Dowling (44:20): Next shift, right?

Jack O'Callahan (44:21): Yeah, next shift. Yeah.

Greg Dowling (44:23): So what's -- You mentioned you're in Florida. You're --

Jack O'Callahan (44:27): Yeah.

Greg Dowling (44:27): You've got a couple of kids. They're adults.

Jack O'Callahan (44:29): Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Greg Dowling (44:30): What's life like now?

Jack O'Callahan (44:31): Well, life's great. Life's good. I got remarried. I met a woman about 30 years ago, and we've been together for 30 years. And she was like a -- she's a second mom to my kids, and they're in their late 30s. I got my fifth grandchild coming. I live down in northeast Florida.

Greg Dowling (44:44): Congratulations.

Jack O'Callahan (44:44): I moved out of Chicago. Thank you. Plus, my first guy, Jackson, he was born on St. Paddy's Day, which is kind of cool. If my dad was alive, he'd have been pretty happy about that. He's an old Irish guy.

Greg Dowling (44:54): That's great. Appreciate this. I got to tell you. "The Miracle," probably one of my favorite movies.

Jack O'Callahan (44:59): Yeah.

Greg Dowling (44:59): And I've seen pictures of you as a kid.

Jack O'Callahan (45:01): Yeah.

Greg Dowling (45:01): They did a pretty good job getting your actor.

Jack O'Callahan (45:03): Yeah.

Greg Dowling (45:03): He's a lot better looking than you.

Jack O'Callahan (45:05): Well, it's funny. I would get letters from second graders. "You're my favorite hockey player." I got one from this girl. She was from Loma Linda, California. She was a second grader. And she wrote me a letter. And it was like the block, where you have the line and then the two lines and the dotted line. So she was working on her block printing. And what she basically said was, "I get to go out on a boat with my dad sometimes. And one time I saw a dolphin swim up to the boat. And I thought that was the coolest thing I ever seen, until I got to know you. And you're even cooler than a dolphin swimming up to the boat." She was a second grader. So anyhow, I'm like, "Oh, my God, this is the greatest letter of all time." So I wrote her a letter back. I was like, "Oh, you're such a great printer, and you're so neat." I complimented her. Within three weeks, I had 20 letters from all of her classmates, right? And so then, every year for the next 5 years, I'd get 20 letters. And I finally called the teacher. And I was like, "Listen, dude, this is getting a little old." And he goes, "Jack, you're the first guy that ever replied to these letters."

Greg Dowling (45:55): Oh!

Jack O'Callahan (45:56): And he says, "Now," he goes, "you're our mascot." He says, "We got your picture all over second grade, and the kids can't wait to write you a letter. And then we make them watch the movie." And it's fun things like that that happen to me and great experiences all in, and I'm one of the luckiest guys in the world because I'm still talking about it. And you and everybody that I run into, no one's ever had a bad word to say about it. And now, everybody typically has a real personal story associated with it, which I just love listening to.

Greg Dowling (46:19): Well, hey, thanks for sharing that with us.

Jack O'Callahan (46:21): Great to be here. Thank you.

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