I was sitting in a Caribbean restaurant last Wednesday morning eating pancakes when I caught a partial glimpse of the TV screen. Something about the former owner of the NHL San Jose Sharks.
Even before learning the full details approximately 30 minutes later, I was sure one of the Gund brothers had died.
George Gund III, 75, died of cancer in Palm Springs, California last week. The news revived my memories of working for the Gunds in the 1980s.
The two brothers owned the NHL North Stars and operated Met Center. I was involved with marketing both entities, and mostly became acquainted with the Gunds through my boss, the late Frank Jirik.
Frank loved to tell stories including many jokes you couldn’t use in today’s sensitive office environment. A favorite tale was Frank’s story about George’s unpredictable behavior. The way I recall it, George was traveling in Europe with his wife and friends. The group was at an airport waiting for the plane to depart.
“George wanders off, sees a travel poster and takes a flight to that destination without telling anybody where he’s going,” Frank told me.
Several days later word reached George’s family and others as to his whereabouts.
If you didn’t guess by now, George was a character and free spirit. He had bushy eyebrows thick enough to hide the safe deposit box key where his inheritance might have been secured. He also mumbled, and when Frank impersonated George it was high comedy.
George and his brother Gordon grew up in Cleveland where their father, George Gund II, was a wealthy businessman. George II might have been interested to see how George III enjoyed his inheritance. His son loved to travel, collect art, and play hockey, chasing the puck even into his 40’s or maybe 50’s. He was also a well-known philanthropist and long time supporter of the San Francisco Film Society.
An online story in last Tuesday’s Cleveland Plain Dealer by Pat Galbincea recalled that George once suited up as a goalie for a North Stars practice and liked to show off a picture of himself in uniform. The same article referred to the Gund brothers owning the NBA’s Cleveland Cavs for many years and how George enjoyed dropping Cuban cigar ashes on the scorebook of the team’s radio play-by-play guy, Joe Tait.
“He was one unique individual,” Tait said in the story.
George spent time in his adopted hometown of San Francisco. He was also enamored with Squaw Valley, California. Frank and I talked about encouraging either George or Gordon to buy a home in Minneapolis and establish more identity in this community. Never happened, and while Gordon was somewhat of a regular around the Met, I just don’t think Minnesota was very often on George’s world travel itinerary.
In the late 1980’s the North Stars were struggling at the box office. Bad hockey produced bad results on and off the ice. The dress suit season ticket holders crowd from the franchise’s early days had been replaced by single game buyers who often relieved themselves on the sidewalks outside the building.
Frank and I had built our reputations filling the Met Center for concerts, family shows and other events including a Lakers NBA exhibition game. “If there’s one empty seat (for any event) it’s one too many,” I told Frank.
He loved to hear that and shared the statement with Gordon, a capable businessman who was blind because of retinitis pigmentosa. Gordon, who once was featured on TV’s “60 Minutes,” was a pleasant guy who watched the bottom line of his businesses.
Our management team made money for him on the non-hockey events, but we disliked not being profitable with the North Stars. We tried to convince the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission to invest over $10 million in the renovation of Met Center, adding suites and remodeling concourses. After negotiations failed, George and Gordon sold the team to Norm Green and other investors in 1990.
George and Gordon weren’t done with hockey, though. They bought an expansion team for San Jose that began play in the NHL in 1991. The club was and still is the city’s only major league sports franchise. George was popular in San Jose and is fondly remembered among Bay Area residents more than 10 years after selling the Sharks.
Frank moved to San Jose in the early 1990s to continue working for the Gunds. I talked to Frank about joining him in California, but never did.
In the 1990s the Sharks were a new team in a new NHL market with a new arena—a classic “honeymoon” situation. The building was packed for concerts like Pavarotti and Sharks games. Frank might have thought about my mantra, “If there’s one empty seat, it’s one too many.”
If he mentioned it to George and Gordon, I’m sure they were pleased.