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Great Teams Make Personal Sacrifices
No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.
—MAX BEERBOHM
In the bedlam and joyous hysteria on the ice following our gold medal-clinching win over Finland on February 24, 1980, I searched the stands for my father. As I canvassed the crowd, TV cameras trained in on me as I located first a friend to whom I called out—and the words were easily readable on my lips—“Where's my father?” ABC TV commentator Ken Dryden (one of the greatest goalies ever) helped narrate and gave drama to the scene by telling a national television audience, “There's Jim Craig, looking for his father.”
Seconds after I asked the question, Mark Johnson's fiancée, Leslie, who knew where my dad was sitting, took my arm, pointed, and helped me locate him.
My looking for my father got a lot of attention. It shows my love for my father and my urgent desire to share something very special with him. That is a lesson that is all positive.
Jim and his father, Don, shortly after the 1980 Winter Olympics.
Credit: Jim Craig
But I want to dig down a bit more into what was going on in those precious moments—and I want to give background and explanation. In searching and trying to find my father, I was trying to connect with him, yes—but I was also trying to connect with my mother, whom cancer had taken from my family a year and a half prior ...
