Toronto Star
September 19, 2002
By Ken Campbell

HAMILTON � About the time Aaron Gavey was on the ice Monday in a bid to win a spot with the Maple Leafs, his cousin Tom got up from his hospital bed in Belleville to stretch and died of a massive heart attack.

And when Tom Gavey is laid to rest this morning, Aaron Gavey will continue his quest with a heavy heart. So will Brad Leeb, who learned just hours after his mother's funeral two weeks ago that he had been traded to the Leafs from the Vancouver Canucks.

It's challenging enough to summon the mental toughness needed to compete for an NHL job, but Gavey and Leeb are doing so with the loss of a loved one fresh in their minds. Maple Leafs athletic therapist Chris Broadhurst, meanwhile, has been in and out of camp after his 20-month daughter, Delaney, drowned in a hot tub accident Sept. 1.

For Gavey, the loss of his cousin carries another concern. Tom Gavey, a longtime sports reporter for the Belleville Intelligencer newspaper, had a kidney disorder that also took the life of his father (Aaron's father's brother) and afflicts one of his brothers. It is believed that the heart attack was brought on by the effects of his dialysis treatments. Since the disorder is in the Gavey family, Aaron must now be checked to make sure he is healthy.

"It's a little disconcerting, but I'm not too worried," said the 28- year-old Gavey. "They do blood work every year when you come to camp and I suspect it would have been discovered by now."

Even though his 45-year-old cousin died of a heart attack, Gavey said doctors told his cousin he would have died of kidney failure within days after voluntarily taking himself off dialysis. Gavey said his cousin was fully aware of the ramifications of his decision and courageously accepted his fate.

"He was withering away," Gavey said. "There was nothing left and he was just a shell of a man and he just didn't want to live like that."

In the last days of his life, Tom Gavey got a message through Aaron's mother that he wanted to speak with him.

"I told him, `I've got to tell you, Tom, I really don't know what to say.' He said, `Aaron, there's nothing to say. I've lived a good life,' and I told him he was going to be missed."

For Leeb, the regimen of training camp has helped to dull the pain of the loss of his mother, Carol, who died in Red Deer, Alta., after an almost three-year battle with breast cancer Aug. 30, three days after his 23rd birthday.

"I guess everyone responds to this type of thing differently and it affects everyone differently," said Leeb, whose brother Greg is a prospect in the Edmonton Oilers system. "I was really close to my mom and I miss her tremendously, so it's hard from that standpoint. But she was a huge supporter of our hockey and she would have wanted me to carry on, to come to the rink and try to forget about things for a little while."

Leeb draws a tremendous amount of inspiration from his mother, whom he said shares his mental toughness. It was that quality that Leeb said kept her alive for so long after she was diagnosed.

"We don't know how she made it as far as she did," Leeb said. "She never told us how much pain she was in."

Veteran winger Tie Domi is feeling the pain, but not because he lost someone close to him. Two weekends ago, he received a call requesting that he fulfill the last wishes of a young boy with leukemia by meeting with him. Domi went to the boy's hospital room and spent an hour chatting and playing Sega with him. The boy died five days later.

"You see the parents there and there's nothing they can do and you can just see the hurt they're feeling inside," Domi said. "On the one hand, it makes you feel good that you maybe made a kid feel happy for at least a couple of hours. But it's just so sad."



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