I remember when I met Mark Bavis during my one and only year with the North American Hockey League. He was an assistant coach with the Chicago Freeze franchise, while I was working in the league office in southeast Michigan. I immediately took a liking to him, even though I was a Boston College graduate and he had attended rival Boston University. (He was a real hockey player, mind you—while I was and still remain strictly a recreational one, except for maybe that one minute skating with NHL players at Michigan State in 1995.)
I once told him I remembered the name "Bavis" from the 1991 Beanpot Tournament championship game at the now-demolished Boston Garden, which BU won by an 8-4 score. BC had taken an early lead and then fell behind, but was just two goals down late in the second period. The next goal would be huge, and BU got it with just one second left before intermission to effectively put the game away.
I asked Mark who exactly was the Terrier player who got that goal, and he replied with a sheepish grin "me".
Mark was a genuinely good, down-to-earth guy, right down to his Boston accent as a native of Roslindale, Mass. I saw him again at the 2000 NAHL All-Star Game outside Chicago that season, and once more at the league office later that year before I returned to New Jersey in late August 2000. I didn't know when I'd see Mark again, but I'd figured I'd cross paths with him again at a rink somewhere along the way.
After graduating from BU in 1993, where he helped the Terriers to four NCAA tournament berths and three Beanpot titles, Mark played professional hockey for three seasons in two different leagues in Fredericton, Providence and South Carolina. He retired as an active player in 1996, and tried his hand at coaching, first at Brown University and then Harvard University before joining the Freeze.
It was as a scout soon after, however, that he found his true calling, scouring the globe for up-and-coming hockey talent. By 2001, he had quickly become one of the rising stars in the scouting department of the National Hockey League's Los Angeles Kings.
He was 31 years old, single, and succeeding at hockey's top level in the NHL. He had his whole life ahead of him—and then he boarded United Airlines Flight 175 at Boston's Logan Airport the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
That was the second hijacked jetliner to strike the World Trade Center, as it collided with the South Tower at 9:03 a.m. All 65 people on board, including Mark and Wayne Gretzky's former mentor, Garnet "Ace" Bailey, the Kings' Director of Scouting, were lost.
It was certainly a surreal day, especially for all of us here in the greater New York City area. I remember my father telling me before he went off to Princeton that morning that a plane had struck the World Trade Center, and I didn't think too much of it at that time. Like many people probably did, I thought it was a small prop job that had somehow gotten off course and collided with one of the towers—not a commercial jumbo jet commandeered by terrorists.
The first thing I did after getting out of the house was drive over to the Union Public Library on Morris Avenue, from where you could always see the Twin Towers on a clear day. On 9/11, however, the sky was choked with billowing black clouds of smoke that looked as if they'd never dissipate, the Towers never again to be seen from that or any other vantage point in my hometown—or anywhere else.
I was on my way to work in the athletic department at Montclair State University not long after, listening to the radio as I made my way north up the Garden State Parkway, when the towers crumbled. I still remember the shock and horror in the voices of the broadcasters, as if what was happening before them could not possibly be real.
My office at the time was in a house just off-campus, which itself was largely barren that day. So was Willowbrook Mall in nearby Wayne—in recent years it's been better known as a flood zone, but that day its doors were actually open. It's just that it was a real ghost town. No one was there, everyone having closed up shop to go home and be with their loved ones in the wake of the terrorist attacks. I've never seen an active mall like that, so eerie in its stillness and emptiness, and I hope to never see one like that again.
I didn't really get much, if anything, done at work that day, as I was still trying to comprehend what had taken place across the Hudson River, in Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon. The hardest jolt of all was yet to come that evening, though, when I saw the crawl at the bottom of the screen while watching ESPN. It confirmed in bold white letters that Mark Bavis and Ace Bailey had indeed been passengers on United 175.
I was a zombie for the next two days straight.
I've tried to contemplate what Mark must have seen or felt that morning. Did he know right after takeoff that his flight had been hijacked? Did he know his Boeing 767 was on a collision course with the World Trade Center? Who or what did he think of just before the plane's impact with the South Tower? Sadly, no one will ever know.
I got another jolt months later when I accompanied the Montclair State women's basketball team to a tournament at Emmanuel College in Boston in November. We had already played our first round game (a win) when I snuck off to Boston College (with permission) a few miles away to watch the Eagles play BU in men's ice hockey at Kelley Rink. It was the first time I had gotten to see a game at BC in more than seven years, having spent most of the time in-between working in Michigan, and I remember I was downright giddy at the prospect of seeing the two rivals face off again like I did many times before when I was an undergrad from 1987 to 1991.
That euphoria lasted about as long as it took me to climb the stairs to the second level of stands at Kelley Rink, where I turned to see Mark's brother, Mike, an assistant coach with BU—and his twin.
He looked exactly like Mark, of course, and I'm sure I probably stared at him like an abject moron for several seconds. If he noticed me, though, he didn't acknowledge it.
To this day I still feel guilty I didn't say anything or offer any words of condolence to Mike on Mark's loss, but in truth I'm still not sure I would have found the right words. Maybe one day I will. I still hope to, all this time later.
Two decades later, it's still hard to believe that Mark is really gone. He might have been a husband and a father by now, might have been part of the Kings' 2012 and 2014 Stanley Cup title runs with players he recommended they draft into their system. For a while I even wore a BU Hockey t-shirt under my gear when I played, to honor Mark, until it just got too beat up. I may bring it out again for a special appearance one day, though.
Mark's family refused to settle their legal case for any monetary gain, as they wanted Boeing, United Airlines and other involved parties to admit they made mistakes and/or were generally lax in their screening procedures, even before 9/11.
A settlement was reached in 2011 with United Airlines and its security contractor, Huntleigh USA.
Mark's memory still lives on, primarily in the Mark Bavis Scholarship Foundation at his prep school alma mater, Catholic Memorial. The Mark Bavis Arena in Rockland, Mass. bears his name. He and Bailey have also both been immortalized in the lyrics of "Your Spirit's Alive" by Massachusetts' own Dropkick Murphys. A Kings' 2012 Stanley Cup Champions hat was also placed at Ground Zero that year, between Mark's and Bailey's names. Thanks to whoever did that.
As I've have every year since, except when I vacationed in Michigan in 2007, I will be home in New Jersey for 9/11. I will also wear a commemorative homemade badge for that day, which showcases Mark in his BU uniform, to honor his memory. One year I even pinned it to a BC polo shirt while I attended 9/11 remembrance gatherings.
I think Mark might have even approved. Maybe just a little. Rest in peace, my friend.
