Gordie Howe

Enjoying his second retirement since 1980, Howe returned to play a game in 1997 with the Detroit Vipers of the International Hockey League. Although he played for less than a minute, Howe scored a goal and became the first hockey player to have played a game in each of six decades. Howe was sixty-nine years old at the time of his final professional hockey game.

From their home in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills, Howe and his wife, Colleen, conducted an extensive schedule of charity-raising appearances in the 1990s. In 2002 Howe disclosed that Colleen had been diagnosed with Pick's Disease, an incurable form of dementia that leads to behavioral changes and memory loss. "I've never had so many worries in my life," Howe admitted to the Detroit News in September 2002, "Sleepless nights. Every day is a constant reminder. What is, what was. Outside it's different, but inside … it eats you up."