The 'Forgotten Miracle' on ice

The saga of Minnesotans on the 1960 U.S. Olympic hockey team reads like the 35-cent novels so popular in that era.

A clandestine, last-minute locker-room visit by Russian rivals. A goalie cast aside by a coach who didn't like his playing style, then brought back when his replacements were found wanting. A disastrous gambling trek to Reno.

But no work of pulp fiction ever had a more astonishing ending: a gold medal, a "Miracle on Ice" two full decades before that expression attached itself to another band of upstart American pucksters.

"If we were a dark horse, it was very dark," said Dick Meredith, 77, of Edina.

"We figured if we could get a medal, we'd be doing well," said goalie Jack McCartan, 74, of Eden Prairie. "A bronze would be fine, and a silver would be gravy."

Instead, Meredith, McCartan, Paul Johnson of West St. Paul and six other Minnesotans brought home the gold 50 Februarys ago. Their triumph is chronicled in a wonderful new documentary film, "Forgotten Miracle" ($19.95, www.forgottenmiracle.com).

The experience forged a connection to the sport that would bring them ample rewards, if not riches.

Instead, Olympic team general manager Jim Claypool got him a job at First Bank. Seven years later, another former U.S. team manager, Walter Bush, hired Meredith for the fledgling Minnesota North Stars.

"We really had a lot of fun. It didn't seem like a job," said Meredith of his 17-year tenure with the team, selling season tickets, working at games and escorting players to public appearances. "I would take them to a Lions Club or something like that, and they could make $50. They really liked that.

"I haven't made a lot of money," said Meredith, now a vice president with the public relations firm Creative Concepts, "but I've had a lot of fun."

So have Johnson and McCartan, who played minor league hockey for more than a decade. After retiring, McCartan owned a Dairy Queen franchise for five years, then sold it to become a scout for the Vancouver Canucks for 27 years. Johnson, 72, owned a bar in Waterloo, Iowa, "with a lot of hockey memorabilia and a lot of pig roasts" for almost 30 years before retiring and moving back to his childhood hometown, West St. Paul.

Cross-checks and Czechs

But Johnson said he couldn't hold a snifter to a Soviet counterpart. "Veniamin Aleksandrov, he could drink a bottle of vodka like it was a glass of water," Johnson said. "They finally sent him to Siberia, I think."

So our star-spangled lads were consorting with Commies? But wait, as the advertorials say, there's more:

Coached by Jack Riley, the U.S. team had roared through the tournament undefeated. The Americans stunned Canada 2-1, as McCartan -- released after tryouts because Riley disdained his non-upright playing style, then called back when his replacements played like sieves -- made stellar save after stellar save. "No goalie ever played a greater game," Riley says in the documentary. Then they upset the Soviet Union 3-2 behind two goals by Warroad's Billy Christian.

In its final match, the U.S. trailed Czechoslovakia 4-3 after two periods. Not only would a Czech victory cost the Americans the gold, but it would elevate that satellite nation above the Soviet Union for the bronze.

"So Nicolai Sologubov, the captain of the Russian team, came into the locker room after the second period with oxygen tanks," Meredith said. "But we weren't really having problems with the elevation. Only one or two guys took the oxygen."

Even though this was the first televised Olympics, the aftermath was a far cry from what greeted the 1980 squad coached by Herb Brooks -- who, incidentally, was the last player cut in 1960.

"When the 1980 team won, they went to the White House," Meredith said. "When we got to Minneapolis and got out on the tarmac, the most important guy there was Sid Hartman."