On The Ice, Fighting Through Adversity

Fifty years ago, pro hockey was a different kind of game. No one wore helmets and no blacks ever donned a National Hockey League uniform.

That is, until a 22-year-old Canadian named Willie O'Ree joined the Boston Bruins. He became the first black man ever to play in the NHL, CBS News correspondent Byron Pitts reports.

"The Bruin organization just said: 'Willie, they said, you're here because we think that you can add sumpin' to our club,'" O'Ree said.

"You weren't a diversity hire, you were just a good player?" asked Pitts.

"Yeah, I just happened to be black," he said.

But in a sport whose complexion matched the color of the ice, O'Ree always had to skate a thin line.

"I was faced with racism, prejudice, bigotry and ignorance while I was playing," O'Ree said.

During one NHL game in 1961, an opponent knocked his teeth out.

"And he made a couple of racial remarks at me," O'Ree said. "Well, you know, I hit him over the head with my stick, and then all hell broke loose."

O'Ree says he never used his fists to fight bigotry -- just to earn respect.

But that night, they earned him something else: police protection.

"Coach Will Schmidt said 'Willie, he says I'm fearful for bodily injury on you,'" O'Ree said. "So they had two police officers outside the dressing room."

Pitts said: "I mean, in 1961, you might've been a pro hockey player. But in Chicago in 1961, you were still a black man who struck a white man?"

"Yeah, yeah, well," O'Ree said.

Today, at 72, O'Ree is appreciated not just for the barrier he broke, but for what he does with that distinction, whether supporting the league's young minority players - 12 of them black - or touring the country as the NHL's director of diversity. He tutors thousands of youngsters each year on the moves of the game ... and the rules of life.

"I think it definitely opens up your eyes -- to have someone like that to look up to and see firsthand," said Nigel Dawes of the New York Rangers.

"If you think you can, you can. If you think you can't, you're right," O'Ree said at one public school appearance.

Yet for all that his story says about survival, the kids often focus on the least obvious, but perhaps most heroic detail.

"When your right eye went blind, how did you still play hockey?" one student asked at an assembly.

That's right. He played professional hockey blind in one eye. As an amateur, O'Ree was struck by a puck. The doctor had said he'd never play again.

"So I just said "I'm gonna prove him wrong," O'Ree said.

He kept it a secret. No one else asked. He never told.

"So, I went out and played 21 years with one eye," he said.

After just one more person who told him he couldn't. And an inner voice that told him he could.

A metaphor for life - his. And he hopes someday, theirs.