63-year-old goalie died playing hockey, but lived inspiring fight against cancer

At first it looked like just another great save by Bob Klem, a 63-year-old hockey goalie bearing up yet again under some 70 pounds of protective gear.

The puck was blocked. The shot on goal denied.

But Klem didn’t look right.

Are you OK? John Buzzelli said as he skated over.

Buzzelli looked into a face that was as familiar as joy to most everyone who knows and loves hockey around Kansas City.

He saw a face just as familiar to all those who joined Klem over the years in his trailblazing, nationally recognized crusade against pancreatic cancer after the disease killed his wife, Becky, in 1999.

But the face Buzzelli saw behind Klem’s goalie mask in that moment was “white as a ghost.”

Moments later, the hockey icon known as “Klemmer” would collapse in the locker room during his regular Saturday night adult league game Feb. 17 inside the Silverstein Eye Centers Arena in Independence.

Monday his legions of friends and fans will gather with his family in the same arena, opening in his honor for his funeral services at 1 p.m.

“Bob was a tireless warrior,” Buzzelli said. “A tireless ambassador for his game and the cancer fight.”

Becky Klem’s death hit her family hard — her husband, Bob, their daughters, Rachel and Sarah, and Bob’s son from a previous relationship, Jody Hale, his son said.

Nothing alerted them that Becky had pancreatic cancer until it was too late. There are still no reliable tests to provide early warning of pancreatic cancer, and that angered Klem then and until the end.

They wanted to make sure Becky was remembered and honored, Sarah Klem said. Rachel had the idea that her dad and teammates could start painting the hockey sticks purple for her and the fight against cancer.

Then Bob Klem got the idea of having special fundraiser games. Klem, who described himself as a “non-geeky network engineer” at Sprint, had played hockey since he was 6 growing up in Chicago. And he’d played goalie as long as anyone can remember.

His love for hockey would be the force that carried him into the cancer fight that rapidly became his new life purpose.

The games were more like get-togethers at first. But, the way Klem did things, he soon had a foundation — www.skatewithbob.com — that would raise an astounding $165,000 and become a model organization for others looking for ways to fight cancer.

The number of third-party organizations nationwide raising money against pancreatic cancer have grown by 10 to 15 a year, and Klem’s example had a lot to do with that, said Brittany Veneris, the senior manager of corporate and community partnerships at the California-based Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.

“We’ve been using his story,” Veneris said. “He was so organized … a trailblazer.”

He called his events “Have a Skate with Bob,” which would also become the new name of his hockey teams.

Everybody wanted to skate with Bob, said former Sprint colleague and teammate Scott Patterson of Fairway.

“He had such a big personality,” he said. “The way he laughed. And his colorful language.”

Soon the professional minor league hockey teams in the region were teaming up with him, collaborating in events.

The Kansas City Mavericks, who play in Silverstein, helped draw more participants, as did the Rockford, Ill., IceHogs and others.

The arena owners donated the time on the ice and the skaters’ fees, and sponsor support went to the foundation, which sent the thousands of dollars it raised to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.

Klem’s playful spirit dominated the games. Participants often filled out purple-trimmed signs naming a loved cancer victim or survivor they were fighting for. Some signs used the hockey jargon referring to classic hockey player fights seen on television that always start with the combatants throwing down their gloves.

“I drop my gloves for —”

In a promotional video at a 2016 fundraiser game at the BMO Harris Bank Center in Rockford, Ill., Klem holds up a sign saying he drops his gloves for “Becky” … several other names …“and you.”

His favorite Twitter hashtags: #dropYOURgloves and #puckcancer.

It’s going to be hard to play on without Klemmer, Patterson said. But he and so many others joined in Klem’s events know the kind of spirit Klem would want them to carry forward.

Patterson remembers a moment he shared with Klem on the goalie’s 60th birthday.

“I told him he proved the theory that if you are selfless and do things to help others, it makes you happier,” he said. “He wasn’t a doctor or a researcher, but he had a passion and knowledge he knew could help people.”

“He always listened,” Sarah Klem said. “He was always strong in his beliefs.”

Think about the kind of person who would want to be a goalie, Hale, his son, said.

“It takes a special person to be in the crease, pucks flying at you from any direction at any time,” Hale said. “You’re being the protector.”

Klem would want everyone who was with him in his fight to power on the way the Klems did after struggling past Becky Klem’s death, Hale said.

“Why let it end this way?” Hale said, remembering his father’s growing resolve. “Why let this be the story?”

Instead, Hale said, Klem looked for a path “to do the next thing, the next step, to not hold back.”

These are the reasons tributes flow. This is why the hockey and cancer-fighting community wanted — and probably needed — to make an arena available to honor him in death. He was determined to help as many people as he could.

And for a goalie, those were his best saves of all.

This story was originally published February 24, 2018 at 5:30 AM with the headline "63-year-old goalie died playing hockey, but lived inspiring fight against cancer."