Team's early exit made for snow daze

By Marvin Pave, Globe Staff, 2/3/2003

is hair was still wet from the postgame shower when Northeastern defenseman and two-sport captain Jim Walsh hopped into his dad's car along with teammates Dave Archambault and Ed Arrington for the ride from Boston Garden to the NU campus.

The Huskies had just lost in OT to Harvard in the opening game of the 1978 Beanpot, and while several players had left earlier on the team bus, Walsh and his entourage - including his parents, James III and Annellen, and family friends Bob and Stacey Gallagher - stayed to watch the beginning of the nightcap before braving the elements.

''The plan was for Dad to take us back to school, then come back to pick up my mother and Mrs. Gallagher at Polcari's Restaurant for their ride back to Newton,'' recalled Walsh, now president of NU's Varsity Club and vice president of Cambridge-based Walsh Brothers Inc., the construction firm that is building the new athletic center at BU and renovating Fenway Park. ''We left the Garden around 10 o'clock, got stuck in a snowbank, and had to dig out around Government Center and we had no jackets or gloves on. We finally got to Symphony Hall an hour and a half later. That's as far as we could go, so we walked back to our dorms and Dad, with Mr. Gallagher as his copilot, drove back to Polcari's to get my mother and Mrs. Gallagher.''

Walsh's father, who is president of the 102-year-old family firm, made it back to Causeway Street to pick up his wife and Mrs. Gallagher and even made it back to Newton. But the Gallaghers had to hop out on Beacon Street near the reservoir and walk home. The Walshes did likewise shortly thereafter in front of McElroy Commons on the BC campus. The car wound up buried on Beacon Street for five days before it was plowed out.

''The next few days around school were tough,'' said Walsh. ''Everything was shut down. People were waiting in line just to buy milk. You couldn't drive anywhere and there was so much snow that you could jump off the underpass at Mass. Ave. and Huntington Ave. into the drift.

''It was pretty unique. I remember running out of cash a few days later and I had to walk - and hitch - my way back to Newton to get some.''

Walsh played in the rescheduled consolation game nearly a month later and scored one of his team's goals in a 3-2 overtime loss to Boston College. He turned professional with the Buffalo Sabres in 1981 and played most of his six-year career as the only American-born captain of the Rochester Americans of the AHL. He had a brief call-up with the Sabres before leaving hockey and joining the family business.

Walsh, who was inducted into NU's Athletic Hall of Fame in 1991, now lives in Duxbury, where his youngest son, 8-year-old Jay, plays defense with the Mites A team. Jay will attend his first Beanpot tonight, and according to the weather reports, he probably won't have to rush home early with his family.

This story ran on page D6 of the Boston Globe on 2/3/2003.
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