Paul Joseph Haggerty

West Point, 1991

Be Thou At Peace

Posted by Walter Lamb on July 14, 2000:

I was stunned and saddened to just notice at this late date mention of the Paul Haggerty Memorial Golf Tournament in an AHA newsletter. My memories of Hags are fewer and farther away than most, but they are vivid to me, and I am reminded by this tragic event just how much Paul impacted those around him. I was the opposite of Hags in terms of talent. While he became a top line varsity player, I struggled to make the JV each year. He played on JV with us as a freshman when I was a sophomore and he was one of those rare guys who not only had loads of talent, but all the toughness, character and sincerity to go with it. I often felt like an outsider in the locker room because I hadn't been recruited and I wasn't all that good. Hags didn't care about that at all. I loved hockey and he loved hockey, and he was too genuine of a person to let my lack of talent get in the way. We used to stay on the ice late, letting our box dinners get stale (or more stale), and play stupid games that we would make up, like who could stick handle the puck around the other person without going outside the center circle and touch it up against a cone at the center dot. He'd win a point and I'd make up some rule disallowing it and he'd just laugh and then we'd play some more. I never felt better about being part of the Army hockey program than during those times. Since Hags lived in West Hartford, and I lived in Boston, we bummed rides home together a few times. I remember a particular underpass that seemed to be connected to about five different highways and I was always wondering where those roads went. Hags explained that they were built as part of a big project, but that they ran out of money after the bridges were built and couldn't actually build the roads themselves. I think of Hags and that story everytime I drive I-84 through Connecticut, not so much because of the story itself, but because Hags was the kind of guy who could say anything and you'd be interested, just because he made you feel like you were someone worth telling something to. I point those bridges out to others now, even though I think they built the roads, and I enjoy saying "I had a hockey buddy who lived in this area and he said ...". To Paul's wife and kids, I am very sorry that Paul's life was cut short. I am grateful to have been Paul's teammate for a year. Paul was a remarkable person. His talent as a hockey player was only exceeded by his talent as a human being.

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