When the Blue Jackets arrived in Columbus back in October 2000, Cheryl McGarvey learned something new about her husband, Dan.
The couple had attended a few Columbus Chill games over the years in the 1990s before the Blue Jackets arrival, but hockey had never been a huge part of their lives together. But, as it turned out, Dan had grown up in Western Ohio and attended games when the Dayton had a franchise in the International Hockey League, so the arrival of an NHL team to Central Ohio immediately piqued his interest.
“We were dating in high school, and it was always basketball, football, that was about it,” McGarvey said. “He never really said anything about being interested in hockey. Come to find out when he brought up going down there to become season ticket holders, I looked at him and said, ‘What? Why?’ And he had gone to Dayton with some friends when he was younger to a lot of hockey games, and I didn’t know that.”
So the McGarveys visited Nationwide Arena when seats first went on sale, and that day, the couple became full season ticket holders with a pair of seats in section 214.
“He is the one that brought it up and said, ‘Let’s go down and see what this is like,’” McGarvey remembers. “I was like, ‘I didn’t know you were that big of a hockey fan.’ So we went down there and looked at the seats, and he wanted to do it, so that’s what we did.”
As the Blue Jackets celebrate the fans with tonight’s 5th Line Celebration, Cheryl has been a season ticket holder in section 214 for the entire quarter-century of CBJ hockey. Unfortunately, she only got to spend a handful of those years with Dan.
Just three months after the team's inaugural game in Nationwide Arena, Dan was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He fought it until Jan. 13, 2004, when he passed away.
During his battle, though, Dan was still a devoted Blue Jackets fan. Even as he went through bouts of chemotherapy and treatments, he still made a point to attend as many games as he could, keeping a sense of normalcy to his routine and enjoying the chance to root on the Blue Jackets.
“He always wanted to go to the games,” McGarvey said. “Even after working all day, we still went to games. The only time he didn’t go was if he was at The James, and he’d watch it on TV, or if I was up there I'd watch it on TV with him. It’s a motivation to keep going and everything.”
In the years after Dan passed, Cheryl created a new tradition, going with her family and friends to games each year on Jan. 13 if the Blue Jackets happened to be home. The annual Hockey Fights Cancer game also holds a place of importance to the McGarvey family.
McGarvey has made a number of friends over the years in her section, and her grandson, Kyle, also became hooked on the sport after going to games as a kid with Dan and Cheryl. After attending a few CBJ games, he enrolled in the Blue Jackets’ Learn To Play program, joined a few youth teams and ended up playing for the Westerville Warcats high school team before moving on to adult hockey.
“After the first couple of games, that’s what he wanted to do,” McGarvey said. “No other sport, just hockey. He’s the only one of the grandkids that played hockey, but it was the only thing he wanted to do. He didn’t want to do anything else.”
Through the 25 years of friendships, family outings and hockey fandom, McGarvey has stuck with the Blue Jackets, evening getting a custom CBJ license plate that reads JKT5TH. She was chosen a few years ago for the team’s end-of-season jersey giveaway, receiving a sweater on the ice from Pierre-Luc Dubois, and one prized possession is a breast cancer awareness stick with pink tape signed by former CBJ player Kevyn Adams.
