Remembering Bill Davidge

For Bill Davidge, it was always about the people. 

He loved the game of hockey, and may have loved golf just as much, but he loved the people the most. 

His time as a player and coach was marked by the relationships he built with his teammates and players. His memorable stint as a Blue Jackets broadcaster and ambassador made every trip to the rink or a charity event into a reunion. Every tee time was a chance to catch up with an old friend or meet a new one. 

Davidge, a fixture in the CBJ community for the organization’s first two decades who could best be described as simply “Mr. Blue Jacket,” passed away Wednesday at age 72. 

Born in Ontario, he became synonymous with hockey in the state of Ohio, first lettering and serving as a team captain at Ohio State, then helping build the Miami University program before being hired by the Blue Jackets as a scout in 1999. Davidge’s relentlessly positive nature, friendly demeanor and impeccable wardrobe were better suited to broadcasting, and he became a fixture on the team’s radio and television broadcasts before retiring in 2019.

“I don’t know that there’s anybody that I’ve ever been around who has such a great love of hockey and the Blue Jackets,” Todd Sharrock, Blue Jackets’ longtime vice president of communications, said at the time. “There may be people that love both of those entities at the same level, but nobody loves either of them more than Billy does.” 

Davidge’s later years were marked by a public battle with multiple myeloma, though again, he used his stage to inspire others as much as he could. He always had a smile on his face and made it his mission to stay as active as possible, helping raise money to fight the disease through a series of fundraising golf tournaments. Between treatments, he would visit the James Cancer Center at Ohio State to encourage patients going through similar adversity. 

“He carries himself with no airs whatsoever for a guy that has accomplished as much as he has and been around the game as much as he has,” longtime CBJ beat writer Aaron Portzline said in 2019. “He’s a local legend, but he carries himself in such an honest, sincere, everyday guy type of way. He’s been part of the local fabric here even before the team had a local fabric. He’s been that way from day one.”

Davidge was born April 1, 1954, in Dunnville, Ontario, a town of around 6,000 people in the southeastern part of the province just north of Lake Erie. He and his siblings – including a brother, Dan, who became an accomplished coach in his own right – played hockey on frozen lakes and ponds as well as at the bare-bones Dunnville Arena on the Grand River next to a feed mill. 

“You paid a quarter every time you practiced or played, and I'll never forget, they had a $2 registration fee,” he told BlueJackets.com in 2018. "Two bucks. That basically was your insurance policy if you ever got hurt. It was pretty neat." 

As he got older, he showed an aptitude in the sport, and before he got his driver’s license, he’d hitchhike to practice to hone his skills. The hard work and dedication paid off, as Davidge was recruited to play at Ohio State and the University of Pennsylvania. 

READ MORE: Davidge's retirement announcement | Mr. Blue Jacket

Because he could get a full athletic scholarship and play as a freshman, he chose Ohio State, where the fleet-footed center/defenseman was a four-year letterwinner from 1974-77. He finished his time as a Buckeye with 45 goals, 56 assists and 141 penalty minutes in 114 games while serving as a co-captain as a junior and team captain as a senior. A scholar-athlete, he earned a degree in education, which became one of the passions of his life.  

Fortuitously, he roomed with an All-American golfer named Paul Davis, and Davidge picked up a game that became a passion; his last quarter at OSU included golf all day and classes at night. 

He also met a tennis player in a physical education class named Leann Grimes, the daughter of OSU football player Bob Grimes and the school’s all-time leader in singles and doubles wins when she graduated. The two married, and when injuries ruled out a pro hockey career for Davidge, they moved to Oxford, Ohio, where Bill pursued his master’s degree and taught physical education at Miami while Grimes coached the school’s women's tennis team.  

Davidge and legendary Miami coach Steve Cady helped convince the school to take its hockey program to the Division I level in 1978-79, and the two also created the Miami Hockey School on the way to becoming two of the most prominent instructors in the state. After serving as an assistant, Davidge took over from Cady as the program’s head coach in 1985, spending four seasons heading the program behind the bench.  

"He's one of the best teachers that I've ever seen," Cady said in 2014. "He was able to break a skill down, explain the skill. He was a very, very talented athlete at Ohio State, and a lot of guys that are real talented from a skills standpoint struggle to teach it because it just comes natural to them. 

"Bill was not that way at all. He knew how to break the components of the skill down and then articulate that to whatever age that he was working with in a way that made it easy for the folks to comprehend and learn." 

Bill and Leann had a son, Rob, but her life was tragically cut short in January 1985 when she died from injuries suffered in a car accident while returning home from a recruiting trip.  

After stepping away from the bench in 1989, Davidge continued to teach at Miami – he had a sofa in his office rather than hardback chairs, the better to make visitors feel comfortable – and settled into a role as a scout and, for the first time, broadcaster with the Cincinnati Cyclones of the IHL. He also scouted for the Florida Panthers and Detroit Red Wings, and when Columbus was given an NHL franchise and chose Doug MacLean to run it, the latter reached out given his longtime relationship with Davidge. 

He was first hired to scout in 1999-2000, the year before the team debuted, and immediately embraced spreading the gospel of hockey around Ohio with the team’s first radio broadcaster, George Matthews. The two traversed the state in a Stinger-adorned van visiting radio affiliates, talking to fans and drumming up enthusiasm for the NHL team headed to the capital city. Whenever the Blue Jackets needed a representative at an event, Davidge was there.

“It just became so simple for him to sell because he loved what he was doing,” Matthews said in 2019. “It was a no-brainer for him, and then he had the personality. He doesn’t mind reaching out and shaking the hand first, which is a skill set in itself. He was out there meeting people. You have to have a love and passion for what you sell, and Bill certainly had that.” 

It also quickly became clear that Davidge – the relentlessly upbeat former coach with a professorial touch – and Matthews, the ever-excitable play-by-play man whose passion matched Davidge’s, had a chemistry that was unmatched. It led to the two heading to the team’s radio booth, where they stayed partnered for the first nine years of CBJ hockey. 

The broadcast was a match made in heaven, and the two seemed to be having a conversation about the game as much as broadcasting it; Matthews’ frenetic style and homespun catchphrases meshed perfectly with Davidge’s innate ability to break down what had just transpired. 

Eventually, Davidge moved to the TV side, serving as the color analyst beside Jeff Rimer for five seasons before doing intermissions, pregame and postgame coverage on Fox Sports Ohio’s broadcasts. The desk above section 110 at Nationwide Arena was a popular spot for friends and well-wishers each game, with ushers having to step in before each game to tell fans when Davidge had to step away and actually go on the air. 

“Everybody who knows the guy loves him,” former CBJ director of broadcasting Russ Mollohan said in 2019. “He’s touched so many people. They go on the air at 6:30, but Billy is there in his spot or even out in the concourse area before the doors open just greeting people and shaking hands and kissing babies and taking pictures – just doing whatever he can do to make our fans feel welcome and be part of what we have going on here.  

“That’s just how he’s built and how he’s been over all these years. It’s really meant a lot to our franchise to have a guy like him with what he’s done.” 

As important as spreading the game hockey was to Davidge, his family was even more of a focus. Davidge eventually settled with his wife, Jayna, in Central Ohio and Naples, Fla., and the two had a combined six kids and several grandkids. Upon being diagnosed with cancer in 2014, he was told he’d have five to seven years to live, and Davidge faced the disease head-on, continuing to work through hockey season while taking a battery of debilitating medications. 

He went into remission a few times, but multiple myeloma – a cancer of the blood plasma that also impacts bone marrow – never truly goes away. As he reached age 65 during the 2018-19 season, he made the decision the campaign would be his last, allowing him the chance to spend time with his family and hit the golf course as much as he could in his later years. 

“Right now, I’m healthy and I want to be able to jump into retirement and have that aspect of it and not have to look over my shoulder,” he said at the time. “We have six kids between Jayna and I, we have a couple of grandkids. I turn 65 next week, so it’s good. It’s really good.” 

When Davidge announced his retirement in April 2019, he received more than 1,000 messages from friends, broadcasters and just about everyone you can name in the hockey community. The receiving line at the Fox Sports Ohio set got even longer, and Davidge was honored by the Blue Jackets before a game late in the season. Fittingly, his last official broadcast was Game 4 of the team’s first-round playoff sweep vs. Tampa Bay, after which he described himself as “pretty emotional” on air. 

“That’s what it’s all about,” Davidge said. “To see the fans, this is an amazing experience. Just to be part of it for the last 20 years brings tears to your eyes.” 

"To me, he's the picture-perfect Mr. Blue Jacket in the state of Ohio," Matthews said in 2019. "When you see Bill Davidge, you think, 'That's the Blue Jackets.' 

"He was in the perfect job for what Bill Davidge is all about."