Lionel Repka, who helped the Komets to championships in 1963 and 1965, and was one of the greatest defensemen in franchise history, died Monday at 80 following a battle with liver cancer.

Repka was selected the IHL’s top defenseman in 1964-65 – he had 10 goals and 67 points in 70 games – and was a three-time all-IHL selection.

He played the entirety of his professional career – 11 seasons – with the Komets and appeared in 740 games, sixth most in the franchise’s 63-season history. His 535 points are more than every Fort Wayne defenseman not named Guy Dupuis or Jim Burton.

The No. 6 worn by Repka, affectionately nicknamed "Choo Choo," was retired by the Komets in 1991.

After hockey, he had a successful career selling insurance.

If you want to read something very cool about Repka, check out this column from 2002 by The Journal Gazette’s then-columnist, Ben Smith.

He doesn't even remember writing the darn thing. Guaranteed that's how this begins.

Just another reply to a fan, like a hundred others in this long glide across the ice . . . now, really, why would he remember it? It was just another moment, a vacancy in the memory, when he picked up a pen, scribbled a few words, and then slid them into a manila envelope along with a publicity still, plus a small wedge of cardboard to protect it.

And now it is 40 years later -- 40 years! -- and Lionel Repka is standing at a table at Sycamore Hills Country Club on an egg-fryin' Sunday afternoon, and what does he see?

It is the letter. It is the publicity still. It is life, its own mischievous self, comin' back around like a big old wheel.

"Look at this," Repka says now.

And holds up, yes, the piece of cardboard.

"Look at it!" Repka cries, giddy with wonder. "He even saved the piece of cardboard!"

And then he laughs, right out loud, because, yes, life is a big old wheel, it rolls and rolls and rolls some more. And as it does, a piece of cardboard isn't the only thing that ends up getting saved.

A young man's heart. Let's start with that.

It belonged to a 15-year-old boy named Randy Dannenfelser, who was living with his aunt and uncle in Great Neck, N.Y., back in 1962. He was living with his aunt and uncle because his mother had died in 1959, when Randy was 12. Had a stroke and just up and died in something like two hours, at the age of 43.

Randy dealt with it as best he could, all things considered. He buried his emotions deep, and smacked them with a shovel every time they showed signs of stirring. He took his heart and built a fence around it, and then he built a wall, brick by brick, around that.

He also did one other thing.

He started listening to Komet hockey on WOWO.

Those muscled up 50,000 watts came blowing east every night out of little Fort Wayne, Indiana (Where's that?), and they brought Bob Chase's voice with them. Dannenfelser got to know who Eddie Long was, and Len Thornson, and Gerry Randall, and Reg Primeau. He knew all about Ken Ullyot and Colin Lister. And he absolutely adored a certain defenseman named Lionel Repka.

You can guess the rest, no doubt. One day over Christmas break in 1961, Dannenfelser decided to write Repka a fan letter. And sure enough, on March 8, 1962, back came Repka's reply.

And down came the bricks and the fence from around Randy Dannenfelser's heart.

"I remember my reaction when I got the letter," he says now, quietly. "I went berserk, I went nuts, jumping around, look at this, I can't believe it -- you know. You could say that that letter accelerated me coming out of this grief period."

He smiles a little, remembering that moment. And then he smiles again, because, yes, he's here at Sycamore Hills, too, and doggone if that isn't Bob Chase right in front of him, and George Drysdale over there, and Eddie Long and Reg Primeau and, gosh, look at this, Lionel Repka himself.

"Never been to Fort Wayne before," Dannenfelser says, a Jersey guy these days, slightly built, with white hair and a bemused twinkle behind his silver wire rims.

So why is he here now?

Well, that's the thing, see.

That letter Lionel Repka probably doesn't remember writing?

It led, 38 years later, to Dannenfelser getting on the Komets Web site and getting in touch with his old idol. And then with his old idol calling him one Saturday afternoon. And then, last September, when Dannenfelser found out that Repka's son, Ron, had been killed in a bicycling accident, a perfectly wretched thing . . .

Turns out Dannenfelser's wife, Barbara, has been making sport-related quilts for some 25 years including one that hangs in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Turns out she was willing to do a commemorative 50th anniversary Komets quilt to donate to the Ronald G. Repka Foundation, begun by the family after Ron was killed last fall.

And so the Dannenfelsers and Barbara's quilt came to Fort Wayne over the weekend, and Randy finally got to meet the boys, all those sons of winter who used to come to him at night over the radio. Except this time he wasn't asking for anything.

Lionel Repka had already given him back his heart, after all.

Randy Dannenfelser merely came west to return the favor, just a bit.

"You know," Lionel Repka mused Sunday, as Randy Dannenfelser chatted up Bob Chase a few steps away, "when I first heard he wanted to get hold of me, I thought maybe he was some kook or something. You just want to know what's going on. Then you find out it's legit, it's real. And what him and his wife are doing for Ron's foundation . . ."

He shakes his head.

"It just blows my mind, really. There must be some higher power that orchestrates all this."

Maybe. Or maybe it's just a guy sitting down when he's still young and strong, when the legs feel good and there isn't a thimble's worth of sorrow in his life, and taking a couple of minutes, maybe five, to write to a young fan.

Who knew? Who in all this blessed, serendipitous world knew?

jcohn@jg.net