Waking Up Wally: The Walter Gretzky Story

In 1992, an unexpected brain aneurysm plunged Walter Gretzky into a nightmare of disorientation and memory loss. From an initial state of panic, Walter must re-learn everything, from basic tasks, like buttoning his shirt and, more intangible, getting to know who his wife and children are.

Walter Gretzky is the world’s most famous Hockey Dad, father, first coach and mentor of Wayne, The Great One of hockey. From his legendary backyard rink in Canada, where he first taught his kids to play, Walter had dedicated himself to his two loves - hockey and his family. Yet after his stroke, not only does he refuse to lace on a pair of skates, he has no memory at all of Wayne’s hockey triumphs. Walter had gone into a coma and a stranger had come out.

Waking Up Wally: The Walter Gretzky Story dramatizes both the family’s devastating realization of how little Walter remembers and the uncharted journey he and his family must take to bring Walter back. Led by Phyllis’s conviction that re-connecting Walter to his hockey roots is the road to recovery, it is a story of determination and frustration, of dark despair and sustaining laughter. But above all, it is a story of love and trust.