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Walter Gretzky, CM, O.Ont (born October 8, 1938) is a Canadian who is best known as the father of NHL legend Wayne Gretzky. The elder Gretzky, an avid hockey player as a youth and a keen analyst of the game, is credited by his famous son as playing a key role in his phenomenal success as a player. Walter coached his hockey-loving son continuously, starting at age three, building him a backyard rink, devising creative exercises and drills, teaching him profound insights into how to play successfully, and accompanying him to most of his games. He is famous for instructing Wayne and his brothers to “Go to where the puck is going, not where it has been." The elder Gretzky is well known in his own right for his contributions to minor hockey in Canada, and for his dedication to helping many local, provincial, and national charities, for which he has been honoured and recognized. ==Early life== The Gretzky family were landowners in the Russian Empire, and supporters of Tsar Nicholas II〔 originally from Grodno (now in the Republic of Belarus). Prior to the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, Gretzky's father Anton ("Tony") Gretzky (; pronounced ''Hretskyy''), a white émigré, immigrated along with his family to Canada via the United States from Ukraine.〔 Following World War I, Anton, who served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force,〔 would marry his wife, Mary, who immigrated from Pidhaitsi, interwar Poland (now Ukraine). Gretzky's ancestry is typically described as either Belarusian, Ukrainian, or Polish. In interviews, Walter Gretzky has stated that his parents were "White Russians from Belarus", and whenever anyone asked his father if they were Russian, he would reply, "''Nyet.'' Belarus." On other occasions he has mentioned his family's Polish ancestry. However, "the only Slavic language spoken in the Gretzky family () Ukrainian," of which Walter was a fluent speaker from birth.〔〔http://www.waltergretzky.com/index.php?page=biography〕 Tony and Mary owned a cucumber farm in Canning, Ontario where Walter Gretzky was born and raised. This is where he met his future wife, Phyllis Hockin at a wiener roast when she was 15 and he was 18. She was related to British General Sir Isaac Brock, a hero of the War of 1812. They married in 1960, and moved to Brantford, Ontario, where Gretzky worked for Bell Telephone Canada. The family moved into a house on Varadi Avenue in Brantford seven months after the birth of their son, Wayne Gretzky, chosen partly because it was flat enough to make an ice rink on every winter. The couple would later have a daughter, Kim (b. 1963), and three more sons, Keith, Glen and Brent. Unlike Walter, who did Sharp ViewCam commercials with Wayne and Wayne's son, Ty, Phyllis Gretzky mostly refused to embrace the celebrity that sprang from their son's exploits, although she did a commercial with Wayne for ProStars Cereal in the 1980s, and appeared in the video ''Wayne Gretzky: Above and Beyond'' (1990). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Walter Gretzky」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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