Bobby Hull Looks Back

Apr. 24, 1965 - Bobby Hull (pictured with Bobby Jr.) spent part of his first Christmas away from home in the penalty box at Madison Square Garden.

It was 1957, he was an 18-year-old rookie with Chicago Black Hawks, and an infraction had been called against him in a game against the Rangers.

“I remember this handsome blond kid sat down in the box, and he was near tears,” Ed Aubel, the Garden penalty supervisor, recalled the other day. 

“I asked him what the matter was,” said Aubel.

Hull replied: “You know, mister, this is Christmas, and I’m not with my mother and father.”

Now Robert Marvin Hull, at the age of 26 a full-fledged superstar with a Midas touch, regretfully finds that fame has kept him away from his own children.

Hull spoke today by telephone from Rockton, about 90 miles from Chicago, where the Black Hawks are relaxing at a lodge between games of the Stanley Cup finals. They meet the Canadiens, who hold a 2-1 edge in the best-of-seven series, at Chicago Stadium tomorrow night.

“The children don’t understand,” said Hull, who has three boys — Bobby Jr., 4 years old; Blake, 3, and Brett, 9 months.

“They can’t understand why I don’t stay at home with them all the time. Why, just the other day, Bobby Jr. told Joanne to take my suitcase away from me.”

After Thursday night’s game, Hull, his wife, and Blake waited for the limousine that would take Hull back to Rockton.

“Blake cried all the while we were waiting. When I got in the car, he turned to Joanne and asked, ‘Why is Daddy leaving? Have I been a bad boy?’”

Hull left his Point Anne, Ont., home when he was 14 to play junior hockey with a club 200 miles away.

“I don’t know what I would have done if my mother and father hadn’t visited me on weekends,” he said. “But that’s part of growing up in Canada if you want to make the NHL. You have to bear burdens like that. But I have a few goals, and I hope hockey will help me reach them.”

Hull, who has a winning personality to go with his commanding physical appearance, rarely refuses autograph hunters or requests for interviews. He is at his best with fans, who immediately make him the center of attention.

Hull also does everything well on the ice. He is one of only three players to score 50 goals in a season (the others are Maurice Richard and Bernie Geoffrion) and probably commands the highest salary in the sport, about $35,000 annually.

He lives on an island in southeastern Ontario, not from his 600-acre ranch. He reaches his home in an 18-foot runabout.

“My nine-room house,” he said, “rests on top of a knoll overlooking a lagoon.”

Hull also has “three big interests” in Canada. In the U.S., his “interests” are more modest, but extensive. One is typical: an automobile dealer has placed an advertisement that promises “an evening at a private party with Bobby Hull if you buy a new car or a used car.”

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