by Reyn Davis
Winnipeg Free Press
No, Joanne Hull wasn’t home right now. Call back in about an hour. You see she’s taken one of the children to the doctor.
“Which one?” the caller asked.
“The third boy,” answered the maid gruffly. “I think he broke his foot.”
The “third boy” is nine-year-old Bret and the “broken foot” was a hairline fracture of the ankle. He had fallen off a hay rack, catching one leg in some twine which caused the nasty fall.
Hectic is not the word for Joanne’s summer. Adjustment may be more correct.
She became, in her own words, a “cowboy.”
“I enjoyed it,” said hockey’s first lady. “Since May when the hockey season ended, we spent almost all our time on the farm.
“The family was together. And I really surprised myself. You should have seen me riding out into the bush to round up cattle.”
That June day in 1972 when Bobby Hull signed a $2.75 million contract to signal the seriousness of the World Hockey Association, the knowledge was firm in his mind that the rural life he knew and loved as a youngster could now be provided, not only for himself again, but for his big, robust family of four boys and an infant daughter.
Thirty miles north and east of Winnipeg the Hull spread is located, replete with registered cattle, horses, dogs and cats and, of all things, a family of buffalo. Deer skip across his property as if it were theirs by right of way.
The charm of rural life did not particularly excite Joanne whose most immediate plan was to purchase and stock an antique shop where she could pursue an established hobby.
But her love of antiques and her gift of painting have suffered only because of her love for her family and her gift of adjusting to meet their needs.
Here is the lady who drove three boys–Bobby Jr., Blake and Bret–to approximately 250 hockey games last winter from 6 a.m. to midnight.
Blake Hull, the “second boy” according to the maid, is the busiest hockey player in the family. On a team of select 10-year-olds last winter, Blake played 136 games while traveling as far as Chicago and St. Louis for exhibitions.
Bobby Sr. drew raves across two countries for scoring 51 goals in 64 games as he led the Jets to the Western Division crown. But Bret needed only 40 games to score 94 goals in a league for eight-year-olds.
As Joanne played den mother to the boys and their friends, the miles mounted on the family station wagon. But the respite was short. As early as the last week of August, the three oldest boys were already enrolled in a hockey school for advanced training in skating.
Somehow she found the time to paint two works, one of which sold at an art auction. She termed the price she received as “good.”
Now she is conceding that her immediate future will again be wrapped up in four men of the house who play hockey eight months a year and farm for the other four.
It’s like that when you’re perfectly happy.