Shortly after Gordie Howe retired for the first time, back in 1971, he found himself in a dark place. He was miserable in his new role in the Detroit Red Wings’ front office, which had him travelling across the country to represent the team. He wasn’t privy to boardroom decisions, and the demands of the new job kept him away from his family.
At the same time, Howe was still reeling from the grief of losing his mother to a tragic accident at the family cabin while she was watching his children the summer earlier. The lingering shock of her death, coupled with the jarring shift to life in retirement, had Mr. Hockey facing existential questions.
One evening, he was at home with just his youngest son, Murray, who was about 11 at the time. They were eating cereal together for dinner. Howe asked his son to sit on his lap, something he hadn’t done for several years. Though somewhat confused, Murray obliged his father. Howe paused for a moment, and then asked something his son would never forget.
“Murray, do you think I’m a failure?”
In his new book Nine Lessons I Learned from My Father, Murray Howe recalls the absurdity of hero’s question sinking in. “No way!” he told his dad. “I can’t think of anyone who has done more than you.”
Gordie sat quietly for a while. Then he said, “Thanks, buddy.”
The moment is one of many poignant, revealing reflections in Nine Lessons, a book that paints a portrait of one of hockey’s most revered figures that captures much more than just the player. If you followed the flood of tributes after Howe’s death at age 88 last year, you would have learned something about what made the man stand out beyond the accolades he earned through his remarkable, record-setting career. Howe was beloved by fans not only for being his era’s greatest player, but also for remaining a humble kid from Floral, Sask., who never took the opportunity he’d been given for granted.
In this tribute to his dad, Murray tells the story of Gordie the friend and father. He tells the story of a man who tried his best to live as well as he could; a man who achieved remarkable success and global fame but who still faced the same valleys of doubt and insecurity as everyone else. Mr. Hockey, Murray writes, mistakenly thought that his purpose was to be the greatest hockey player of all time — and that without the game, he’d lost his worth.
“It was a wonderful lesson for me,” Murray tells me by phone, recalling that moment when his father briefly opened up about feeling as though he’d failed in some way. “Even the greatest of us have our self-doubts … One of the things he was raised with was the idea of doing everything in the best way possible, and really making sure he pleased everybody. I think that doubt was always there; that maybe he wasn’t living up to that responsibility. And the irony was that no one had done it better.”
During the process of writing about his father, Murray says he learned much more about the man he’d idolized. It was an opportunity to distill the lessons and examples Gordie had provided through their years together. The idea to write the book came on Father’s Day, a few days after his dad had passed away.
“I just had this huge hole in my heart, this emptiness,” he says. Overwhelmed with memories, Murray decided he had to get the story of Mr. Hockey as a father down on paper, to preserve the part of his character that so many fans had seen glimpses of but didn’t really know. In doing so, he penned a love letter to his father — a celebration of a famous man, who never viewed himself as any different from, or better than, the fans who sought his autograph.
“I hope [the book] empowers [people] to know that they can make a difference in the world just by taking ownership of what their own gifts and talents and treasures are,” Murray says.
In pulling back the veneer of the legend, Murray shares the vulnerable, loving side of one of hockey’s most beloved icons. And one last time, we see how Mr. Hockey, the legend, was nothing without Gordon Howe, the man.
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