Birth secret revealed: 'I was a hockey baby'

If it wasn't for the Detroit Red Wings, you wouldn't be reading this column.

Someone else's words would be printed here.

You see, I was a hockey baby.

The story begins in 1940 when Detroit was still a thriving American metropolis, anchored by an automobile industry that appeared indestructible. Almost 2 million people lived within the city limits of Detroit, more than twice as many as are there today.

The setting for this '40 story is the great Olympia Stadium in downtown Detroit. The Olympia, as it was simply known, was home ice for the Red Wings. It was a fine place in its day, rivaled by the Chicago Stadium and the Boston Garden - all of them temples to worship "The Original Six" teams of the National Hockey League.

Seated a few rows up from the glass, behind one of the goals, was a couple on a first date, Kay Coon and Charlie Bartush and a few of their mutual friends. They all had seats near each other.

The exact date in 1940 isn't important. It doesn't matter who the Red Wings were playing that day, although there is a one in five shot it was the Blackhawks. And nobody in that grouping of seats behind the goal remembers the score.

It was however the outcome of that chance encounter that brings us to this column in the Daily Herald, more than 60 years later.

Kay may have arrived at the Olympia with Charlie B. that day. But somewhere between the first faceoff and the end of the third period, her hazel eyes met the stare of another young man in the group, Charlie B.'s best friend, Chuck Goudie Sr.

After the last siren sounded, she left with Chuck G. in her heart.

To put it in hockey terms, there was a line change late in the game.

A few years later, Kay and Chuck became Mr. and Mrs. Goudie. A few years after that they became my parents.

I suppose that makes my mother the original hockey mom, long before a vice-president wannabe equated hockey moms with lipstick-wearing pit bulls.

The Red Wings did pretty well in my parent's post-meeting era. They made the Stanley Cup Finals in 1941 and 1942, the beginning of pro hockey's Golden Age. Long before the expansion of all the major leagues, Detroit and Chicago were joined in the NHL by Boston, New York, Toronto and Montreal.

Detroit was indeed a "hockey town" back then, at least in the U.S., well before some smart ad man smooshed together the name, capitalized it, and copyrighted the word as "Hockeytown."

Like a lot of teenagers in Chicago who made The Stadium their second home from late fall to mid-spring, The Olympia became the site of my pro sports pilgrimages in the 1970s.

The arenas were very similar. Lots of iron beams, steep aisles and tight seats. The air in the concourses always seemed to be equal parts beer stench and cigarette smoke.

But when the two cities were still blue collar towns and hockey was a blue collar sport, nothing could rival the excitement of those marvelous three periods.

In a game whose history is overflowing with great characters, one of the greatest was the radio voice of the Red Wings, Frank Joseph James Lynch.

Thankfully, he went by "Budd" on the air from the time he took to the microphone doing Detroit play-by-play in 1949.

His trademark call of a goal scored really can't even be described in print. "He shoots. He scoooooooores" Lynch would sing with the beginning of the word "score" at top octave like the screech from a howling dog.

To this day, a question I asked of Lynch ranks as one of my greatest professional gaffes. While working as a high school reporter, I interviewed him at a celebrity golf tournament.

"What is your handicap" I asked the jovial broadcaster.

"My right arm, Chuck," he replied, pointing to place where his right arm used to be before it was blown off during World War II combat. It was an oversight that instantly made me a more meticulous interviewer.

Even though Lynch retired, at age 91 he is still the Red Wings public address announcer and can be heard in the background during the Blackhawk's playoff games in Detroit.

You can also hear the legend of Budd Lynch whenever Blackhawk's announcer Pat Foley calls a goal.

"He shoots. He scoooooooores" Foley sings with the beginning of the word "score" at top octave.

On the road to this column, Pat Foley also has a place. Both of us attended Michigan State University. He was the sports director at MSU Radio while I was the news director and the only person who to this day can get away with calling me Chuckie.

This column was a necessary finale to a lifetime of Red Wings memories. Closure, as they like to say in the psychoanalysis business.

Decades later, my mother moved to Chicago, I've raised a family here and the Red Wings are standing in the way of a Chicago Stanley Cup.

I'm rooting for the Hawks.

So is she.

• Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC 7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by e-mail at chuckgoudie@gmail.com.