Herb Brooks’ wife Patti Brooks remembers his life in vivid detail, and his run as coach of the 1980 “Miracle” team is especially detailed. He passed in 2003, but Patti was giving personal accounts of the actual events of the movie in 2010 to NHL.com. She married Herb in 1965 and stayed married to him for 38 years. Back in 1965, Herb was five years removed from a 1960 Olympic USA hockey gold medal. The history of that team is interesting and worth checking out.
Let’s stick to Patti and her memories of her coach husband. It should be noted that after beating the USSR, she points out that her husband gave the team a curfew because they still had to defeat Finland to earn their gold. Herb Brooks’ wife Patti says the whole opening ceremony and winter olympics in general was a much smaller-scale affair. She recalled how she and their daughter used to have to wait outside the arena to meet up with him since they wouldn’t go to the games themselves and used to stay at a different place than the teams and coaches.
According to Herb Brooks’ wife Patti, she’s really bothered about his death since it meant he wouldn’t be able to see their grandchildren grow up. His death came from a car accident and was not from natural causes. She says he really loved spending time with his grandchildren. They ended up with five grandchildren, and her explanation about why he loved spending so much time with them was because he was gone so often during his children’s young years. He wanted to make up for that. Patti was also quick to point out that Herb was given a gold medal the year of the “Miracle” win, and most years coaches do not receive a gold medal. I guess the committee thought he deserved it for beating the USSR. In the early years of the marriage, Patti was mostly just staying at home taking care of the kids. Nobody gave her a gold medal!
