This jersey’s story is quite a saga. It has been through a lot, as you can see from the evident repairs, mainly on the chest. Henry himself placed this jersey with me years and years ago because he knew that I pay attention to little details and he knew that I would use that trait to restore the jersey to the way it should look. When Henry had me pick the jersey up in Warroad, it was crumpled up in the bottom of a Rubbermaid tote. The tote was in a little yard shed in the back yard at his sister Shirley’s house near the golf course North of Warroad.
When I saw the sweater, I didn’t think that could be it. It had never seen a minute of repair since the day Henry left the hospital with it in 1969. It was still split up the middle and down both arms by the paramedics’ surgical scissors when they needed to get the jersey off Henry to assess his injuries. It was still missing both layers of ribbed gold fabric on the right shoulder yoke where Henry’s ruptured eardrum had sprayed blood on it; if Henry was going to take the jersey home from the hospital, apparently all biomaterial needed to be removed. It was missing the crest of the jersey (!) because the doctors and nurses asked if they could keep a memento of having tended to the injuries of the young star. They chopped out the crest and divided it up, allegedly, and all of them got to take home a piece. So essentially, this thing was missing a bunch of material including the crest, and was completely flayed open. It looked like a poorly-made charcoal-colored rug with a gold #16 on it. Even the numbers are different heights. In those days, it was common for twill numbers to be measured and cut by hand and mistakes were made. If you look closely, you’ll see that the #6 is a 1/4 inch taller than the #1. This was a rocky first impression! So this is the middle of the story. Here are the beginning and the end:
When Henry was in high school, he was already a legend. It was like Paul Bunyan was coming to town. Host towns’ fans didn’t miss a chance to see Warroad come to their town to play. They had all heard of the 9 foot Native kid who never left the ice and could shoot the puck right through the boards. When they found out that he was 6 feet tall and couldn’t shoot through puck through the boards, it doesn’t sound like they were all that disappointed. There are 100-year-old people in Northern Minnesota who still will tell you that one of the ‘important’ things that they did with their lives is to see Henry Boucha play in their town’s arena. And you’ll usually hear from them some exclamation equivalent to ‘wow’. Everyone agrees that Henry was dazzling. Herb Brooks wasn’t as easy to impress as the small towners, and his famous quote about Henry is “Henry can make the puck talk”.
Henry had good players on his team, including future NHL’er, WHA’er and National Team player Alan Hangsleben, but what the smaller towns always will lack is depth. That showed when they got beaten by Roseau to go to the State Tournament in 1969. There was, though, in those days, a ‘back door’ to the Tournament and it would be decided with a playoff vs the runner-up of another section. When Henry played the hero, scoring an overtime buzzer-beater to take Warroad to the Tournament, the whole state was happy (no offense to Doug Palazzari’s Eveleth team, the losers of that playoff game). The fans all wanted to see Henry on that stage.
Henry and the Warriors played well. They even got revenge on Roseau. Henry was becoming a tournament darling. He was an electrifying player that made people get out of their seats. They couldn’t wait to see this gem play in-town for the Gophers every weekend for four years (Henry didn’t follow through on that. He got married and decided to play closer to home with the WCHL Winnipeg Jets).
By the time Warroad made it to the championship game vs Edina (championship-less at that time), Henry was the rooting interest of every fan outside of the greenest of the green Edina Hornets fans. By all accounts, as the game progressed, Henry would have had his Cinderella day too, we’re it not for the right elbow of Henry’s would-be future Gopher teammate: Hornets defenseman Jim Knutson. Henry was chasing a shot deflection down the side of the boards when Knutson angled him off and smashed Henry’s head against the glass, rupturing his eardrum. Henry was helped off the ice and taken to the hospital while his team played to an overtime loss. It was a shocking end to this story. And that is how this jersey got to hospital, got split open, got the shoulder yoke chopped out, and how it got it’s crest chopped out. After the jersey was brought back to Warroad along with an injured Henry, it was stored by he and his family for 40+ years, eventually ending up at the bottom of a Rubbermaid tote in Shirley Flick’s backyard.
When I saw this jersey, I’ll admit that I did have some confusion. I’d had no idea about the removed pieces of material. It was only when I asked Henry did he remember. He hadn’t looked at the jersey in any detail in many years. No matter, I said, I just need to find another jersey like it with exactly the same material and colors. Oh, and a crest. No big deal, right? I will note that there was some discussion about whether or not the jersey should actually be stitched back together or left the way it was. Possibly we could pin it over the top of a jersey to show where certain pieces had been removed or Velcro the seams so it would show the damage done. In the end, it was decided that the shirt should go back together. The damage was less of the story than what happened with the jersey before the damage, and for that reason it should be recognizable in that state. The stitching was never going to be so perfect as to mask the fact that it was a repair anyway. The old wounds would certainly still be visible, stitched or unstitched.
Beginning with the crest:
It is the old kind. It’s soft like thick velvet and it’s got the stitched-over edge, not a rigid twill edge like the new stuff. It’s also very very small compared to a modern Blackhawks logo. It’s only about 5 and 5/8 inches from the tip of the nose to the back of the last feather. Also, I guess I had always thought that logo was mostly standardized, but I was wrong. I found 3 variations just in the shape of the nose alone, and that’s on ones that were the right size and construction. I would think there are probably more than that.
I got lucky and found a perfect crest to buy on eBay after about 8 months of looking everyday.
For ‘donor’ jersey material:
I hunted. I mean I really hunted. I would stop into every thrift shop I saw if I had 5 minutes to spare. I had saved searches on eBay that were checked daily and Google alerts that we’re made specifically to find what this is, that being a mercerized cotton durene with a ribbed gold shoulder. After I found the crest about 8 months in, I decided to settle for the time being, and let a seamstress make this rug look like a jersey again. I found a couple thin sweaters that had close to the same colors and sheen as the to-be-replaced jersey segments and brought those, the crest, and the jersey to an excellent seamstress named Peggy who worked for Steichens Sporting Goods for many years handling jerseys for many amateur and pro teams. She very expertly did the repair work and the jersey looked amazing. It was good enough for most and would have remained in that state unless I was able to find a perfect donor to improve the restoration. The problems were that the ribbing and the tint/coloring were imperfect. In fact, when Terrence Fogarty called about wanting to use the jersey as one of his still-life props for the painting that would be the cover for the 75th anniversary state tournament program cover, I begged him to paint the shoulder ribbing in a way that was more straight, like how it would be when I got it restored right. He said he had to paint the jersey as it was. I said that was fine, but warned that that portion of the painting would be outdated as soon as I was able to find the donor jersey I had been needing. He said he had to call them as he saw them and I do see his perspective there. Terrence is a great asset to the community and I hate to in any way diminish the accuracy of his work, but that is why the painting is at this time no longer accurate.
Needless to say, I leaned many things while on the hunt for the donor jersey. One is that I was going to need an identical jersey or the jersey would never be right. I needed the gold ribbed shoulder material, I needed the black ribbed neck material, and I obviously needed the black chest material. The more I looked, the more I found that every other neck, shoulder or chest looked a little off. I waited and waited. I researched. The jersey had no tagging but I discovered that it was made by a company called 'Harv-Al' out of Winnipeg. I also was told that it was not anything like an expensive pro-weight jersey. These were definitely ordered by the school while keeping an eye on the pocketbook. The bad news for that is that many of these probably just came completely to pieces over the years. These things helped me not at all all in eventually finding the donor I needed, but there was no way to know that at the time. After around 7 years I found another sweater available online that was the exact same make. It was smaller. It was so much smaller that the chest material piece would have to come from the back of the donor. Nevertheless, this was going to be the route to finally getting the jersey right.
The donor jersey was more faded than the original, so I brought them both to a fabric restoration specialist. I know this person to be someone that does restoration for the Minneapolis Institute of Art and therefore had a good level of trust. He saw immediately that to do the work, he was going to need some time with the jerseys to get all colors and tints right. I was worried that his dyeing work would be inhibited if the jersey were still intact. I took it home and removed all the stitching that connected the body to the shoulder yoke, and also the stitching holding the yoke to the ribbed neck. I returned it in these pieces and the restorer set to work. He had it all for about 8 months. He said that after I took it to the seamstress for the sewing fix, I should bring it back to him and he could airbrush out any hard-edge discrepancy where the old material met the new material.
The seamstress did a great job. The biggest thing besides the material being the same was that she was able to get the actual direction of the knit to match the original. This makes a big difference when you see the jersey as different (and from different directions) lights hit it. There were also no great pulls in any direction, so she had it well-held in place when the stitching went in. She had it for around a month or so.
When the seam work was complete, it went back to the restorer. After about a month with him, the jersey looked amazing. That is its current state.
Finally, Henry’s jersey rightfully has a wearable appearance again. It may not be in mint condition, but this treasure of Minnesota hockey history is again in a condition that requires no great amount of imagination. It took dollars and time, but a story like this one deserves to be told, and it was a pleasure to give that story a helping hand.
When I saw the sweater, I didn’t think that could be it. It had never seen a minute of repair since the day Henry left the hospital with it in 1969. It was still split up the middle and down both arms by the paramedics’ surgical scissors when they needed to get the jersey off Henry to assess his injuries. It was still missing both layers of ribbed gold fabric on the right shoulder yoke where Henry’s ruptured eardrum had sprayed blood on it; if Henry was going to take the jersey home from the hospital, apparently all biomaterial needed to be removed. It was missing the crest of the jersey (!) because the doctors and nurses asked if they could keep a memento of having tended to the injuries of the young star. They chopped out the crest and divided it up, allegedly, and all of them got to take home a piece. So essentially, this thing was missing a bunch of material including the crest, and was completely flayed open. It looked like a poorly-made charcoal-colored rug with a gold #16 on it. Even the numbers are different heights. In those days, it was common for twill numbers to be measured and cut by hand and mistakes were made. If you look closely, you’ll see that the #6 is a 1/4 inch taller than the #1. This was a rocky first impression! So this is the middle of the story. Here are the beginning and the end:
When Henry was in high school, he was already a legend. It was like Paul Bunyan was coming to town. Host towns’ fans didn’t miss a chance to see Warroad come to their town to play. They had all heard of the 9 foot Native kid who never left the ice and could shoot the puck right through the boards. When they found out that he was 6 feet tall and couldn’t shoot through puck through the boards, it doesn’t sound like they were all that disappointed. There are 100-year-old people in Northern Minnesota who still will tell you that one of the ‘important’ things that they did with their lives is to see Henry Boucha play in their town’s arena. And you’ll usually hear from them some exclamation equivalent to ‘wow’. Everyone agrees that Henry was dazzling. Herb Brooks wasn’t as easy to impress as the small towners, and his famous quote about Henry is “Henry can make the puck talk”.
Henry had good players on his team, including future NHL’er, WHA’er and National Team player Alan Hangsleben, but what the smaller towns always will lack is depth. That showed when they got beaten by Roseau to go to the State Tournament in 1969. There was, though, in those days, a ‘back door’ to the Tournament and it would be decided with a playoff vs the runner-up of another section. When Henry played the hero, scoring an overtime buzzer-beater to take Warroad to the Tournament, the whole state was happy (no offense to Doug Palazzari’s Eveleth team, the losers of that playoff game). The fans all wanted to see Henry on that stage.
Henry and the Warriors played well. They even got revenge on Roseau. Henry was becoming a tournament darling. He was an electrifying player that made people get out of their seats. They couldn’t wait to see this gem play in-town for the Gophers every weekend for four years (Henry didn’t follow through on that. He got married and decided to play closer to home with the WCHL Winnipeg Jets).
By the time Warroad made it to the championship game vs Edina (championship-less at that time), Henry was the rooting interest of every fan outside of the greenest of the green Edina Hornets fans. By all accounts, as the game progressed, Henry would have had his Cinderella day too, we’re it not for the right elbow of Henry’s would-be future Gopher teammate: Hornets defenseman Jim Knutson. Henry was chasing a shot deflection down the side of the boards when Knutson angled him off and smashed Henry’s head against the glass, rupturing his eardrum. Henry was helped off the ice and taken to the hospital while his team played to an overtime loss. It was a shocking end to this story. And that is how this jersey got to hospital, got split open, got the shoulder yoke chopped out, and how it got it’s crest chopped out. After the jersey was brought back to Warroad along with an injured Henry, it was stored by he and his family for 40+ years, eventually ending up at the bottom of a Rubbermaid tote in Shirley Flick’s backyard.
When I saw this jersey, I’ll admit that I did have some confusion. I’d had no idea about the removed pieces of material. It was only when I asked Henry did he remember. He hadn’t looked at the jersey in any detail in many years. No matter, I said, I just need to find another jersey like it with exactly the same material and colors. Oh, and a crest. No big deal, right? I will note that there was some discussion about whether or not the jersey should actually be stitched back together or left the way it was. Possibly we could pin it over the top of a jersey to show where certain pieces had been removed or Velcro the seams so it would show the damage done. In the end, it was decided that the shirt should go back together. The damage was less of the story than what happened with the jersey before the damage, and for that reason it should be recognizable in that state. The stitching was never going to be so perfect as to mask the fact that it was a repair anyway. The old wounds would certainly still be visible, stitched or unstitched.
Beginning with the crest:
It is the old kind. It’s soft like thick velvet and it’s got the stitched-over edge, not a rigid twill edge like the new stuff. It’s also very very small compared to a modern Blackhawks logo. It’s only about 5 and 5/8 inches from the tip of the nose to the back of the last feather. Also, I guess I had always thought that logo was mostly standardized, but I was wrong. I found 3 variations just in the shape of the nose alone, and that’s on ones that were the right size and construction. I would think there are probably more than that.
I got lucky and found a perfect crest to buy on eBay after about 8 months of looking everyday.
For ‘donor’ jersey material:
I hunted. I mean I really hunted. I would stop into every thrift shop I saw if I had 5 minutes to spare. I had saved searches on eBay that were checked daily and Google alerts that we’re made specifically to find what this is, that being a mercerized cotton durene with a ribbed gold shoulder. After I found the crest about 8 months in, I decided to settle for the time being, and let a seamstress make this rug look like a jersey again. I found a couple thin sweaters that had close to the same colors and sheen as the to-be-replaced jersey segments and brought those, the crest, and the jersey to an excellent seamstress named Peggy who worked for Steichens Sporting Goods for many years handling jerseys for many amateur and pro teams. She very expertly did the repair work and the jersey looked amazing. It was good enough for most and would have remained in that state unless I was able to find a perfect donor to improve the restoration. The problems were that the ribbing and the tint/coloring were imperfect. In fact, when Terrence Fogarty called about wanting to use the jersey as one of his still-life props for the painting that would be the cover for the 75th anniversary state tournament program cover, I begged him to paint the shoulder ribbing in a way that was more straight, like how it would be when I got it restored right. He said he had to paint the jersey as it was. I said that was fine, but warned that that portion of the painting would be outdated as soon as I was able to find the donor jersey I had been needing. He said he had to call them as he saw them and I do see his perspective there. Terrence is a great asset to the community and I hate to in any way diminish the accuracy of his work, but that is why the painting is at this time no longer accurate.
Needless to say, I leaned many things while on the hunt for the donor jersey. One is that I was going to need an identical jersey or the jersey would never be right. I needed the gold ribbed shoulder material, I needed the black ribbed neck material, and I obviously needed the black chest material. The more I looked, the more I found that every other neck, shoulder or chest looked a little off. I waited and waited. I researched. The jersey had no tagging but I discovered that it was made by a company called 'Harv-Al' out of Winnipeg. I also was told that it was not anything like an expensive pro-weight jersey. These were definitely ordered by the school while keeping an eye on the pocketbook. The bad news for that is that many of these probably just came completely to pieces over the years. These things helped me not at all all in eventually finding the donor I needed, but there was no way to know that at the time. After around 7 years I found another sweater available online that was the exact same make. It was smaller. It was so much smaller that the chest material piece would have to come from the back of the donor. Nevertheless, this was going to be the route to finally getting the jersey right.
The donor jersey was more faded than the original, so I brought them both to a fabric restoration specialist. I know this person to be someone that does restoration for the Minneapolis Institute of Art and therefore had a good level of trust. He saw immediately that to do the work, he was going to need some time with the jerseys to get all colors and tints right. I was worried that his dyeing work would be inhibited if the jersey were still intact. I took it home and removed all the stitching that connected the body to the shoulder yoke, and also the stitching holding the yoke to the ribbed neck. I returned it in these pieces and the restorer set to work. He had it all for about 8 months. He said that after I took it to the seamstress for the sewing fix, I should bring it back to him and he could airbrush out any hard-edge discrepancy where the old material met the new material.
The seamstress did a great job. The biggest thing besides the material being the same was that she was able to get the actual direction of the knit to match the original. This makes a big difference when you see the jersey as different (and from different directions) lights hit it. There were also no great pulls in any direction, so she had it well-held in place when the stitching went in. She had it for around a month or so.
When the seam work was complete, it went back to the restorer. After about a month with him, the jersey looked amazing. That is its current state.
Finally, Henry’s jersey rightfully has a wearable appearance again. It may not be in mint condition, but this treasure of Minnesota hockey history is again in a condition that requires no great amount of imagination. It took dollars and time, but a story like this one deserves to be told, and it was a pleasure to give that story a helping hand.
This is the same style of gloves that Henry Boucha and most of his teammates wore while he was at Warroad High School. You can see on pictures of them where they've been marked by the school. These were not put into use by the school, I don't think, because they are not marked in the same way, but they were located in pretty close proximity to Warroad, so I have to wonder. I've never seen another pair anywhere.
I have literally been trying to identify this make and model for over ten years. The eventual goal was to maybe finding a pair to buy. Well, the purchase was what also solved the mystery, I still have never heard of the company, Mir's. They have a really bizarre and recognizable look to them, with the hexagonal black top to the cuff. I have asked for help from every old time equipment collector I can by posting in all of their Facebook groups. No one has ever stated that they've seen anything like them. No one had a single lead even on the company, not to mention the model, the " Moonlit". I’ve had multiple searches on eBay and google that have been checked daily for a decade. These are definitely a unicorn. They are really in great condition too, for their age of almost 60 years.
I have literally been trying to identify this make and model for over ten years. The eventual goal was to maybe finding a pair to buy. Well, the purchase was what also solved the mystery, I still have never heard of the company, Mir's. They have a really bizarre and recognizable look to them, with the hexagonal black top to the cuff. I have asked for help from every old time equipment collector I can by posting in all of their Facebook groups. No one has ever stated that they've seen anything like them. No one had a single lead even on the company, not to mention the model, the " Moonlit". I’ve had multiple searches on eBay and google that have been checked daily for a decade. These are definitely a unicorn. They are really in great condition too, for their age of almost 60 years.
