When my phone’s “Trailer Park Boys” ring tone began playing Sunday afternoon, and Jack Poole’s name popped up on the screen, I was a happy guy. “Hi Jack!” I said. Jack asked if I had heard the news about Robby Nicholson. If you live long enough, you learn that some questions are often ominous, and this one was. “Robby died of a heart attack this morning on his way to play golf,” Jack said.

I almost dropped my phone.

There were about 400 people at Rob Nicholson’s wake Friday night in Green Bay, maybe more. A good chunk of them knew Rob through hockey, the medium where he spent most of his big life. Rob had left his home about 10:45 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 26 to play golf with his pal, Mike Welsing. Not far from his Hobart home, Rob blacked out, ran over someone's mailbox and fell over in the front seat of his vehicle. He was gone before EMT staff could revive him.

“He wasn’t a great golfer, but he loved to play,” Welsing said. Robby shot a 45 on his last nine-hole session a few days before he died. “He was really happy with that score.” Most 59-year-olds would be.

Rob Nicholson memorabilia lined the Proko-Wall Funeral home Friday night. One item I found fascinating was little Robby’s fifth grade report card, earned during the 1967-68 school year, which was the Green Bay Packers Ice Bowl season. “Rob gets into a little mischief,” his teacher wrote. I laughed. Ten year-old boys carry mischief around in their back pockets. The teacher wished Robby would do more independent reading; he only turned in three book reports during the first half of the school year. Our young scholar’s grades were mostly C’s and B’s. He got a D in social studies and an A in physical education. He was a typical Green Bay kid.

I didn’t know Robby then. I first became aware of him when he was a freshman hockey player on George Wrobel’s Premontre Cadets. Back then, Premontre, Ashwaubenon and Southwest were the top three teams in the Brown County Youth Hockey Association high school club league. Premontre was the only school-sanctioned team in the league. My club, Green Bay West, never came close to

knocking off Premontre in the years I played. We were competitive with Premontre in our second whack at them in my senior year, losing 4-2. The 1972-73 Premontre outfit was loaded with good hockey players on the back end led by goalie Mark Mazzoleni and defensemen Rick Brusky and Pat Wilson. They had two kids who could score—Jim Krueger and Greg Barrett—and football-lineman-turned-wing Jerry Kust was the team’s thumper. If Robby did any damage against us, it’s lost to this memory. As a freshman, Wrobel remembers Nicholson as a “small, quick player who was knowledgeable about the game and very coachable.” When Robbie began his junior year at Premontre, he grew as fast as the national debt and morphed into tall, skinny blond-haired kid trying to make George Wrobel happy on a hockey rink. “In one of his first games, Robby has both hands on the stick at center ice and he’s looking at me on the bench,” Wrobel said. “I yelled, ‘Robby, the puck’s down there! Get in the game!’”

So nondescript a hockey player in 1973 was he that if someone bet me $100,000 that Rob Nicholson would be drafted by the Philadelphia Flyers before the decade was out, I would have jumped on that bet. And lost.

After high school, I moved to Minnesota. On a winter trip home I saw the Bobcats play once in the late 1970s when Robby was on their roster but I can’t remember anything Robby did, or didn’t do. Johnny Dougherty, son of original Green Bay Bobcats player, the late Dick Dougherty, was playing for the Bobcats, and he scored twice as Paul Coppo’s Bobcats beat some other United States Hockey League (USHL) team 7-3. By the late 1970s, the USHL had transitioned to an all juniors (age 20 and younger) format. Green Bay hockey fans, who for years had grown familiar with players like Gordy Yewman, John Harpell, Bruce Riutta, Ron Beck, John Mayasich, Tony Bukovich Jr. and Fuzzy Frenette, couldn’t identify with amateur players who showed up for a winter or two and then were gone.

The Bobcats were in a death spiral in the late 1970s. When a semi-pro team in 1971-72, the Bobcats average attendance was 3,639 fans. That team had the Purpur Brothers (Cliff, Dick and Bob) and the Cullen brothers (Tim and Terry), plus great players like Beck, Riutta, Steve Ross and Larry Skime. Fans left as the league transitioned to an amateur, juniors-only league: Attendance averaged 1,651 in 1977-78, dropping to an average of 1,082 fans in 1978-79. By 1980-81, the Bobcats final year of play, the club averaged 980 fans. Bobcats’ owner Paul Coppo pulled the plug on May 16, 1981.

By then, Robby Nicholson had been drafted in the 10th round by the Flyers, played junior hockey with the Bobcats and St. Paul Vulcans and later for St. Mary’s University. After college, Robby said no thanks to the NHL Flyers and returned to Green Bay for good where he dove into all things hockey. He succeeded George Wrobel as head coach of Premontre/Notre Dame Academy and become President of the Green Bay Area Youth Hockey Association. With Wrobel, Nicholson started the club hockey team at St. Norbert College and later took an assistant coaching role when St. Norbert sanctioned the sport. Rob was a force in bringing junior hockey back to Green Bay in the early 1990s and later served as President of the Green Bay Gamblers and the President of the Board of Governors of the USHL.

I lived in Minnesota from 1974 to 1995. When I moved back to Green Bay, I said hello to Robby when I saw him around area rinks—Little Brown County, the De Pere Ice Center, Cornerstone—but that was pretty much it. I knew his mother owned the coolest sounding travel agency in the world (Sunshine Travel) and that he had sunk deep roots beneath area hockey rinks. In 2000, I was involved in coaching in the Green Bay Youth Hockey Association. George Wrobel ran a hockey pro shop at Little Brown County (demolished years ago by the Packers) and knowing George was involved in Green Bay hockey since pre-World War II, I approached the Green Bay Youth Hockey Association with an idea: Let’s throw a roast for George Wrobel to honor the man’s lifetime commitment to hockey.

The association gave me the green light. I had no idea where to start. A few days later Rob Nicholson called me at home (my phone connected to a cord, so 20th century). “I heard you’re organizing a benefit roast for George. I want to help.” My worries were over. We had about eight meetings before George’s event. Robby was easy to work with. If we needed something, he knew where to get it and who to see. The kid who got D’s in social studies knew everyone in Green Bay and beyond: The guys who drove the Zamboni's in Wisconsin rinks to former Packers kicker Chris Jacke to Mr. Hockey himself, Gordie Howe. Rob’s presence drew other people to our committee like Steve Harrison, Pat Wilson (who signed a three-way contract with the Detroit Redwings in 1979) and Mike Welsing. The Wrobel Roast became a success the moment I answered Rob Nicholson’s phone call.

In October 2000, the Wrobel Roast committee brought 411 people to honor George with tributes and teasing. Guests enjoyed remarks by three members of the first Wisconsin Badgers women’s hockey team, dinner, free beer, live music and silent and live auctions. Close friend and Harvard men’s hockey coach Mark Mazzoleni sent Rob a letter to read to George, and George’s whole family was there.

Robby insisted on handling the live auction. He walked between the tables, yelled at men to get off their wallets and do something good for hockey at least once in their sad, pathetic lives. It’s a trick to motivate people by insulting them in a friendly way, but Robby had both the confidence and the knack to make people happy about spending their money.

Rob Nicholson’s committee raised nearly $15,000 that evening and George sent it to the Green Bay Youth Hockey Association. In the Big Apple Pie of Credit for that wonderful night, all the committee members would have slid the biggest piece of pie in front of Robby Nicholson.

A few years later, Robby and I were pallbearers for Palmiro (Paul) Mazzoleni, a 91-year-old gentlemen we both grew to know and love through the Mazzoleni brothers: Tony, Mark and Paul Jr. Mark and Karen, his wife, were with Nicholson and his wife, Ruth, on Robby’s last night. “Rob was like a brother to us, and we are heartbroken,” Karen said. “He was loved by everyone,” Mark said.

Though both men had left hockey, Robby and Mark still spoke by phone nearly every day, and lunched once a week. Friendship was a big thing for Robby Nicholson. So was living. “He did more in fifty-nine years than a lot of us will do in our lifetimes,” Welsing said Friday night.

The Big Guy led a Big Life. What Robby did for hockey in Wisconsin survives him. Wisconsin should honor Rob Nicholson for all that he’s done for the most special sport by inducting him posthumously in the Wisconsin Hockey Hall of Fame.

Rob and Ruth Nicholson

--Photos courtesy Rob Nicholson family

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