Former All-Star Goalie Curtis Joseph Opens Up About Growing Up In A Mental Institution In His New Book

Former All-Star goalie Curtis “CuJo” Joseph has released a trailer for his first book Cujo: The Untold Story of My Life On and Off the Ice and I must say….I’m pretty excited. Now I know what you are thinking, I’m not much of a reader. And you’re correct, I’m an idiot. I think anyone who reads one of my blogs could pretty easily tell that based on my poor grammar but this is one story I need to read.

CuJo was my favorite growing up. Which is pretty crazy to say being that I was a die hard Bruins fan and my wardrobe consisted of only Ray Bourque jerseys until I was about 13. But every time it was my turn to play goalie for my Mite team, I pretended I was CuJo. Each week a parent would write an article in the local paper about how our Mite team did that week and every time it was my turn to play goalie I always would tell my Dad to tell whoever was writing the article that week that I wanted to be compared to CuJo. I basically demanded it.

Maybe it was because my older brother had a “Curtis Curve” goalie stick and always talked about him that made me like him so much or maybe it was his badass name CuJo. Nonetheless, I was a big CuJo fan growing up. But as a little kid I obviously never looked too deep into Joseph’s life and what it was like for him as a kid. Can you blame me? I was like 10 and all I cared about was knee hockey and chicken fingers. I would of never even guessed that the 3x NHL All Star grew up in a mental institution as an orphan.

CuJo was born to two unmarried 16-year-old parents and was put up for adoption immediately. A nurse from the hospital that he was born at named Jeanne Jospeh and her husband adopted the baby from the teenagers and brought it home to raise him themselves. Unfortunately for Curtis, the Joseph family ran a mental institution and that is where Curtis was going to live. A mental institution with 20 patients and parents who really didn’t care about him much. Not the best place for anyone to grow up. His mother even began to develop a drug problem.

“Mother wasn’t normal,” he said. “She ended up using all the drugs that were given for the men, 20 mental patients. The drugs were flowing fast and furious. It just wasn’t normal. (via EdmontonSun.com)

Everyone thinks that all hockey players come from rich upper class families because the game is so expensive to play but that’s not the case for a lot of people out there. There are a ton of players in the NHL who have gone through some serious shit and weren’t hand fed everything in their life like everyone thinks, and Curtis Jospeh was one of them.

A 19-year NHL career that saw 3 all-star appearances, 943 games and 454 wins and it he had to go through absolute hell to get there. Let’s not forget the guy ended up marrying a playboy model as well. This sounds like a story I could read.