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Hulbert has had 'an interesting life'
Doug Flanagan/reporter@qvpr.com
Joe Hulbert has been married to his wife, Marian, for 64 years and has owned Quincy Auto Body Rebuild for the past 50 years.
If you get into a conversation with Joe Hulbert, he’ll most likely tell you at some point that he’s had a pretty interesting life.
He certainly has.
Hulbert was born and raised in Minnesota. He started courting a classmate named Marian when he was 13 years old and she was 11. After graduating from high school, he entered the United States Navy and served for several years in World War II, mostly in the Philippines. He was stationed on the USS Goslin, a personal attack destroyer.
When he got back, the first thing he did was marry Marian. He was 19, she was 17. They’ve been together ever since — 64 years and counting.
“She’s a wonderful wife,” Hulbert said. “She’s always worked with me and supported me in everything I’ve ever done.”
After he got out of the service, he moved to Anchorage, Alaska, where he worked from 1956 to 1960 for the Ford Motor Company. He also began to indulge his new passion for flying by serving as a member of the Civil Air Patrol.
“We looked for downed aircraft and did search missions,” he said. “We had some pretty exciting times. One time I was forced down myself when ice put me down right on the Kenai Highway. My plane was on skis, and when I landed, there was so much ice I had my head out the window. It took me a mile and a half to get stopped. There was some real bad weather. I taxied up the road, and left the plane, hiked up to the nearest town and stayed in the guards’ barracks.”
Hulbert has owned several airplanes, including a Piper PA-20 Pacer that he flew in Alaska. He’s flown through parts of California, Colorado, Oregon, Minnesota and Canada in addition to Washington and Alaska.
“I love flying,” he said. “It’s like a tranquilizer for me. I guess I had some close calls over the years, but it took a lot to scare me. It wasn’t hard work. We flew low, about 300 feet off the ground. But sometimes we’d have to fly in and out of canyons. That was the tricky part of it. It could be dangerous. When they’re narrow, you can’t just turn. You have to do a wing-over around the top and go underneath to get out of them.”
Hulbert enjoyed his work in Alaska, but in 1960 decided it was time to move on.
“Before I went up to Alaska, I helped my brother start an auto body shop in Moses Lake,” he said. “When I was in Alaska, the territory was on the rough side. We thought it would be better to bring the kids down here for school. Alaska was like the old West. I liked Alaska, though; it was a super place to live. There was a lot of fishing, a lot of hunting and a lot of flying.”
The Hulberts moved to Quincy and opened their new business, Quincy Auto Body Rebuild on Aug. 1, 1960. The shop recently celebrated its 50th anniversary.
“To my knowledge, it’s the longest continuing running business in Quincy under the same ownership,” he said. “There are very few others going today. We’ve had a pretty good run here.”
Now 83, Hulbert is retired from the business; Waymer Urwin runs the day-to-day operations of the shop now, and Hulbert’s son-in-law, Paul Evans, runs the auto wrecker service.
“I tinker with the cars a little bit, but I’m getting too old to do a lot of body work these days,” Hulbert said.
Hulbert has enjoyed watching Quincy grow and develop over the past 50 years.
“I like getting to know all of the people here,” he said. “Fifty years ago, Quincy wasn’t a big town. Now we’ve got all of these different things. It’s been amazing to see it grow."
