Lamar Hunt Jr.

• 1. Introduction

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  Lamar Hunt Jr. is an American businessman who serves as president and owner of the Kansas City Mavericks, a professional ice hockey team. He was born on the 20th of October, 1956, the son of Lamar Hunt and the grandson of H. L. Hunt, an oil tycoon. Yet before his name appeared on any team, Hunt spent years training as a classical musician, a detail rarely mentioned alongside his family's business ventures. His later business career would center on a single name, Loretto. It would span a charitable foundation, real estate development, and the ownership of hockey franchises that changed cities and names more than once. What carried him from a conservatory practice room to a hockey owner's box? And what do the turns in his marriages and family life reveal along the way?

• 2. A Divided Childhood

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  When Hunt was five years old, his parents, Rose Mary Whittle Hunt and Lamar Hunt, separated; the divorce followed in the summer of 1963. He spent the first eleven years of his life growing up in Dallas, Texas, dividing his time between two remarried households.

  His father remarried in 1964, to Norma Knobel, while his mother married a Texas businessman named John David Carr.

  St. Mark's School of Texas, an all-boys school in North Dallas, provided Hunt's private education growing up. Decades later, in May 2003, he added a Master of Arts in Counseling from Dallas Baptist University to that education.

  Those same Dallas school years also introduced Hunt to a discipline entirely apart from real estate and football: classical music.

• 3. Second Flute

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  While still in high school, Hunt studied under David Vornholt, a flutist with the Dallas Symphony. He went on to graduate from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music in 1979, then earned a masters degree in music at Duquesne University.

  An audition for the Kansas City Symphony earned Hunt the position of second flute in the orchestra. In 1990, he recorded an album of Bach's flute sonatas at St. James Catholic Church in Liberty, Missouri.

  That same discipline for detail would carry into an entirely different arena once Hunt turned toward Kansas City business ventures bearing the name Loretto.

• 4. The Loretto Ventures

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  The Loretto Foundation is the one non-profit among four organizations Hunt runs, all under that shared name, and it focuses on Catholic education. Loretto Commercial develops commercial projects around Kansas City, while Loretto Properties builds both residential and commercial real estate.

  Loretto Sports Ventures ties directly to Hunt's hockey holdings, starting with the Kansas City Mavericks of the ECHL. The same Loretto Sports Ventures also purchased a junior team, the Topeka RoadRunners, which it renamed the Topeka Pilots in 2018.

  The Loretto Sports Ventures name would soon attach itself to an entirely separate hockey franchise, with a naming history all its own.

• 5. A Franchise In Motion

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  An affiliate of Loretto Sports Ventures bought the Missouri Mavericks in January 2015, and the franchise became the Kansas City Mavericks in June 2017.

  As part of the North American Hockey League, the Topeka Pilots played in that city for two seasons. Then, in February 2020, Hunt moved the team to Kansas City, renaming it the Kansas City Scouts. The Scouts never took the ice during the 2020-21 season, sidelined by the COVID-19 pandemic. In May 2021, Hunt sold the team to a group in Amarillo, Texas, who rebranded it the Amarillo Wranglers.

  The Kansas City Chiefs also carry the Hunt name; Hunt is part of the family that founded and still operates the NFL franchise.

  None of those team changes touched the very different story unfolding inside Hunt's own household.

• 6. Two Marriages

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  Hunt's first marriage, to Jocelyn, produced seven children. That marriage ended in 2000, following Hunt's settlement of a lawsuit that alleged he had sexually assaulted his wife's sister. Hunt agreed to the settlement, but he described the conduct at issue as consensual rather than as assault.

  In 2003, three years later, Hunt married Rita Mae Hammerschmidt, who brought two children of her own from a previous marriage.

  Between his two marriages, Hunt now counts nine grandchildren and continues to live in Kansas City.