And when sorrow hits the skating world – as it did, doubly, this week – the Boston club feels the pain, as well.
Two teenage skaters, their mothers, and two coaches from the Skating Club of Boston were killed Wednesday night when the plane bringing them back from a national development camp in Wichita, Kansas, collided with an Army helicopter and fell into the frigid Potomac River. Even as skaters and their families mourned, news came that alumnus Dick Button – a two-time Olympic gold medalist for whom the club's trophy room is named – had died at the age of 95.
“This is a club of excellence. It has been for over 100 years,” said Paul George, a former USOC vice president who trained at the club on his way to the 1962 U.S. pairs championship. “We have produced countless talented skaters. … I think we will continue to do it.”
First chartered in 1912 – the same week that Fenway Park opened and just eight days after the Titanic sank – the Skating Club of Boston is the third-oldest American skating club and a founding member of U.S. Figure Skating. After starting out on a frozen Chestnut Hill pond, the club was based at the Boston Arena until 1938, when it got a home of its own.
For the next eight decades, the utilitarian barn on the banks of the Charles River was one of the centers of American figure skating, training Button and fellow Olympic champion Tenley Albright, Olympic medalists Nancy Kerrigan and Paul Wylie and scores of U.S. champions.
“You can feel the history,” said Kerrigan, who won a bronze medal at the 1992 Olympics and silver in ’94. “It was deep and rich in history, and a lot of the elite, elite skaters have have come through here. It’s pretty amazing, actually.”
It was also the home club for half of the American team that perished in a plane crash on its way to the 1961 world championships in Prague.
“The day the music stopped, very much like this,” George told reporters Thursday, when he was joined in a rink-side news conference by Albright and Kerrigan before the news of Button's death was known. “It took time, but we came back — I think stronger, better.”
Albright said she lost 22 friends and a coach in the accident, and she would have been on the plane herself to cheer them on but she was in her final year at Harvard Medical School. Skating Club of Boston CEO Doug Zeghibe said the 1961 plane crash left a hole in the organization that lingered for decades.
“It had long, long-reaching implications for the skating club and for the sport in this country, because when you lose coaches like this, you lose the future of the sport as well, he said. "It’s been a long time in redeveloping it, and I personally feel that this club has just now, almost 60 years later, been coming out of the shadow of that 1961 crash.”
The club moved in 2020 to a new facility with three rinks and modern amenities, but its past is celebrated in every corner.
One wall overlooking the main rink — officially known as the Tenley E. Albright Performance Center — features a timeline illustrated with black-and-white pictures that traced the sport's evolution from quaint outdoor competitions in suits and long dresses to the quad jumps and spangled costumes of today. Across the ice are lists of the Olympians, world and national champions that trained at the club.
Through a library that is used by the younger skaters for their remote schooling is a trophy room named for Button that is stuffed full of pins and patches, silver cups and costumes, magazines and medals and pictures and programs and posters.
“This club is very proud of its tradition, both on the ice with Olympic champions and world champions, but also for leadership and leadership roles in U.S. Figure Skating,” Zeghibe said. “With this new facility we want to pay homage to our history and our roots, but be very much looking forward. And the kids that were lost and the coaches that were lost were really part of the team of looking forward.”
Flowers began accumulating Thursday morning in the club's lobby, with skaters and their families arriving to share long and tearful hugs. A table that had been set up to wish the skaters in Wichita luck was replaced by a memorial with a candle and a single white rose for each member who died in the plane crash.
Kerrigan and Albright said they came to the club Thursday so they wouldn't have to grieve alone.
“You don’t have to know everybody to feel that connection,” Kerrigan said, choking back tears. "We've been through the same thing -- that training, that rigorous schedule of falling over and over and somehow picking yourself back up, which is the main lesson learned in skating: you get back up, keep on trying. And even when it’s hard, you get back up.
“Even when you’re crying, hurt, pained, get back up and move forward. It’s not easy,” she said, “but that’s what we all have to do now, together.”
___ AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports
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