- Joined
- Jul 26, 2003
Frozen in Time: The Enduring Legacy of the 1961 U.S. Figure Skating Team
by Nikki Nichols
I bought this book last night. In another thread, I stated that it would take me about a week or two to finish it. I made that prediction based upon my busy schedule.
Yeah, whatever. I came home, put the phone on voice mail, and simply refused to stop reading. Why? Because it was darned good, and I'm deeply irresponsible. Scratch one more skating book off the list.
For those few of you who don't know what this book is about at all, here is your chance to learn some important skating history.
In her introduction, Nichols expresses surprise at the fact that no one has written a book about this subject before, which does seem very odd. She spent about three years researching it, and it shows.
It is very well written. Read this book. Just go get it and read it. It's sad, beautifully written, and fascinating.
The plane crash took the lives of 34 people associated with the U.S. skating team, as well as dozens of other passengers, 11 crew members, and a farmer on the ground.
Nichols concentrates primarily on the skaters, of course. She doesn't tell the long detailed stories of each of them, but she does spend long enough on every skater, and the people in their lives, to give us a sense of who they were and where they were coming from. With 18 skaters (3 ladies, 3 men, 3 pairs and 3 dance teams), that's a lot of ground to cover. This is in addition to the coaches and various family members who were also on board. But she manages to cover them all with enough history to do them justice, and I never once forgot who was who. That's not an easy task, but she makes it happen.
She gives us a portrait of their personalities, and lively descriptions of the programs they performed. She's especially descriptive of how the audience fell in love with Laurence Owen and Doug Ramsay.
She focuses mainly on the skating powerhouse family of Maribel Vincent Owen and her two daughters, Laurence and Mara, who both became national champions in 1961, one in singles, the other in pairs; and Laurence's rivalry with Steffi Westerfeld. Many, many poignant and fascinating details arise throughout the entire story, and Nichols describes it all with a simple, easy style. She makes the skaters who formed the world team that year come alive with personality and funny excerpts.
She also gives us an idea what the time, the culture, and the figure skating world were like in the late 50's and early 60's. She's funny when talking about how Dick Button's commentating has changed over the years. (Yes, that's right -- Dick Button was doing television commentary back in 1961.)
And we learn how exceptional they all were. Each skater seemed extremely accomplished in other things besides skating. One was an Air Cadet in the air force. Another was a distinguished Harvard graduate. Another was a poet. Another was a state piano champion who was forced to decide between trying for a national championship as a pianist and trying for a national championship as a skater, because the competitions took place at the same time.
The entire time, as I was reading and enjoying these people and their exceptional lives, in the back of my mind I couldn't forget that I already knew their fate, and it was very affecting.
Where Nichols surprises is that she doesn't stop at being an historian of the 1961 U.S. team. She takes the time to delve into the entire history of figure skating, describing its ancient origins, its modern origins, its changes through the years, the various skating clubs which formed throughout America, and its relationship with the media, particularly television.
Nichols goes back in time far enough to talk about Maribel Vincent Owen's life, and her decades of frustration due to constantly losing to Sonja Henie (and Nichols' portrait of Henie is not flattering).
Nichols sets up the deeply historical events of the 1961 U.S. Nationals, where the Owens had a field day as a family, and follows them onto North Americans (a regular competition at the time), from which they traveled as a group to New York to board their doomed flight.
As the narrative proceeds in its simple, graceful, elegant style, the author cites one incident after another of people who almost were on that plane but were not (due to sometimes bizarre circumstances), or who were almost not on it, but were. Each story, simply told, becomes more emotional simply because the reader knows where this is going.
She then chronicles the crash, including many technical details, for this isn't just a narrative, it's also a matter of historical record.
She takes a bit of poetic license (acknowledging it as she does) and talks a bit about the people inside the plane as if there was some way to know what they did and said to each other, which of course, there is not. I'm not sure why she did this, as it wasn't necessary, but it turns out to be much less of a deal than I thought it would be at first.
At various points, Nichols also cites some eerie coincidences. The USFSA president at the time, F. Ritter Shumway, spoke with a member of the team by phone before they boarded, and claims to have told his secretary immediately upon hanging up, "I had a terrible feeling talking to them just now. I can't explain it." Lorraine Hanlon, who had almost been a passenger on the flight, was having a nightmare filled with images of fire when her mother woke her to tell her that the plane had crashed.
The remainder of the book covers the consequences of the tragedy, both for the families involved and for U.S. figure skating as a whole. Nichols also spends a few pages talking about the other passengers and crew members on the plane, and the changes Boeing made to the 707 jetliner as a result of this crash.
A few facts were mentioned multiple times. Other than that and the very rare typo, I found hardly any errors in this book.
There are photos. They are black and white and are found throughout the text instead of within a central photo section like most books.
All in all, the attention to detail and the stories of the people involved make for one compelling book, and really bring home to the reader just how much talent, vitality and potential we lost. It shows just how much figure skating history was not just altered, but wrenched violently onto a completely different course. Were it not for this plane crash, Laurence Owen would almost certainly have been a household name even today. I not only found it a wonderful read, but I learned many new things.
It's a book that very much needed to be written. Find it and give it a read.
by Nikki Nichols
I bought this book last night. In another thread, I stated that it would take me about a week or two to finish it. I made that prediction based upon my busy schedule.
Yeah, whatever. I came home, put the phone on voice mail, and simply refused to stop reading. Why? Because it was darned good, and I'm deeply irresponsible. Scratch one more skating book off the list.
For those few of you who don't know what this book is about at all, here is your chance to learn some important skating history.
In her introduction, Nichols expresses surprise at the fact that no one has written a book about this subject before, which does seem very odd. She spent about three years researching it, and it shows.
It is very well written. Read this book. Just go get it and read it. It's sad, beautifully written, and fascinating.
The plane crash took the lives of 34 people associated with the U.S. skating team, as well as dozens of other passengers, 11 crew members, and a farmer on the ground.
Nichols concentrates primarily on the skaters, of course. She doesn't tell the long detailed stories of each of them, but she does spend long enough on every skater, and the people in their lives, to give us a sense of who they were and where they were coming from. With 18 skaters (3 ladies, 3 men, 3 pairs and 3 dance teams), that's a lot of ground to cover. This is in addition to the coaches and various family members who were also on board. But she manages to cover them all with enough history to do them justice, and I never once forgot who was who. That's not an easy task, but she makes it happen.
She gives us a portrait of their personalities, and lively descriptions of the programs they performed. She's especially descriptive of how the audience fell in love with Laurence Owen and Doug Ramsay.
She focuses mainly on the skating powerhouse family of Maribel Vincent Owen and her two daughters, Laurence and Mara, who both became national champions in 1961, one in singles, the other in pairs; and Laurence's rivalry with Steffi Westerfeld. Many, many poignant and fascinating details arise throughout the entire story, and Nichols describes it all with a simple, easy style. She makes the skaters who formed the world team that year come alive with personality and funny excerpts.
She also gives us an idea what the time, the culture, and the figure skating world were like in the late 50's and early 60's. She's funny when talking about how Dick Button's commentating has changed over the years. (Yes, that's right -- Dick Button was doing television commentary back in 1961.)
And we learn how exceptional they all were. Each skater seemed extremely accomplished in other things besides skating. One was an Air Cadet in the air force. Another was a distinguished Harvard graduate. Another was a poet. Another was a state piano champion who was forced to decide between trying for a national championship as a pianist and trying for a national championship as a skater, because the competitions took place at the same time.
The entire time, as I was reading and enjoying these people and their exceptional lives, in the back of my mind I couldn't forget that I already knew their fate, and it was very affecting.
Where Nichols surprises is that she doesn't stop at being an historian of the 1961 U.S. team. She takes the time to delve into the entire history of figure skating, describing its ancient origins, its modern origins, its changes through the years, the various skating clubs which formed throughout America, and its relationship with the media, particularly television.
Nichols goes back in time far enough to talk about Maribel Vincent Owen's life, and her decades of frustration due to constantly losing to Sonja Henie (and Nichols' portrait of Henie is not flattering).
Nichols sets up the deeply historical events of the 1961 U.S. Nationals, where the Owens had a field day as a family, and follows them onto North Americans (a regular competition at the time), from which they traveled as a group to New York to board their doomed flight.
As the narrative proceeds in its simple, graceful, elegant style, the author cites one incident after another of people who almost were on that plane but were not (due to sometimes bizarre circumstances), or who were almost not on it, but were. Each story, simply told, becomes more emotional simply because the reader knows where this is going.
She then chronicles the crash, including many technical details, for this isn't just a narrative, it's also a matter of historical record.
She takes a bit of poetic license (acknowledging it as she does) and talks a bit about the people inside the plane as if there was some way to know what they did and said to each other, which of course, there is not. I'm not sure why she did this, as it wasn't necessary, but it turns out to be much less of a deal than I thought it would be at first.
At various points, Nichols also cites some eerie coincidences. The USFSA president at the time, F. Ritter Shumway, spoke with a member of the team by phone before they boarded, and claims to have told his secretary immediately upon hanging up, "I had a terrible feeling talking to them just now. I can't explain it." Lorraine Hanlon, who had almost been a passenger on the flight, was having a nightmare filled with images of fire when her mother woke her to tell her that the plane had crashed.
The remainder of the book covers the consequences of the tragedy, both for the families involved and for U.S. figure skating as a whole. Nichols also spends a few pages talking about the other passengers and crew members on the plane, and the changes Boeing made to the 707 jetliner as a result of this crash.
A few facts were mentioned multiple times. Other than that and the very rare typo, I found hardly any errors in this book.
There are photos. They are black and white and are found throughout the text instead of within a central photo section like most books.
All in all, the attention to detail and the stories of the people involved make for one compelling book, and really bring home to the reader just how much talent, vitality and potential we lost. It shows just how much figure skating history was not just altered, but wrenched violently onto a completely different course. Were it not for this plane crash, Laurence Owen would almost certainly have been a household name even today. I not only found it a wonderful read, but I learned many new things.
It's a book that very much needed to be written. Find it and give it a read.
