L E T T E R F R O M T H E E D I T O R
Button recalls his fond days at U.S. Championships There are only a few skating superstars whose celebrity transcends the sport and spills over into
pop culture. Dick Button is one of them. This month, 100 years of U.S. Figure Skating Championships will be celebrated in Boston, and
Richard Totten Button — the formal name he used as a competitor — will be there. It’s only fi tting since Button, a member of The Skating Club of Boston, helped popularize the event both as a competitor and TV analyst. To help commemorate this centennial anniversary, writer Lois Elfman and I put together a
time line for the U.S. Championships event program that highlights some of the classic moments and accomplishments in the event’s glorious history. It was a great adventure for me to go back in time using the SKATING Magazine Archive to learn more about many of the sport’s pioneers and legends. One of the event’s greatest competitors, of course, was Button. He was and is revered by those
who competed against him in the 1940s and 1950s. Decades later, he still holds the respect of the cur- rent generation of competitors. I called Mr. Button and asked him to share some of the highlights from his record-tying seven U.S.
titles, which spanned the years 1946 to 1952. His athletic and spectacular style of skating are still etched in the minds of those who watched him compete following World War II. His run of greatness began in 1944, when the 14-year-old from Englewood, N.J., claimed the U.S.
novice title in Minneapolis. “I just came across a picture yesterday of sitting there with Jimmy Lochead (junior men’s champi-
on), Eileen Seigh (ladies novice champion) and myself,” Button said of the photograph taken at the 1944 event. “All of our ears are sticking out; when you are 14, your ears stick out. It was great fun, because it was the fi rst of all the national championships. It’s like your fi rst love.” The next year, Button went on to secure the U.S. junior title in New York. That competition, how-
ever, was memorable for all the wrong reasons, Button said. “I remember it specifi cally because I messed up,” he said. “I was leading with an almost unbeatable
margin in the school fi gures portion. In those days, fi gures counted for 60 percent. I still wanted to show everyone, ‘Here comes Dicky Button, coming down the pike,’ and I was going to do a great job. But I never got off the ice on the fi rst jump and splattered myself everywhere. I still won, but it wasn’t a great performance.” Button made history the next year in Chicago, where at age 16 he became the youngest man to
win the U.S. senior title. The triumph also marked the fi rst time that anyone had won the men’s novice, junior and senior titles in consecutive years. In 1947, the U.S. Championships made their West Coast debut in Berkeley, Calif. “Berkeley was fascinating,” Button said. “It was there, I am told, that I met my future wife, Slavka
Kohout. She was 12 or 13, and she arrived at the arena with her father as I was leaving. She asked me, ‘Do you leap and twirl?’ As a sophisticated pooh-bah, I ignored her. Her father laughed. She got back at me later. … she often reminds me of this story.” The U.S. Championships spent the next two years in Colorado Springs, Colo., at the famous Broad-
moor World Arena. Button, the 1948 Olympic and World champion, loved it there, but the altitude was diffi cult for everyone to manage. “In those days, we had to skate two programs some years,” he said. “One to show it to the judges
and one to be marked, and that was exhausting. Everyone else did well when they weren’t under pres- sure, and I did terribly. The next night, they would do badly under pressure, and by comparison to the fi rst night, I looked better. It was an exhausting scene.” In 1950, Button won his fi fth U.S. title in Washington, D.C. “It was my second year at Harvard. We all took the train down from Boston. I remember doing
school fi gures and there was a spot on the ice and I borrowed somebody’s hat and put it over the spot. Nobody knew what the hell was going on. One of the judges lifted it up and saw there was a bad spot and said, ‘OK, I got it.’ We all skated around the hat.” Button arrived in Seattle in 1951 hoping to continue his domestic dominance. “I had gotten very much immersed in all of my activities at Harvard,” he said. “I was doing every-
thing but concentrating on skating. I nearly got my fanny whipped by Jimmy Grogan, Hayes Jenkins and the others, so I went back to Harvard, gave up all extracurricular activities, concentrated on studies and training, and got myself in the best of shape for the next year at the Olympics.” Button earned his seventh and fi nal U.S. title in Colorado Springs in 1952. “The last year was one of my favorites, because it was the fi rst time at a national championship
that I was able to do a triple jump,” said Button, who is also credited with performing the fi rst double Axel, at the 1948 Olympics, as well as inventing the fl ying camel spin. “It was a good performance, too, somewhat diff erent than what I did at the Olympic Games in Oslo.” Button won his second Olympic title in 1952 to go along with his fi fth of fi ve World titles. He went
on to enjoy an equally impressive run as a TV skating analyst with ABC, a career that spanned fi ve de- cades and garnered him many broadcasting honors. His memories of competing at the U.S. Championships are still vivid more than 60 years later, and they represent what this fascinating sport has meant to so many people.
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4 JANUARY 2014
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