OUR MADCAP MEMBERS by Zora Boyle
Haing been a Member of Ham Polo Club for over 30 years, I would like to relate what can be achieved in later life as told here about Betty Goedhart, who is still known to those who have been omnipresent over the years at Ham and we must take heart that life can go on!
Betty and my lives have been intertwined ever since our Holiday on Ice skating connection, later on through exercising Betty’s ponies for many years in Richmond Park and our continued friendship. After her retirement from skating, her love of horses took over and she took up playing Polo at Ham Polo Club for more than a decade. All this before her real Madcap Adventures.
What can one say about the daredevil Betty?
Betty the dare devil started rock climbing and eventually she started trapezing, something she apparently wanted to learn since she was a little girl.
Born near Kansas City, she became an ice skater, and then joined Holiday on Ice to travel the world. Betty met her husband to be Skee who was then also a skater when she joined Holiday on Ice in USA. Skee quickly rose to Manager and when the first Holiday on Ice tour was booked in Europe they came over as a newly married couple in mid 50’s. The show was a novelty and hugely popular in post war Europe and celebrities, statesmen and royal families came to see the performances. It was a great fun time, which it still was in 1966 when I eventually joined the show from ‘behind the iron curtain’.
Holiday on Ice soon became very popular and grew to two, then three, sometimes four units of more than 100 skaters and crew touring Europe, The Far East and South America.
Betty’s Husband, Skee became a general manager for Europe and Betty stopped skating when her daughter Nicole was born in 1960. Their son, also named Skee Junior followed few years later and the family settled in Paris and so did the HOI European headquarters.
I didn’t skate with Betty, she retired before I joined the show. However the family often came to visit and we became friends, perhaps because we both had Czech
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roots, but whatever the reason we always liked each other.
The office eventually moved to Richmond and Betty settled here and started riding first and then playing polo. Skee by then had bought out the Holiday on Ice Enterprise and spent a great amount of time travelling. When I came to live in England with our children we happened to buy a house near The Goedharts and that is when all our fun together really started. Betty’s children were grown up by then and she practically adopted ours, I started exercising her ponies with her or without her when she happened to be away. We had the most blissful time riding in the park and everything else we got up to in those years with both husbands with HOI and mostly away. Nothing naughty, just pure carefree fun. There were many occasions that a clan from the Club were to attend Holiday on Ice, a truly fun experience, and usually in the very dangerous spots in the front row where we might be inveigled to embracing the skaters dressed in their costumes. We were so very lucky and we loved it.
After Skee Senior passed away quite suddenly from leukaemia both my husband Derek and I helped and supported her throughout the traumatic couple of years with Holiday on Ice. I was a tough time for Betty. Latterly Betty sold the company incredibly well to the Dutch Endemol TV Productions and retired to the dreamy La Jolla.
If that were not enough, when she returned to the USA in her 70s, she started learning to fly on a trapeze. One thing about Betty is her ‘joie de vivre’ which is quite unique and most infectious.
Betty has led a charmed life, but had she not; she would have enjoyed it just as much. Her capacity to enjoy every day is second to none and is simply admirable. ‘At 85 she is totally fearless and ready to take on any challenge presented to her.
Where she leads may we follow and to know her is to love her.
That’s our girl......Go Betty Go! HPC • THE LONDON POLO CLUB 59
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