By Lexi Rohner
Figure skating nostalgia often conjures up visions of decorated champions and grandiose ice shows of the past. Remember heavy feathered and stoned headdresses, character costumes, specialty acts like Frick and Frack and Sonja Henie? There was the Smurfs era of Ice Capades and the super long pinwheels that often saw one tiny showgirl racing to attach herself to the end, just in time for the wheel to stop and for her to bask in the audience’s applause.
More than these visions, though, are the individual memories that make up skating’s cherished past.
Equipment
Many skaters today have never seen a scribe. In Sun Valley, Idaho, facility guru and former show skater Scott Irvine brought the scribe back in 2018 after an adult skater mentioned wanting one.
“I scoured the Internet and couldn’t find one, so I made one,” Irvine said. “The demand has increased with rekindled interest in figures.”
A scribe is used to lay out the initial shape of a figure and to check the shape and size of circles already skated. It’s also used as a straight edge to check the alignment and placement of the turns. Irvine custom builds approximately 20 stylish and fun scribes annually.
Olympic judge Coco Shean enjoyed figures with her coach, World champion and Olympic pairs medalist Pierre Brunet. Die-hard figures fans know the tranquility and concentration required to complete satisfactory, let alone, perfect figures. Performing them without pre-set tracings takes extreme focus and body control. Scribes create these tracings while one learns figures on patch sessions (time slots with designated patches of ice per skater).
Another necessary piece of equipment in the mid-20th century was the wooden rack, an upside-down T-shaped carrier, pre-dating duffel bags, suitcases and Zuca bags. A thick, wax-covered yellow rope handle made for easy carrying both figure and freestyle skates.
A heavy wooden record case for skating music was another staple item skaters hauled into the rink.
“You could put several albums inside,” Olympic judge and U.S. team leader Lorrie Parker said.
In addition to record cases, 1960 Olympic champion Carol Heiss Jenkins recalled wooden guards, pleated skating skirts and Stanzion boots, which were much softer than today’s boots.
Apparel
Slower movement on patch required extra clothing to stay warm. The Polar Sport (PS) line was popular and later became an official outfitter of U.S. Figure Skating’s World and Olympic teams.
“It was the brand,” Elyssa Brecher, of Knoxville, Tennessee, said. “Ours were royal blue with twin white stripes; we looked so sharp.”
"Polar Sport was popular back then and all my dresses had petal skirts,” said Dawn Eyerly, a Los Angeles attorney and former U.S. pairs competitor with brother Troy Goldstein. “I don't think I would bring back any of those trends.”
PS became Polarfleece in the 1990s after being sold.
“We wore the skirts and zip-off pants,” Jocelyn Chalquist said. “I’d bring those back.”
Parker, who trained in the late 1960s and 1970s, remembered saving money to buy a PS warm-up suit, black with white stripes.
“I was so excited to get it and still have it,” Parker said. “Danskin’s first line of Lycra practice dresses was exciting, as we were used to homemade non-stretch dresses.”
Created by a former fashion model and adult skater, Anya Robertson’s sleek designs changed the sport’s look forever.
“The materials were often stiff, starchy and uncomfortable, but they looked great,” former coach Deb Wilker said.
“I remember skimpy little outfits, which was strange, because my first years of skating were all at outside rinks,” Olympic coach Christa Fassi said.
Peggy Graham recalled wearing skating dresses, mostly homemade, and tights for practice.
“Toward the end of my skating, ladies started wearing leggings,” Graham, chair of the International Officials Committee, said. “Off-ice training was just ballet and dance. Everything is more sophisticated now.”
Two-time U.S. ice dance bronze medalist Kim Navarro remembered half dress/skirts were popular.
“I’d skate before school and wear whatever top for school, then add tights and a skating skirt,” she said.
Navarro eventually noticed longer chiffon skirts trending, and in her 20s, leggings were in.
In the 1950s, men competed in black trousers and black or white mess jacket with a white shirt and bow tie.
“I remember being the first to go to something else,” 1956 Olympic champion Hayes Jenkins said. “I wore a tan jacket when I won the 1953 World Championships in Davos, Switzerland.”
Training
Navarro’s training consisted of all-day skating, stretching and an off-ice regimen, five to six days a week.
“The time commitment and dedication stand out most,” Navarro said. “We did lots of run-throughs and had one week off annually."
Eyerly and her brother attended school full time, rising at 4 a.m. to skate before school and training on afternoon public sessions.
As a young competitor, Parker didn’t understand her good fortune to train in Colorado Springs, Colorado, at the Broadmoor World Arena.
“My younger sisters and I trained summers with Carlo and Christa Fassi,” Parker said. “John Nicks brought his students from California, and later in my career, I trained summers there [in California], also.”
Parker’s fondest summer weekend memories included spending time with Randy Gardner, Tai Babilonia and Dorothy Hamill, who Parker took boating in her native state, Oklahoma.
Fassi’s training experience was quite different in her home country of Germany.
“We traveled 100 miles daily because my city had no rink,” Fassi said. “In summers, we were roller skaters.”
Graham’s skating life started early; her parents and aunt skated in the 1940s and 1950s, competing at the U.S. Championships and Worlds.
“My siblings, cousins and I were bound to end up in a rink,” Graham said. Raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where numerous high-level competitors and officials originated, Graham was part of a tight skating community. She also spent summers in the 1960s and 1970s training with the Fassis and Nicks at the Broadmoor and in Lake Placid, New York.
“We skated alongside several Olympic, World and national champions in an intense and inspiring environment that felt like home,” Graham said.
Heiss Jenkins trained at the old Madison Square Garden in New York on a third-floor rink.
“It was quite warm, so practicing figures was comfortable,” she said.
Unlike today, most rinks closed during summer.
“It wasn’t until I trained at the Broadmoor that I skated in the same rink all year,” Heiss Jenkins said. “We like to think today’s skaters respect what we brought to the sport six decades ago. The sport’s presentation has changed, and athletic demands expanded, but the underlying basics are the same.”
Rituals and traditions
Most skaters have rituals, like tying one skate before the other.
“Before performances, my dad always hugged us and told us to have fun,” Eyerly said. “That stuck with me. I listened to the same song before competition and sang certain parts, and Troy and I had a special handshake.”
Gale Tanger trained in the 1950s and 1960s with U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame member Slavka Kohout.
“She was demanding and had training procedures we followed at Wagon Wheel (FSC),” Tanger, an Olympic and World official, said. “Her rituals were ours.”
While training was constant and left little extra time, Parker and her training mates made it fun.
“We played add-on with jumps, and I always loved ending my show solos with cartwheels into the splits,” Parker said.
Memories and today’s skaters
Camaraderie and family have always been synonymous with the sport of figure skating.
“We trained with, and saw, the same people daily,” Eyerly said. “We had outside lives but understood our unique challenges as competitors.”
As a parent, Eyerly appreciated her family’s sacrifices.
“Our family bond has much to do with skating,” she said.
“I'm one of few people who skated senior national competition and didn’t lose to the Haydenettes,” Brecher said. “They were junior that year.”
Brecher’s coach, the late Robert Unger, saw travel competitions as an opportunity for independence and responsibility.
“My mother didn’t go, and as the youngest, I shared a room with four teen girls,” Brecher said. “I slept on the floor between beds. I always felt safe, and never missed practices, or competition.”
Navarro trained seriously from 2000 to 2010, though she began in the late 1980s.
“I think skaters would react to our training the same as if you’d told them you walked to school in snow, without shoes, uphill, both ways, 10 miles,” Navarro said.
Chalquist echoed this, noting most kids wouldn’t like figures, carrying two pairs of skates in a wooden carrier plus scribes.
Tanger pointed out skaters didn't spend as much time warming up or down as they do now, and has fond memories of seeing Carol Heiss Jenkins rise and following her career.
“She was my idol,” Tanger said.
Heiss Jenkins, like Tanger, said much of the science behind the sport hadn’t yet been developed when she competed.
"I always had a steak, vegetables and tea three hours before I competed,” Heiss Jenkins said. “We really had no special off-ice warm up procedure.”
