Tell us a bit about your early years – when and where you were born and raised, your family, where you went to elementary and high school?
I was born in January of 1940, the oldest of three. Then there was my sister Nancy and my brother Bruce.
My parents were both German. They came here in the late 1920s and met here. My mother went to Parsons School of Design and my dad – who'd trained in Germany – was a confectioner. When he came here he became a baker.
We grew up in Queens [ New York ]. I've still got a bit of a Queens accent. I went to Catholic schools my first five years, but the head nun wouldn't allow me to get off for skating and practice, so I ended up going to Public School 108 in Ozone Park . There I was able to get out of school an hour early and go for practice.
By the time I was 13, I'd made the World Skating Championship Team and had to do a lot of traveling, so I went to a professional high school. That allowed me to do practice in the morning – I'd leave the house around 6 in the morning, take a bus and subway to the rink in New York City and train from 7 till 11:30 – and then go to school, where there was a lot of tutoring. Then I went back to the rink for practice, or went for a ballet lesson.
What got you interested in ice skating? And was it just you, or was it a family affair?
My mother and dad were both athletic and outdoorsy, especially my mother. They introduced me to outdoor skating. When summer came, I begged my mom to take me skating and I started skating indoors when I was 4 ½ or 5. I started out at the Brooklyn Figure Skating Club, then, once I was 6, I started taking lessons from Pierre Brunet's wife. Once I got good enough, he was my only coach for the next 18 years.
From the time I was 6, I was training 5 to 6 hours a day. [Laughs] My mom used to say that was probably a good thing because I had a lot of energy. Both my brother and sister were ranked nationally.
When and where did you win your first competition?
[Laughs] I didn't do very well in the beginning. In my first competition – at Lake Placid – I think I was second to last. I remember coming home on the train afterwards and my mother asking if I really wanted to do it. I told her I'd do better next time.
…I didn't actually start doing well until I was 10. That year I came in 4 th at a regional meet and at 11 I won my first national championship – National Novice – in Seattle , Washington.
Your figure skating was – and still is – described as “athletic.” What does that mean? They put skaters into two categories: balletic and athletic. My competitor for quite a few years – I was second to her in the Olympics in '56 – was Tenley Albright, and she was very balletic. If you want to best your competitor, you aren't going to do it doing something they are good at; you have to do something you are good at.
I was always fast, always athletic, and I loved to do jumps. I knew that if I could get a clean double axel – something that she didn't have and that no woman had – I'd have something that could make me a champion. And it did.
At 16, you represented the U.S. at the 1956 Olympics – and skated away with the silver medal. At 20, you represented the U.S. at the 1960 Olympics – and skated away with the gold medal. How did that make you feel? Winning the silver medal in '56 was thrilling, followed two weeks later by my winning the World Championship. That was an important year for me. My mother was dying of cancer, and once we got home from the Olympics and World Championships, she was bedridden.
But the gold medal, that's different. The American flag was flown. They played the National Anthem. It was very emotional. I always had the dream [of winning a gold medal], but for the dream to come true, that made it all the more special.
Most of the time attempting – trying to achieve the dream – is the reward. But to win a gold medal, you've gone beyond that.
Winning a gold medal doesn't make you a happy person or a healthy person, but it does opens doors for you. It gives you the self-confidence and courage and opportunities to try things. And it does it at an age when you can dream big.
I still have dreams, but now they have limitations. But if you are 18 or 20, and you've won an Olympic gold medal, you have no limitations. In life, along the way, you'll find there are limitations, and what they are, but at that point in life there are none.
No one gets where you are today without coaches and mentors. Who were your coaches and mentors and role models?
My parents, especially my mother. She was always supportive and encouraged us to fulfill our personal dreams.
And my skating coach, Pierre Brunet. It's always a gamble. You never know if a student is going to come through, but he believed in me. I trusted him and had great respect for him. And, when I look back on it now, I realize he also had great respect for me. It's a wonderful thing for an adult to have that kind of respect for a young person.
He was a good role model in terms of professionalism, too. He always wore a suit jacket and white shirt and tie. He was always polite and well spoken, and he expected that from his pupils. And he instilled a good work ethic, too.
There were teachers in school who were understanding and supportive, too, and the Skating Club of New York, when I won the World Championship, gave me an honorary membership in the club and free ice time. That was a great help because after my mother died [in 1956], my father would not have been able to afford skating.
You never achieve any sort of success in any endeavor without help…and once I got into the working world, I've always tried to repay that – not just with checks, but with volunteering and teaching.
What do you think is the most important thing you learned from your mentors?
Perseverance. With perseverance comes a sense of concentration and determination, and a certain amount of self-confidence. And you have to be careful there, because there's a very fine line separating self-confidence from conceit.
You can't build it on your own. You need others to help you see what it takes – the hard work and the work ethic – to succeed. And to help you recognize success.
And the other thing was an ethic of hard work.
Those are both things that stand you in good stead when you get older. I tell parents of the students I'm coaching now that their children aren't just learning how to skate competitively, they are learning life lessons, too, because they are never going to lose the things they learn on the ice.
How did you manage to do all the practicing and meets required for competitive skating and have a “normal” life, too? Or did you?
It was time management, thought we never used that phrase when I was growing up. I learned that from skating. I learned early on to be able to tell the things I wanted to do and the ones I wasn't interested in.
While I started and ended the day skating and was often away for competitions, when I was in school and college I had classes like everyone else. And I always had good friends.
You went to New York University . What did you major in?
I started there when I was 17, but I didn't graduate. I've probably got the equivalent in hours to being a Junior. I was an English major with a minor in psychology, which puts me in good stead for coaching [Laughs] and being around young kids and teenagers.
Most days I started classes at 1 pm – after 4 or 5 hours of practice – and then I'd take classes in the evening, too. Most of the professors were wonderful and accommodating. Once, I fell asleep during a music class in the evening and a friend told me the teacher told her to let me sleep because I needed the sleep more than I needed the Bach fugue.
Friends were important in college. When I had to be away from school because of competitions, they'd air-express me their notes.
I stopped going in January of 1960 to get ready for the Olympics and marry Hayes [Jenkins, a 1956 Olympic and World Skating Champion]. We got married in April and moved to Akron because he'd joined a law firm there.
In 1961, you retired from competitive skating. Why?
After the Olympics I retired, but I was still very busy. I had offers to do ice shows, but decided to do a movie [ Snow White and the Three Stooges ] out in Hollywood . Hayes encouraged me to do it. [Laughs] He said: “Ten years down the road with kids and diapers, I don't want you to say ‘I could have been a movie star.'”
I enjoyed it, but while it was interesting, I knew making movies was never going to be my passion. Then I did print and TV promotional work for several companies [including Swanson Frozen Foods and Mobile Oil Corporation]. And all along I was doing commentary on the Olympics for TV or radio. That began to wind down when I started coaching.
How did you meet your husband, Hayes Jenkins?
We met through skating when I was 11. We had one year – 1956 – when we were World Champions together and went on world tour together. After that, he retired from skating and went to law school [at Harvard] and we kept in touch. [Laughs] We knew each other a long time before we got involved.
What brought you to Ohio ?
Hayes' job. We had a two-week honeymoon, then packed up and moved to Akron . We lived there till Hayes retired and we moved to Westlake .
When – and more importantly why – did you decide to become a skating coach?
I never dreamed I'd coach, but in 1978 an ice rink opened in Akron . Hayes and I went to see the rink -- as the ice was freezing – and when we got into the car he said: “This is our sport. Why don't you volunteer your services to help get this rink going?”
The next day I ask the rink's owners if I could give free skating lessons for the first 8 weeks on Saturday mornings to anyone who wanted to come. The first Saturday, there were over 300 kids. They were all ages and there were kids who'd never been on ice.
I divided them into groups – those who knew how to skate and those who didn't – and we went from there. That night at dinner I was so excited. Kids – many had gotten their skates for Christmas – had made it across the ice without falling. Others had leaned the Bunny Hop.
On Sunday, some kids called about me working with them after school the next day. Then parents started calling about giving lessons to their kids. Then parents started calling about coaching. One thing led to another. The next year I had five skaters going to regional competition.
In 1981, Winterhurst Skating Rink in Lakewood called about coaching there. But I said I couldn't unless they could work things out with the schools so kids could come for morning, afternoon and noon-time practice. They did.
I guess you could say that my volunteering became a formal job. I fell into it and grew into it, but it was timing, too. I couldn't have done it when the children were still small. But by the early '80s, the youngest was a teenager and the oldest was away at college and I was able to do it full-time.
Early on, I set a goal. Just because I could skate didn't mean I could impart information, so I said to myself that if I didn't get someone to nationals within five years, I would reevaluate coaching competitive skaters. By my third year, I'd accomplished that, though.
I love coaching and I find being around my students challenging and rewarding and fulfilling. They have a wonderful outlook on life, even though they are beating their bodies up on the ice trying to learn things.
They keep me young. [Laughs] And, because I'm coaching them for competitions and taking them to competitions, they keep me current on what's going on in figure skating today.
How did it feel to be “back” in a competitive environment, but from the other side of the barrier?
It's nerve-racking. You're responsible for the careers of young people. And your career as a coach is determined by how your mostly-teenage students perform. And performance is more than just being able to do multi-spin jumps. It's grace and elegance and interpretation and maturity and balletic and athletic moves. And it's your job to impart all that so that they can compete well, so that they can do what you know they can do.
Sometimes I feel rather helpless. I have done what I can, and now I have to send them out to compete and I hope I have given them all the tools they need to keep their head about them in the pressure cooker and goldfish bowl that is competition.
You've been coaching for 30 years. What's different about competitive skating today from when you were coming up?
A lot, so that's a difficult question to answer. One thing is that young people today are so much more worldly – with the Internet the world has gotten a lot ‘smaller' – and they have so much information at their fingertips. Because of that, they are a bit more judgmental and critical of a coach. Another is that there is a lot more moving from coach to coach. That wasn't the case when I started coaching.
To balance that, I think there's a higher level of dedication to the sport – there are so many other things they could be doing – at least with my students and their parents.
And the sport has changed, too. There are no more “school” figures. And there is a new scoring system.
At 68, you've been a Hollywood actress, a spokesperson for several companies. Today you're out on the ice almost every day coaching. How do you do it? In other words, where does all the energy come from?
I've been blessed, personally, with an optimistic outlook, and I've always had lots of energy, perseverance and determination. When I take up something – for instance knitting – I take it up passionately and I try to learn everything I can about it.
But I've always had two speeds – my mother used to say I went 100 miles an hour or zero – so sometimes I get up in the morning and say “I need to unwind today,” and I may just sit and read all day. The next day, I'm rejuvenated, ready to go.
Do you have a special diet?
Per se, no. I have always eaten healthily and I always knew about nutrition, but once I got older I needed to have someone help me get back to square one, so in my late-40s I saw a nutritionist. She was very big on eating as naturally as possible.
Today, I cook with olive oil or butter and I never use synthetic sweeteners. I make sure I have a banana every day – it's good for potassium – and I make sure I'm eating enough protein, lean meat and fish. I probably have salmon three times a week. And I'm a big vegetable and salad person – thought dressings are always simple. I'm not a big pasta eater, and I'm not much of a dessert eater, either because I don't like to feel full or heavy at the end of a meal.
Do you work out?
Fitness-wise, I've done yoga and I used to do morning workouts with weights – we called ourselves the Bootcamp Babes. I play a little tennis, I walk as much as possible and I'm on the ice almost every day, stroking and moving. I've got a bit of arthritis and that helps me stay flexible and keep my joints limber.
But I'm not doing anything to ‘lose' weight. I think when you are my age, it's better to have a little weight on you, or you look frail…and you're more predisposed to osteoporosis, too.
Over the years, you've hung out with some of the “fittest” people on the planet. What did you “learn” from all those super-fit people?
[Laughs] They were very happy people, very content people, and that helped make and keep them fit.
And they had a good outlook – a healthy and positive outlook – about life. I learned early on that being fit is more than just eating right and lots of exercise. It has to do with attitude, too.
What's your definition of, and criteria for, successful aging?
First, you have to have good genes. After that, you need to exercise. And you need to keep yourself busy with things you like to do. I've always had hobbies because I've always been interested in learning how to do different things.
And I think you need to be a people person. I know I'm people oriented. I love meeting people, being around people. But not just any ‘people,' people who bring about a feeling of contentment, people who make you feel happy.
And I have to say that from my experience, one of the things that can help you age successfully is being around young people. And, of course, having a happy marriage is important, too.
If you want to age successfully, you have to be happy and content. That can be a difficult thing to manage because life ‘happens' and it keeps ‘happening' as you age. And there are always going to be things you are going to have to come to terms with or overcome so that you can become more content with who you are.
For that, I always remember what my mother used to say: “You have to be a good fighter.”
Back to the top
|
