may have made some skaters more nervous than usual, while for others the event would have seemed like the opportunity of a lifetime.
Whatever you called it—“The U.S. Championships,” or just plain “Nationals” as many skaters did—this event was by far the most important to date on the 1961 competition calendar, cameras or not. The competition wasn’t just about winning medals or trophies, either. Winning a gold, silver, or bronze medal in the ladies, men, pairs, or dance events meant a stronger chance of actually being seen in the televised portion of the championships. With only one hour to cover the four major disciplines, the broadcast editors could only concern themselves with the standout performances. Most important of all, however, was the opportunity a top-three finish presented. Finishing on the podium earned each of the victors a spot on the team that would represent the United States at two important competitions: the North American Figure Skating Championships and the World Figure Skating Championships.
The North American Championships no longer exist today, replaced by the more frequent “Grand Prix” events, but in 1961 the “North Americans” were considered a vital precursor to the World Championships. The North Americans that year would be held in Philadelphia. The team then would head for the World Figure Skating Championships to be held in Prague, Czechoslovakia. A trip behind the forbidding Iron Curtain would put the skaters in a very select group at a time when such travel was much more difficult and more expensive than it is today. Inclusion in that group, as every skater knew while warming up on that day in Colorado Springs, required earning a medal at the Nationals, where their years of training and sacrifice would come down to just a few minutes on the ice.
The pressure of making history rested on the shoulders of the vibrant Laurence Owen, eager to live up to the championship expectations written about so frequently in the press and born of her membership in an elite skating family, a family that had been dubbed the “first family of skating” by newspaper reporters who covered her parents and grandparents in their respective heydays. Her grandmother, a well-known skater in her prime, once told reporters that “skating was obviously in our blood.” Laurence also inherited the skating gene from her father, Guy Owen, who had been a Canadian men’s junior champion and North American champion in an event called “fours,” which featured four skaters performing tricks in tandem—somewhat of a miniature precursor to what we now call “synchronized skating.”
Laurence, like her sister, Maribel Jr., who went by “Mara,” was actually a fourth-generation skater on her mother’s side of the family. Her great grandfather, Sumner Willard Vinson, was considered one of the foremost experts in figure skating in the areas of Roxbury and Dorchester, Massachusetts. He put his son, Thomas Vinson, on skates at age four. As a young man, he had a fateful meeting with a spunky young society belle and Radcliffe graduate, Gertrude Cliff. Boston newspaper writer Sally Ellis wrote about their first encounter on a skating pond.
“One day, with two eligible bachelors in hot pursuit, [Gertrude] merrily zoomed by a young man who was earnestly practicing such bygone intricacies as ‘The Maltese Cross,’ ‘Balls of Twine,’ and ‘Picket Fences.’ ‘Such foolishness,’ muttered the young, impatient toast of Boston society.”
A few months later, Thomas was teaching Gertrude how to perform those very maneuvers. The two married and had one child, Maribel, who spent many a day of her youth at the Cambridge Skating Club. Maribel told reporters that the rink felt more like home than the family’s Winchester estate.
“For all that mother wears her hair like a Gibson Girl, she’s got pretty good ideas and she’s pretty liberal. Never tied down by convention. I didn’t go to school until I was nine years old, and I don’t think I missed a thing. Mother taught me for an hour a day and the rest of the time I was out in the fresh air and sunshine or at the Cambridge rink skating.”
Laurence, “Big Maribel,” and “Little Maribel” Owen together.
The time at the rink paid off. Maribel won nine U.S. National Championships in the ladies event, six championships in the pairs event (along with three silver medal finishes), and had also won a silver medal in ice dance. She appeared in the Olympics three times and claimed a medal in one of those appearances, yet her legacy was unfulfilled, having never won the elusive gold medal. Like her mother, Maribel was invited to perform for the British king and queen.
The Vinson family undoubtedly played a leading role in the Boston skating scene’s storied history and the sport’s association with wealth and privilege. Because skating drew most of its participants from the wealthier classes, the sport also meshed well with the Harvard community. Olympic gold medalists Dick Button and Tenley Albright, for example, were among the top U.S. skaters who earned Harvard degrees. In 2004, the Harvard Varsity Club’s John Powers wrote about this bond: “Rosy-cheeked Brahmins already had been doing figure eights for years on outdoor ice at the Cambridge Skating Club on Mount Auburn Street and The Country Club in Brookline. In a day when Harvard and Boston society were conjoined, it was inevitable that figure skating would wear a crimson muffler.”
With such an impressive family skating tradition, it is no surprise that reporters said the Vinson family was to skating what the Barrymores were to acting. These lofty labels and expectations, though immense, did not appear in any way to weigh Laurence down as she prepared for her first real shot to win a national title. She was a girl who marched to her own rhythm. While always polite and mature in her manner of speech, she exuded an individualism and fierce independence that she, no doubt, inherited from her larger-than-life mother. Those qualities were manifest even in her appearance. She wore pants over her long legs much more often than the skirts favored by most girls of her time, and she kept her dark brown hair in a short, boyish pixie cut, a style that seemed designed especially for her high cheekbones. Her eyes seemed to disappear into small slits when she flashed her large, toothy smile, called a “laughing smile” by photographers who had the pleasure to catch her in action. She looked exotic without being flashy and was wholesome and approachable. She spoke through her nose just a bit, like a lot of teenagers still discovering their voices, and she communicated her thoughts and feelings best with either a blank piece of paper or a vacant sheet of ice. Like her mother, she was half writer, half skater, and she’d often change her mind about which she liked better.
Even though the Olympic gold medal had eluded her, Maribel was viewed with the kind of reverence reserved for athletes with a legendary resume. As she led her daughters around the Broadmoor Ice Palace, whispers of fascination echoed through the corridors. “There she is!” “Laurence looks just like her mother!”
Maribel, known as “Big Maribel,” on the skating scene, was a galvanizing figure. She was charming, intelligent, animated, and always willing to share her opinion. Former student Ron Ludington said those who were close to her cherished her as a beloved mother figure, but that others had trouble warming to her.
“She ran the show, and she was considered out of line. She wasn’t supposed to behave that way. Others would say she behaved like a man.”
Ludington added, “She opened a lot of doors. She took charge, and it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.”
Ben Wright, skating historian and a mainstay of the Figure Skating Club of Boston, agrees that Maribel had an outspoken side. “She did not waste words.”
Maribel was known as a hard-driving coach. She ran her house with a military sense of order that would drive the toughest army general to exhaustion. She was Auntie Mame and the Unsinkable Molly Brown wrapped up into one combustible soul. Laurence wrote about the family dynamic for a school project.
It was during my first stay in the East that two major forces entered my life: my grandmother and figure skating. ‘Grammy’ took an immediate liking to me. Apparently, at our first
