Skaters JoJo Starbuck, Dick Button and Dorothy Hamill.
By Laura Beach
COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. – The Fenimore Art Museum was packed on Saturday, July 15, as fans crammed into a crowded auditorium to get a glimpse of skating legends Dick Button, Dorothy Hamill and JoJo Starbuck. The Olympic stars held visitors rapt for two hours as they discussed their first experiences on ice, their dreams and fears as they competed for Olympic gold, and their subsequent lives as professional skaters, entertainers and celebrity spokespeople.
Members of Ice Dance International performed in the Farmers’ Museum’s Louis C. Jones Center before the symposium.
“It’s an honor and a delight to be here among the royalty of American skating,” said symposium moderator Douglas Webster, former artistic director of Ice Dance International Events, introducing the trio.
“Are we lucky or what?” asked Dorothy Hamill, describing the joy skating has given been her. “The very first time I was on ice, that I felt the chill and the wind in my face, I was happy. It was a magical place for me.”
“I wore my ski pants to school every day, just in case there was skating. It annoyed my teachers no end,” quipped Button.
The skaters spoke of the incredible coaches who changed their lives, their growth as athletes and as individuals and their recognition that the world of competitive skating was changing. Hamill and Starbuck remembered the satisfaction of perfecting their craft by practicing four to six hours a day, six days a week, as well as the difficulties of acclimating to professional careers dominated by nonstop performance and travel.
“Rest on the seventh day,” said Button, citing overtraining as a hazard and stressing the need for a performer to unwind and let loose with friends.
A California girl, Starbuck described tense encounters with Russian and East German figure skaters. All three panelists spoke of their pride in representing the United States, as well as the great burden of responsibility they felt.
“And what about that haircut?” Webster asked Hamill, whose short style, known as the wedge, became an international trend. It was Hamill’s mother who encouraged her to crop her hair, she said, adding that Japanese stylist Yusuke Suga gave her the famous “wedge” cut. “I never let anyone else touch my hair again,” said Hamill.
Button’s gold medals for his 1948 Olympic win in St Moritz and his 1952 win in Oslo mesmerized visitors.
“The beginning of wash and wear hair changed the way women in sports were perceived,” said Webster.
Short videos of winning performances by Button, Hamill and Starbuck, on the ice and off, spoke to the extraordinary talent, fierce discipline and infinite grace of these exceptional people, Olympian in the truest sense. Ever the performer, Button choreographed one riveting event. It was a rare and special moment reliving history with three individuals who made it.
Across the street from the Fenimore, in the rustic Louis C. Jones Center at the Farmers’ Museum, visitors were treated to ensemble performances by members of Ice Dance International Events, a company formed by Button and Webster with Linda and Edward Villella, and the late Debbie Gordon, to whom the symposium was dedicated.
On view through December, “The Art of Figure Skating through the Ages: The Dick Button Collection” fills six galleries in the museum’s lower level with European and American paintings, sculpture, prints and posters from the Seventeenth Century through the present. Judging by the crowds lingering in the galleries, it is costumes that most fascinate visitors.
The museum is at 5798 State Highway 80. For more information, www.fenimoremuseum.org or 607-547-1400.
