Community Corner

Winchester Residents Learn About Vinson-Owen Family

Sports Illustrated Senior Writer, Ed Swift, stopped by the Jenks Center to talk about Maribel Vinson-Owen.

It’s been 50 years since Helen Hatch picked up a pair of ice skates.

She still remembers the day she ended her figure skating dream – Feb. 15, 1961. Lying in bed that morning, Hatch heard her mother get up and do the same thing she did every morning. She walked down the stairs in their Medford home, entered the kitchen, flipped on the radio and opened the fridge.

But that morning was different. Almost as fast as the radio turned on, Hatch heard her mother racing back up the stairs.

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“She came up and into my room and threw herself on my bed,” Hatch recalled. “She was screaming and crying. She said, ‘They’re all dead.'”

Hatch’s figure skating coach and Winchester resident, Maribel Owen, The plane carried the entire 1961 figure skating team crashed on its approach to the Brussels airport. Maribel’s two daughters – Maribel and Laurence Owen – were traveling to Prague to were also killed in the crash.

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Hatch, along with a number of other members from the Winchester community, stopped by the last week to hear more about the Vinson-Owen family. Sports Illustrated Senior Writer, Ed Swift, spoke about Maribel Vinson-Owen and her impact on the figure skating world.

“I didn’t know Maribel other than she was just a name in the record books,” Swift said. “But after speaking with all these skaters, her impact on the skating community is still being felt, and that’s just incredible. Fifty years after her death, her influence is still noticeable.”

Maribel Owen was a nine-time U.S. Champion who won bronze in the 1932 Olympics. Laurence was the 1961 American singles champion, while Maribel Vinson-Owen was the doubles champ, along with Dudley Richards.

Susan Keats of the , was amazed at how Maribel’s former students, who are now coaches, still use some of her techniques when they coach their current students.

“Her legacy lives on,” Keats said. “Her influence still impacts so many people. How many can say they’re still having an impact 50 years after their death?”

But for Hatch, her memories of the Vinson-Owen family revolved around getting dropped off in front of their High Street house. She would sit on the parlor and wait for Maribel and her children to finish eating before practice would begin.

“As a little girl, I’m sitting in this velvet chair, waiting to head to the rink,” Hatch said. “And next to the chair was this great big bowl, and you would see oodles of medals, and then behind that were a wall of trophies. You see that and all their success, and you just said, ‘Wow.’”   


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