Maribel Vinson

Maribel Yerxa Vinson was the daughter and only child of Thomas Vinson and Gertrude Cliff Vinson of Winchester, Massachusetts. Both of Vinson's parents were figure skaters and Vinson was made an honorary member of the Cambridge Skating Club at birth. She came from a privileged social background. Her mother, Gertrude Vinson, had progressive ideas and homeschooled Vinson until she was nine. She spent much of her childhood skating. A good student, Vinson studied at her mother's alma mater, Radcliffe College, and graduated in 1933, all the while pursuing an interest in ice skating. She married Canadian skater Guy Owen in 1938 and they had two daughters, Maribel Yerxa Owen, born in 1940 in Boston, and Laurence Rochon Owen, born in 1944 in Oakland, California They moved to Berkeley in the early 1940s. During World War II, Guy Owen worked at a shipyard during the day and taught ice skating to students after hours. The couple turned professional, earning a living as performers with ice skating shows such as the International Ice Skate Revue before setting up their own show. Their two daughters stayed with their maternal grandparents in Winchester, Massachusetts while their parents toured in 1945. Conflict arose in the marriage by the late 1940s. Guy Owen was somewhat shy; Maribel Vinson was loud, extroverted and had a dominant personality. Vinson complained to one of her students about Owen's excessive drinking. Owen found show business, life on the road, and long separations from his family stressful. Owen and Vinson divorced in 1949 and Owen moved to Washington. He was visiting his parents in Ottawa when he was rushed to the hospital with severe abdominal pain in April 1952. He died of a perforated ulcer at age 38. Vinson and their daughters were not mentioned in his obituary. It is not known whether Vinson and their daughters attended Owen's funeral Mass. Following her father's death, also in 1952, Vinson and her daughters moved back east to Winchester and lived with her mother. In February 1961, Maribel Vinson was killed along with both daughters in the Sabena Flight 548 crash in Belgium.{{cite web|url=https://www.espn.com/espn/eticket/story?page=110215/skatingcrash&redirected=true == Competitive career ==

Vinson began to take lessons with coach Willie Frick at the Boston Arena at the age of nine. She won the U.S. junior ladies' title at the age of 12. From 1928 to 1937, Vinson won the women's singles title at the U.S. Championships every year except for 1934. She also teamed up with Thornton L. Coolidge to win the U.S. pairs' title in 1928 and 1929, and with George E. B. Hill to win four titles in 1933, 1935, 1936, and 1937. At the 1932 Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid, New York, Vinson earned the bronze medal behind the Norwegian champion Sonja Henie and the Austrian runner up, Fritzi Burger. While still competing, in the 1930s, Vinson became the first woman sportswriter at the New York Times newspaper. She covered sports such as fencing, golf, track, tennis, swimming, squash, badminton, lacrosse and horse shows between 1934 and 1937. Her male colleagues discovered that she could outdrink them. Following her retirement from amateur ice skating, Vinson toured professionally with Owen in shows. They married in 1938. ==Coaching career==

and Maribel Vinson are pictured during a performance in Canada in 1936. Following the birth of her two daughters, Vinson began coaching in Berkeley, California. Vinson and her daughters moved back east to the Boston area in 1952, where they lived with her recently widowed mother in Winchester. On one occasion, Vinson pulled a student's ponytail and the girl fell on the ice and broke her wrist. Vinson also scolded her students and swatted their buttocks with blade guards. Kestnbaum also stated that female skaters should pay more attention to their appearance than men do. Consumed by her coaching career, Vinson paid little attention to what she wore off the ice and had no time to devote to housekeeping either. ==Plane crash==

Vinson, as a coach, and her two daughters, as competitors, were all part of the United States team scheduled to appear at the 1961 World Championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia. They boarded Sabena Flight 548 at New York City's Idlewild International Airport along with the rest of the American team. The overnight flight had a stopover scheduled for Brussels, Belgium and on its arrival in the clear mid-morning of February 15, the captain had to abort the approach and circle around for a second attempt to land on a different runway. The plane, a Boeing 707, never made it back to the airport; instead, it plunged into the wooded farmland of the village of Berg, Belgium, taking the lives of all 72 passengers and crew plus a farmer at work in his fields. All 18 members of the American figure skating team plus 16 of their relatives, friends, and coaches were among the dead. The remains of Vinson Owen and her daughters were brought home for interment in the Story Chapel Columbarium at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ==Legacy==

Gertrude Vinson stayed active in the skating association following the plane crash. She tried to encourage the young skaters and offer advice to them that her daughter would have given. She was known as "Grammy" to the skaters in the club, who helped care for her following the loss of her family. She was interred beside her daughter and granddaughters following her own death in 1969. Vinson Owen was inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame three times – in 1976 as a singles' skater, in 1994 with George E.B. Hill in the pairs' category, and in 2011 as a coach for the 1961 World Team. In 2001, she was inducted to the inaugural class of the Professional Skaters' Association Coaches Hall of Fame, which included the five coaches that perished beside her. In 2002, she was inducted in the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame. Her daughters were inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2011. In Winchester, the Vinson-Owen elementary school was named in her and her daughters' honor. ==Competitive highlights==

Single skating Pair skating with Hill Pair skating with Coolidge ==See also==