100 Years on Ice

In Boston last week U. S. figure skaters held their national championships. The occasion coincided with a centenary that they had long been looking for.

Every good figure skater can do a Jackson Haines spin, the showy sit-spin that has helped make ice shows a popular U. S. entertainment. But few U. S. skaters know much about Jackson Haines, the father of figure skating. Jackson Haines was not the first skater to trace a pattern on ice. As far back as 1642, there was a skating club in Edinburgh, whose membership was confined to those who could "skate a complete circle on each foot and jump over first one, then two, then three hats." In 1863, when Haines won the figure-skating championship of the U. S., the sport consisted of stiff tracings judged only by accuracy. Haines, a New Yorker who had studied ballet, was the first skater to put form into figure skating.

His spinning to music shocked U. S. skaters; they would have none of it. So Haines went to Europe on an exhibition tour. He found London cool, Stockholm warm. When he reached Vienna, the city went wild. Haines taught the Viennese to waltz on ice. They formed the Vienna School of Skating, founded the International Style, now universally used by figure skaters. Haines never returned to the U. S., never lived to see his rhythmic technique accepted by his native land. He died in 1879, while traveling from St. Petersburg to Stockholm, was buried in the little Finnish village of Gamla-Karleby. Thirty years later, Manhattan Socialite Irving Brokaw, after winning an international prize in Switzerland, brought the International Style of skating back to the U. S. It spread like wildfire after European stars, like the great Charlotte, staged spectacular exhibitions in Manhattan's Hippodrome.

U. S. figure skaters have long wanted to celebrate Jackson Haines's birthday. But nobody -- not even the late Irving Brokaw, whose Art of Skating is the figure skater's bible -- had ever known the date. A few weeks before the national championships his birth month was unearthed. It turned out to be November 1840. Skaters were embarrassed to have just missed a chance to celebrate his centenary in the proper month.

Yet last week's tournament was some thing of a milestone in U. S. figure skating. Among this year's contestants there were none who could hold a candle to Sonja Henie (ten times world's champion), Karl Schaefer (seven times world's champion), nor even Megan Taylor (current world's champion). But in the novice class was a perky 13-year-old, Anne Robinson, a collateral descendant of Jackson Haines. Little Anne has been skating only three years, but she won the Eastern championship four weeks ago. Last week, in her first national tournament, the Haines offshoot lost her poise, finished eighth; but experts predicted that she would do better.

In the Ladies' Senior championship, 19-year-old Jane Vaughn of Philadelphia was crowned U. S. skating queen. In the Men's Senior event, 20-year-old Eugene Turner of Los Angeles spread-eagled the field for the second year in a row.

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