Skating at the Broadmoor

Skating at the Broadmoor

by David Barth
written January 1, 2007

This was written in an email to Donna and John Baldwin. I had known John when he was a competitive ice skater at the Broadmoor World Arena in 1968 to 1972. These are some memories from ice skating at the Broadmoor World Arena in Colorado Springs, 1968 to 1972. Since 1999, I'm better known as Carol Mikesh's sidekick who follows her to many competitions. She photographs skaters and encourages me to shoot photos, too, so that she will have more to choose from. Out of every 100 photos, we get, maybe, two or three good ones that she prints to see if she can get them autographed at a future event. Back in 1967 and 1968, I drove a white 1965 Vette with black rag top and red interior, when John, Sr. had a red Corvette given to him by the Broadmoor.

I stayed at Beatty Hall, a small hotel for ice skaters. Bessy Gilmore (or was it Gilmer, I can't remember) was the "house mother." It was unusual that I was able to stay there because I was just a public-session skater. This was before I got into a relationship with Carol that ended my free days of driving from Denver down to "The Big B" on Friday evening after work, and skating 6 or 7 public sessions, through Sunday. I'd skate the Friday evening session, three sessions on Saturday, and two or, sometimes three sessions on Sunday. Skating the Sunday evening session was tough because I had to get back to Denver that night and go to work Monday morning.

Anyway, I talked my way into Beatty Hall, which was very inexpensive. I believe they charged $4 per night, and that included a hot breakfast. I was earning around $400 a month, so I didn't have a lot of money. I bought stock Harlick boots (and later, custom boots) from Harvey and Yvonne Dowlin. Yvonne was an ice skating coach who measured skater's feet for boots and her husbank, Harvey, mounted and sharpened blades.

The reason I began going to the Broadmoor is that when I got out of the Navy in 1966, I returned home to Ohio from "sunny South Carolina," and the dreary winter was too depressing in Columbus. Besides, living with my parents got old after about two weeks, so I opened a Rand McNally Road Atlas and decided Denver would be my destination. I drove my Vette to Denver in March 1967. I moved into the YMCA in downtown Denver. Here I was with a relatively new Vette, living at the Y! Within a week I got a job and an efficiency apartment on the edge of downtown. The job was at American National Bank, downtown, about 10 blocks from my apartment. Later, that apartment was torn down to build the 50-story "cash register" building, one of the taller buildings in Denver.

In those days, there was a small outdoor rink at Zechindorf Plaza, beside May D&F department store. One day in the fall of 1967, while eating at the Walgreens across the street from Zechindorf Plaza, I decided it might be fun to try skating, so I walked in to May D&F, bought a pair of ice skates for $14 and began skating. I learned by watching others, and within a few months, I thought I was pretty good! And I was hooked on skating, and I skated evenings after work and on weekends. When the rink closed for the summer of 1968, I was at a loss of what to do. So I began to skate at DU, but it just didn't "click" for me. In a magazine, I saw an advertisement about skating at the Broadmoor, where Peggy Fleming was taking lessons. I imagined that people on the public sessions must all be excellent skaters because they were skating at the great Broadmoor!

So, one Saturday, I grabbed my skates, hopped into my Vette, and drove down to the Springs. I didn't bother to check a map. I just went. When I got to the Nevada Street exit, it looked like I was in the city, so I took the exit. I stopped at a Conoco station and asked where the Broadmoor was. They guy gave me directions, and I finally arrived at what I'd call "Mecca for skaters." I thoroughly enjoyed the old, wooden rink. The paintings around the walls of the old west seemed to be just the right decoration for this old rink. The step from the aisle to the ice was about 10 inches high, but before long, I was able to just leap out onto the ice, taking the drop in stride.

I got to know the ladies at the food counter. I began bringing in my own music tapes for the guys at the skate rental to play. The building was fascinating. There were so many nooks and crannies. There were bathrooms and other rooms hidden away. I wish I'd had a chance to really investigate it before it was torn down.

The first day I arrived, I saw an older skater whom I had seen skating at Zechindorf Plaza in Denver. He was a fast skater, and seemed to have a good knowledge of the sport, so I introduced myself and asked him if he would give me some pointers to improve my skating form. By then I realized I didn't skate quite like Peggy or the other greats. When I would see him on weekends, he would show me edges, 3-turns, and mohawks. Then he would tell me to forget everything and "go like hell." That is where I learned speed.

In winter I did a lot of skating on Lake Pactolus, west of Denver. The owner flooded it to "groom" the ice, and although we skaters begged him to get an old, used Zamboni, he never did. When it had snowed, he handed out snow and coal shovels for us to clear the ice. I got to know a lot of recreational skaters, and we called ourselves "The Flying Circus," after Manfred Von Richtoffen's W.W.I flying squadron. Like Von Richtoffen, we liked to wear bright colors on the ice. The main east-west rail line through Colorado went right by the lake. In earlier days, the lake had been a source of ice for the ice houses in Denver. In winter, lake ice was harvested in huge blocks that were loaded into insulated rail cars and taken to Denver to keep goods fresh throughout the summer months. At the lake there was a huge four-story insulated storage shed with walls three feet thick to store ice so that it would be available during the summer months.

The California Zephyr used these tracks, and we really showed off when it went by. We wanted to make them wish they were out there skating with us on that glorious ice. I bought a pair of old, Kangaroo skin Planert speed skates from a speedskater who had just bought a new pair, and I wore them a few times, but they just weren't my style. I even rented hockey skates once, but they weren't for me. I used MK Phantom blades in the early years, then went to John Wilson Gold Seal blades which I still use.

Often, high schools in Texas would bus a bunch of kids up to the Broadmoor to skate on the Saturday evening session. It was challenging to skate around all of the beginners who would fall in front of you or suddenly turn to skate to the boards. I felt sorry for the chaperones who were older folks, often on skates for the first time in their lives. When a teenager fell, it wasn't a big deal. When some of these older folks (shucks, they must have been in their forties!), fell, it was a different matter. Two different times, when I was skating the Saturday night public session with some Texas high school group, one of the older folks fell backward, hitting his head on the ice and splitting it open. I always felt like a "pro" on the ice who would help others if they needed it. I would skate over to the fallen guy, pull out my handkerchief, scrape up some ice with it, and press the ice against the bleeding head wound. Amazingly, that sort of "cauterized" the cut, and it would stop bleeding. From my past experience at swimming pools (where there wasn't any ice), a head cut would really bleed a lot. By the time we got the guy off the ice, his head wasn't bleeding, but he would need to go to an infirmary to get some stitches.

At Beatty Hall, breakfast was included in the $4.00 per night price, which is pretty incredible when you think about it. At that time, the president of the Broadmoor was a great promoter of the sport, and the Broadmoor underwrote the costs of running Beatty Hall. One morning I was eating breakfast with the skating girls. Jojo Starbuck was there. At the time she must have been about 16 years old. I wished she had been old enough for me to date. She told the story of how she came to be called "Jojo." When she was a little girl, her parents told her that her name was Alicia. When Jojo tried to say her name, "Alicia," all she could enunciate was "Jojo," so that is what everybody called her.

Kenny Shelly, Jojo's partner, had a room at Beatty next to mine. He was a very nice guy, and was always friendly, even to a common, ordinary public session skater, like me. Another nice skater was Bill Favier who skated with Leanne Miller at the time. I had been into photography since I was a kid. It was around this time that I had got an 8mm movie camera. It didn't have sound, and autofocus hadn't been invented. I took movies of the World Championships (1970), and a few of the skaters, but focusing was such a big problem in the low light of a rink that the films were of very poor quality. I attempted to shoot black and white once or twice, to see if I could improve them, but it wasn't much better. I had a short clip of Leanne and Bill at a practice. I had movies from skating on Lake Pactolus, and from pubic sessions at the Broadmoor. All these films were in a suitcase.

Around 1999, Carol and I decided to get rid of some junk in a garage sale. I put the suitcase of films out on the driveway. A guy saw the films and offered $5. I took it. A few weeks later I got an email from a lady I had never heard of, Ann Jensen. She had bought my films on eBay for $500, and she had them converted to VHS tape and given them to the USFSA Museum in the Springs. I'm sure glad that they were saved, but still, they aren't very good quality. Ann gave me a copy of one of the tapes. She even annotated who the skaters were on the outside cover. She did a nice job. She deserves a lot of credit for what she did. I believe she became an administrator at a rink in southern California. I guess what should be done now is to decide if what is on the tapes (I believe there were two) are worth putting on DVD because DVD has a much longer shelf life than VHS tape. In retrospect, during that time, I should have been shooting still photos. Today, I don't have any photos from those days. I would really value a photo of John with that bright, red Vette!

One day John, Sr. stopped at Beatty Hall to show me his red Vette. It was magnificent. I had only been able to buy mine when I was in the Navy because I didn't spend much money. I bought mine off the showroom floor for $4,200, cash.

But it was a smallish car. I decided I wanted a bigger car, so I sold the Vette, with 30,000 miles, for $2,600 in 1968. Some of that money went for the down payment on my first house and the rest went to buy a used, 1964 Chrysler Imperial.

I liked the girl skaters. The were in top physical condition, and they were cute. Most of them could do an axel (I couldn't). They had me wrapped around their finger, so to speak, and that resulted in my breaking Bessy's cardinal rule: Skaters in training were not allowed to eat junk food. Around 1972, several of these girls came up to me at Beatty Hall one afternoon, between public sessions, and pleaded for me to take them to A&W so they could get hamburgers, fries, and milk shakes. I relented, and I think 7 or 8 of them crowded into the Imperial and I took them to the A&W on 8th Avenue. We ate in the car, and the waitress had to make several trips to the car to get all the food to us. Those girls could eat! I guess if the cops had picked me up, I'd been thrown in jail for transporting a car load of underage girls around town! I got them back to Beatty Hall safely, and I imagine Bessy was very upset when the girls were too full to eat dinner that night. After I reflected on what I'd done, I resolved never to do it again.

The major things the old guy taught me were stroking, posture, edges, and speed. About stroking, for me it was a very unnatural motion, but it doesn't throw one's upper body forward that way picking does. I still cringe when I see a world-class skater begin skating by picking the first few strokes. I was taught to start off on an edge and not to use picks except for toe jumps and scratch spins. It really isn't difficult, but a skater has to break the habit of using the picks.

Sometimes Carol and I skate on the outdoor rink at Belmar, a shopping area in Lakewood, a suburb west of Denver. We live about half a mile from the rink. It is very small, about as large as the indoor rink that was in downtown Colorado Springs years ago. It amazes me that I can still skate pretty well after all these years and after not being on the ice for months at a time. I do very little jumping these days. Carol gets perturbed with me because she says I "show off" too much. Sometimes she pretends she doesn't know me. I go out and do simple stuff, but it wows the non-skating people who happen to be walking by. I love it!

Carol and I go up to Sun Valley three or four weekends during the summer. Carol chooses the weekends based on what guest skater will be there. On the first public session I skate, within half an hour, I'm out there showing off again. At one time, when I skated three or four times a week at local rinks, I had all of my single jumps (my Lutz was really a Flutz), and I even had a cheated axel for about a week. I gave it up because it was too difficult for me. I had always heard the "old wives tale" that if you didn't have an axel before age 30, you'd never have one. Well, I proved that I could learn one over the age of 30. It is fun to reminisce about the "good old days" of skating at the Broadmoor World Arena.