Some of you have priceless pictures from our school days and, if we’re lucky, you can dig them up to share with the rest of us. Bob Carow recently sent one that is just too cute from when some of our class members took lessons in elementary school at the Ann Arbor Figure Skating Club.
Girls weren’t the only ones gliding, spinning and jumping on the ice, getting ready to perform in the club's annual “Melody on Ice” show. Some of the boys got in on the fun, too. Bob found a picture from the 1956 show with Doug Young, Fred White, Herbert Sloan, Sammy (yes, that's what the program said) Swisher, and David Fox suited up in costumes made by their mothers. (Barry Bateman was also part of the group but isn’t in the photo.) The littlest dwarf in the middle next to Snow White, with the big ears and angelic expression, is Bob himself.
Also in “Melody on Ice” that year were some 9-year-old members of the future Class of ‘65: Mary Raab, Sharon Seyfried Fairbanks, Francie Smillie and Jane Snyder Aloe as School Belles; Chris Loken-Kim and Pam Ufer Wood as Mama Dolls; and Martha Payne Harris and Ann Ratliff Bernard as a couple of Bo-Peep’s Sheep. Wouldn’t you just love to see a replay of that show?
When they were older, some of our classmates were in the Hockettes, a synchronized skating team known for its precision, high mark of excellence, and sometimes fearless routines that were always a hit in the “Melody on Ice” shows. Many little girl skaters yearned to be a Hockette someday, but it took a lot of skill to qualify. See if you can pick out Cindy Donahey, Chris Loken-Kim, Marianne Mayer Behler, Kemmy Metz, Mary Raab, Ann Ratlliff Bernard, Jane Snyder Aloe, Marcia Stegath Dorr, and Pam Ufer Wood in the group picture.
Even if you weren’t in the skating club but loved to skate (Mim Streiff Poag and I remember skating in races on a frozen outdoor rink at Northside Elementary School), you may remember getting your skates at the Bigby family’s basement skate exchange.
Long before snowmobiles, snowboards, and ice golfing (yes, that’s a thing), winter for Ann Arbor kids meant skating and playing hockey on outdoor rinks created by the Parks Department, which lasted only as long as the cold weather did; sledding on anything we could find that resembled a hill in our neighborhoods; and, for something really exciting, tobogganing, if we could find someone with a big sled.
Our parents may have gotten tired of stuffing us into snowsuits, looking for lost mittens, and mopping wet floors when we came in from the snow, but winter was a pretty glorious season for kids.
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