A reader sent me this link to a Harvard Crimson’s article on Dorothy Hamill’s almost-retirement from figure skating back in 1975 . Accurate? Well, Dorothy grew up just down the street from me, I watched her learn to skate on Patrick’s Pond in the early 1960s, her older brother Sandy was my friend and Patrol Leader of the Raccoon Patrol of Riverside’s Troop II and – well, yes.
I think that the Crimson author, one JON LEDECKY, was s a bit hysterical calling it a “Watergate moment” – Dodo, as we knew her, was exhausted, frustrated and still a young kid, and if her father saved her from professional ruin, that hardly rises to the level of Presidential corruption, but I assume Ledecky, fresh off a stint as a reporter for Greenwich Time, was a kid himself, so he should probably be excused his histrionics too. Our Savior knows that I’d like to be excused for things I wrote last week, let alone what I said, wrote and did at 19.
Either way, Dorothy recovered her poise, went back to skating and of course won the gold medal. We all cheered.