Maribel Yerxa Vinson Owen was an American figure skater and coach.
30 Facts About Maribel Vinson
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Maribel Vinson competed in the disciplines of ladies' singles and pair skating.
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Maribel Vinson was the first female sportswriter at The New York Times, and continued competing and winning medals while working as a full-time reporter.
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Maribel Yerxa Vinson was the daughter and only child of Thomas Vinson and Gertrude Cliff Vinson of Winchester, Massachusetts.
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Maribel Vinson was likely named in honor of her maternal grandmother, Maribel Yerxa Cliff, who died in 1911.
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Maribel Vinson 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.
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Guy Owen was somewhat shy; Maribel Vinson Owen was extroverted and had a dominant personality.
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Maribel Vinson Owen complained to one of her students about Owen's excessive drinking.
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Owen and Maribel Vinson Owen divorced in 1949 and Owen moved to Washington and then to Ottawa, where he was rushed to the hospital with severe abdominal pain in April 1952.
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Maribel Vinson died of a perforated ulcer at age 38.
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In February 1961, Maribel Vinson Owen was killed along with both daughters in the Sabena Flight 548 crash in Belgium.
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Maribel Vinson began to take lessons with coach Willie Frick at the Boston Arena at the age of nine.
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Maribel Vinson won the US junior ladies' title at the age of 12.
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From 1928 to 1937, Maribel Vinson won the women's singles title at the US Championships every year except for 1934.
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Maribel Vinson teamed up with Thornton L Coolidge to win the US pairs' title in 1928 and 1929, and with George E B Hill to win four titles in 1933,1935,1936, and 1937.
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At the 1932 Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid, New York, Maribel Vinson earned the bronze medal behind the Norwegian champion Sonja Henie and the Austrian runner up, Fritzi Burger.
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Maribel Vinson's daughters developed a love for ice skating and she trained them in the sport.
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Maribel Vinson Owen coached Tenley Albright to five US titles and then to the United States' first Olympic gold medal in ladies' singles.
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Maribel Vinson taught Frank Carroll, who himself went on to be one of America's top skating instructors, coaching Michelle Kwan to her numerous world and national titles and Evan Lysacek to his Olympic gold medal.
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Maribel Vinson Owen was an assertive, outspoken woman and a demanding coach who set high expectations for her daughters and for all of her students.
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Maribel Vinson Owen scolded her students and swatted their buttocks with blade guards.
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Maribel Vinson Owen coached an African American student at a time when racial prejudice made this unacceptable.
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Maribel Vinson taught the student free of charge and initially gave her lessons when the rink was closed because the rink manager refused to grant admission to African Americans.
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Maribel Vinson Owen was allowed to coach her own daughters early in the morning at the prestigious Figure Skating Club of Boston, but was not hired for a full-time position.
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Maribel Vinson was disappointed by this and could not understand why a coach with as many titles as she held was denied a full-time coaching position.
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In Primer of Figure Skating, Maribel Vinson Owen devotes three-and-a-half pages to what female figure skaters should wear on the ice, which included the correct length and style of skirt, and credits the appeal of the sport to feminine interests in skating fashions.
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Gertrude Maribel Vinson stayed active in the skating association following the plane crash.
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Maribel Vinson tried to encourage the young skaters and offer advice to them that her daughter would have given.
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Maribel Vinson was interred beside her daughter and granddaughters following her own death in 1969.
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Maribel Vinson's daughters were inducted into the US Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2011.