In 1961, the U.S. lost its entire national figure skating team in a plane crash

Editor's note: This archival article was first published Feb. 26, 2021.

FARGO — It’s almost unimaginable in the world of sports — a team of athletes carrying the hopes and dreams of an entire nation wiped out in the blink of an eye.

That is what happened on February 15, 1961, when all 18 members of the United States Figure Skating National Team were killed after the plane they were on crashed in Belgium on the way to the World Championships in Prague.

The crash also killed 16 officials, judges, coaches and family members, 27 other passengers and 11 members of the flight crew.

Hear Tracy Briggs narrate this story:

While it was devastating to any figure skating fan in America, it hit the Foster family of Fargo especially hard. Not only did they watch their favorite skaters die, they lost good friends and even a partner.

The George and Irene Foster family used to joke that they were “the complete skating family." Dr. George Foster was a native of Fargo who started skating while in medical school at Northwestern, in part, because there was an ice arena near school. After graduation, he and his new bride Irene, a Chicagoan, moved to Fargo so George could set up a practice as an ear, nose and throat specialist.

Three children followed: daughter Sidney, son Chuck and daughter Linda. A working husband and father by the mid 1930s, George wasn't ready to give up skating. He and Irene helped form the new Fargo Winter Club to promote figure skating and were driving forces behind the construction of the Fargo Arena.

All three Foster kids skated; however, youngest sibling Linda quit after a few years. Sidney and Chuck kept going, having national and international success. Sidney specialized in ice dancing and finished 3rd in the U.S. and 7th in the World Championships in 1956.

Chuck was a pairs skater who, after graduating from Fargo Central High School, moved to Boston to attend Harvard University. It was there that he was matched up with a young woman named Maribel Owen, a high school student.

"It was great,” he said in a 2013 interview with “The Skating Lesson” on YouTube. “But it was a bit of a problem. I was a college sophomore or junior, and she was 14 years old. I didn’t relate to a 14-year-old girl at the time. But it was great fun. We enjoyed getting together and having success”

In 1955, they won the national junior pairs championship coached by Maribel’s mother, Maribel Vinson Owen, a nine-time U.S. Ladies Singles Champion, who Chuck calls a "tough cookie" who knew skating "terrifically."

He knew he let his coach down when he decided to retire from skating following the 1956 season with the young Maribel.

“We had been selected for the world team in 1957 but didn’t go,” he said. “I was back in North Dakota at the time, and it drove big Maribel crazy that I quit here. But I wanted to get on with my life.”

But young Maribel found success with another pairs partner, Dudley Richards. They won nationals in 1961 and earned the right to go to the World Championships in Prague. Maribel’s younger sister, Laurence or Laurie, had also earned a spot at Worlds after winning the Ladies Singles title.

All three women — Chuck's former coach Maribel Vinson Owen, his former partner Maribel Owen and young Laurence Owen — were all killed in the 1961 crash.

After leaving competitive skating and graduating from college, Chuck got into the lumber business and was on a business trip in Oregon when he learned of the plane crash.

“I was in a motel, and I got up to turn the TV on. And they said they were all gone, all gone,” Chuck said in the 2013 interview. “I couldn't believe it. I was in a state of shock because they were all my friends. I had just seen them after Nationals.”

Chuck said he immediately called a friend from his skating club to see if it was really true.

“She said, ‘Yes, Chuck. Yes. It’s true. They’re all gone.’ It was very traumatic for all of us,” he said.

The news was also tough for Chuck's mother Irene back in Fargo, who had known Maribel Vinson Owen for 30 years and watched as she coached her son.

Following the plane crash, the World Championships were canceled, and people were left wondering how the crash could happen. And for years, there was no answer. But according to The New York Daily News, investigators eventually determined that the jet's stabilizers were probably to blame. It was considered to be the worst air disaster affecting a U.S. team until 1970, when 37 Marshall University football players died in a plane crash, according to History.com.

The 1961 U.S. Figure Skating Team plane crash proved to be a devastating, but temporary, blow to the sport in this country. American skaters had recently won gold in both the women’s and men’s events at the 1960 Olympics and bronze in the pairs event. But all of those athletes had retired after the games to make room for the new crop of skaters looking to compete in the 1964 games. The skaters killed in 1961 were just starting their ascent to the top of their sport when the crash happened.

But not only was the current generation of top skaters gone, so were the top-level coaches that trained them and would train others into the late ‘60s and ‘70s. But the United States Figure Skating Association, which marks it’s 100th anniversary this year, soldiered on and by 1968, its skaters, including Peggy Fleming, had again reached the top of the podium.

Many of the skaters that had worked with coach Maribel Vinson Owen eventually took over where she left off. One of her disciples was Frank Carroll, well known for his work with Michelle Kwan, who went on to tie Vinson Owen’s record with nine U.S. Ladies Singles Championships.

A memorial fund was also set up in honor of the victims of the 1961 crash. The money raised goes to help skaters pay for equipment and travel. Olympic medalists including Fleming and Scott Hamilton say they wouldn’t have been able to afford skating if they had not received the memorial funds.

In the 2011 documentary of the 50th anniversary of the crash "Rise," they said that that is the legacy left behind by the 1961 skaters.

George and Irene both remained in Fargo and died in the mid 1980s.

Chuck officially retired as a competitive skater in 1956. He met a Minnesota girl "on the middle of the ice" in Boston where they realized not only were they both Midwesterners attending college in the East, they were both children of ear, nose and throat doctors. Chuck and Kay were married and eventually had two children together.

But like his father, who couldn't give up skating even though he was a busy husband and dad, neither could Chuck.

He worked as a judge for nearly 60 years. He served on the Board of Directors for the U.S. Figure Skating Association and was on the U.S. Olympic Committee from 1989 and 1996, where he was a decision maker during the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan incident. He was inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2003 and that same year was elected President of the U.S. Figure Skating Association until his retirement in 2005.

Chuck and Kay now live in Haymarket, Virginia to be closer to their daughter, but they make it back to Fargo occasionally. He has attended Fargo Central class reunions and visited his sister Linda in the Detroit Lakes area. Chuck said Linda is now in Arizona, and his older sister Sidney is still in Massachusetts.

Now 86, he can look back on a long career that had its origins on a chilly ice rink in Fargo when he was just 4 years old. And while he’s seen the sport change and grow, one thing has not changed — thoughts of his friends on that plane to Prague in 1961 who didn’t have the honor of seeing time pass.

“I still think about them everyday,” he said.