Dick Button has passed away

A life well lived.

I have always agreed with Scott Hamilton that Dick Button is the greatest skater of all time - GOAT. I believe it because of his record. During his entire skating career, he lost twice - his first competition and his first worlds (finished 2nd). Every other competition he ever entered, he won. I don't know of another athlete who has that kind of record.

First double axel. First triple jump (a loop). I got a chance to ask him once about the loop - "why the loop? was it your best jump?" He told me it was around the time Roger Bannister broke the 4 minute mile. Dick wanted the first triple to be remembered. That's the gist although it was kind of convoluted.
 
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USFS' obituary: https://www.usfigureskating.org/news/press-release/remembering-dick-button
Two-time Olympic champion Richard “Dick” Button, whose pioneering style and award-winning television commentary revolutionized the sport of figure skating, died Jan. 30 in North Salem, N.Y. He was 95 years old.
Born Richard Totten Button on July 18, 1929, in Englewood, New Jersey, Button was inducted into the inaugural classes of the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame (1976), the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame (1976) and the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame (1983).
Well known as “The Voice of Figure Skating” from 1960 to 2010, Button was inducted into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 2015. While with ABC, his no-holds-barred analysis and caustic commentary earned him the first Emmy Award for Outstanding Sports Personality (1981).
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In 1949, Button became the first figure skater to earn the prestigious James E. Sullivan Award, which honors the best American amateur athlete.
Button is survived by his longtime partner and spouse Dennis Grimaldi, and his two children, Edward Button and Emily Button.
A look at Button’s remarkable career will appear in the Spring issue of SKATING magazine.
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Associated Press obituary by Barry Wilner and Dave Skretta:
apnews.com

Dick Button, Olympic great and voice of skating, dies at 95

Olympic figure skating great and authoritative commentator Dick Button has died at age 95. Button's son, Edward, says he died Thursday and did not provide a cause.
apnews.com apnews.com
He was an athlete and actor, a broadcaster and entrepreneur.
“Dick was one of the most important figures in our sport,” said Scott Hamilton, the 1984 Olympic champion. “There wasn’t a skater after Dick who wasn’t helped by him in some way.”
The winner of two Olympic gold medals and five consecutive world championships, Button died Thursday in North Salem, New York, at age 95. His death was confirmed by his son, Edward, who did not provide a cause, though Button had been in declining health.
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Button’s impact on figure skating began after World War II. He was the first U.S. men’s champion — and his country’s youngest at the time at age 16 — when the competition returned in 1946. Two years later, he took gold at the St. Moritz Olympics, back when the competitions were staged outdoors. He performed the first double axel in any competition and became the first American to win the men’s event, paving the way for future champions such as Hamilton, Brian Boitano and Nathan Chen.
“By the way, that jump had a cheat on it,” Button once said. “But listen, I did it and that was what counted.”
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Column by Christine Brennan:
www.usatoday.com

Dick Button dies at 95: Olympic gold medalist was figure skating's superstar and professor

Dick Button was the first American Olympic figure skating gold medalist in the sport back in 1948, then again in 1952.
www.usatoday.com
Button anointed stars with an on-air sentence. A triple jump wasn’t good unless he said it was. When he shed a tear in the ABC Sports broadcast booth for an injured Randy Gardner and his partner, Tai Babilonia, as they withdrew from the pairs competition at the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics, fans wept with him.
Viewers put their faith in him, and rightly so, because you can make a pretty strong case that no other sport has produced anyone quite like Dick Button. As a pioneering superstar, an innovator, a businessperson and a powerbroker, he was to figure skating what Arnold Palmer was to golf, bringing the sport to the masses — and making a lot of money in the process — as Americans’ access to and fascination with television was exploding across the land.
But there’s more. Button also became figure skating’s Howard Cosell, a tuxedoed, Harvard-educated television personality who was the extremely self-confident conscience of the sport.
“He was like a professor,” his longtime broadcasting partner, Olympic gold medalist Peggy Fleming, said in a telephone interview. “He taught audiences how to watch skating. He also sometimes was like a professor sitting next to me as a commentator. If I said something that he thought was grammatically incorrect, he would literally write a note as we were on the air to tell me about it.”
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I became his colleague when I joined the ABC/ESPN figure skating announcing team for a couple of years in 2005. One memorable morning, Button, Fleming and I got stuck in an SUV with a few other members of the broadcast team on a highway overpass in the middle of an ice storm in Portland, Ore., on our way to the arena.
Button, then 75, decided he was going to do something about it. What, we had no idea. He opened his car door.
“No, Dick,” we all said.
He stepped out of the SUV onto the ice-covered road. He took a step or two, thankfully holding onto the car door. He stopped and surveyed the situation, then took another step or two, not holding onto the car door.
Was he going to try to walk to the arena?
In that moment, I was comforted by the thought that this was a man with two degrees from Harvard who also happened to know an awful lot about ice.
The great Dick Button got back into the car.
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He led a truly wonderful and influential life, his accolades as a skater and commentator are so vast and well deserved. How I view a layback or a spiral is very much guided by his words. For him, it was not just the jumps. My condolences to his family, friends and the US skating community.
 
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How I wish today's commentators would be a bit more like Dick - less about trying to be the show and more about highlighting the important parts of the skating performance. Providing a bit of explanation and some encouraging words. I don't remember all the details of his broadcasts, but what I do recall seemed to balance the beauty and sport of figure skating. (I'll hold onto that memory whether or not it is accurate.)
 
Just as I got into figure skating, ABC was really starting to take over a lot of the events. By 1996, I really decided to 'learn' about the sport and my mom had gotten me all of the big books at that time- Beverly Smith had two by then, Christine Brennan's Inside Edge was out, etc. I mean what 10 year old doesn't want to do that? :lol:

But, and I've said it before, I truly think that I learned the most about the sport, both for initially identifying all elements and for learning about what what comprised the 'presentation' was by listening to Dick Button. Sure, even by the mid-90's he was going on endless tangents or getting flustered mid-program and wildly misidentifying stuff ("double flip.. I mean triple toe.. I mean triple loop"), but he obviously knew the sport and he had such a wealth of seeing all of the skating from the 50s up until then. He also was responsible for World Pros and some of the other otherwise-'serious' pro competitions. He gave us so much skating, so much sassy criticism that maybe was correct or maybe was out of left-field, but it didn't matter. I wanted to listen to him and learn from him. I don't think any other commentator in the States has ever come close to what he was able to achieve.

RIP.
 
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We are all aware of the mortality of human life, but there are those persons we wish or want to believe they would escape the eventuality of death.

I, like so many of this board, learned so much from Dick about our beloved sport. The world and particularly the world of skating lost a true treasure.

Dick, may you always skate in heaven with the souls of all our skaters we've lost too soon or have passed before. Thank you sir for your wisdom and knowledge.
 
Dick's contributions to the skating world were immeasurable and rightly so, a lot of people remember his accomplishments as an athlete and commentator. He did so much more for the sport than that.

Had it not been for his efforts, professional competitions would never have developed in the way they did.

Had he not cared enough to preserve them, hundreds of priceless skating antiques and other memorabilia would likely be sitting in an attic or landfill right now.

He had a tremendous sense of humour. I went through my emails and thought I'd share this with all of you... This is how he signed off: "Dick, aka Big Daddy. St. Dick, Popeye on Ice the octagenarian, etc etc etc"
 
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