As Skating Club of Boston mourns jet collision, stunned community leans on history of resilience

NORWOOD, Mass. — It was impossible not to notice the clean, shiny sheet of ice upon stepping inside The Skating Club of Boston on Thursday morning. It was practically beckoning young skaters to get out there and put their magnificent talents on display; instead, the ice remained unused throughout the morning and into the afternoon, a symbol of the heartbreak being felt throughout this venerable century-old institution.

Of the 67 people killed as a result of the collision of an Army helicopter and American Eagle Flight No. 5342 near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday night, six of them had ties to the Skating Club of Boston: Skater Jinna Han and her mother, Jin Han; skater Spencer Lane and his mother, Christine Lane; and coaches Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova. They were returning to Boston by way of Washington after participating in a national development camp in Wichita, Kan.

Had they returned home, Jinna Han and Spencer Lane would have quickly made plans to get back on the ice at the club’s sprawling practice facility. Instead, as a tightly knit community mourned, nobody was skating.

“In an hour it would be packed,” said Doug Zeghibe, the CEO and executive director of the club, as he stood next to that unused sheet of ice early Thursday afternoon. He ticked off some of the many competitions coming up, including the 2025 World Figure Skating Championships, to be held in March at Boston’s TD Garden, hosted by The Skating Club of Boston. With that big event on the schedule, the club has been buzzing with activity.

Yet on Thursday, the front lobby was a place where members of Boston’s skating community came to share stories and hugs.  The visitors included 89-year-old Tenley Albright, a 1956 Olympic champion who was the first American woman to win figure skating gold, and 1994 Olympic silver medalist Nancy Kerrigan. Both women grew up in the Boston area and trained at the Skating Club. The main ice surface at the Norwood facility, which opened in 2020, is called the Tenley E. Albright Performance Center.

“I certainly don’t have any answers,” said Albright, who became a prominent surgeon after her figure skating career. “I really can’t believe that it happened, because I picture them right here.” She added: “The skaters just flew all over the ice, doing remarkable things, inspiring all of us.”

Also in attendance was 16-year-old Patrick Blackwell of East Greenwich, R.I., a bronze medalist in the recent U.S. Junior Figure Skating Championships. Blackwell was friends with Spencer Lane.

“It’s heartbreaking to know that something like this can affect the community so much,” Blackwell said. “But all of the community is coming together to acknowledge the passings of everyone. The skaters, their families.”

Blackwell said Lane was caring, kind, outgoing and happy. “Every time he landed something new he would come to me and say, ‘Hey, I landed this,’ ‘I landed that.’”

The Skating Club of Boston, established in 1912, was based for many years at a modest facility along the Charles River in Boston’s Brighton neighborhood, not far from Harvard Stadium. The club’s long history, and its Brighton roots, played a role in what was taking place Thursday at the new facility in Norwood. For this is not the Skating Club’s first airline tragedy. In 1961, the entire United States figure skating team was killed when the plane escorting its members to the world championships in Prague crashed in Belgium. Ten members of the delegation were from The Skating Club of Boston; a plaque was placed in the club room of the Brighton facility in their memory.

When the new facility was opened, the plaque made the trip to Norwood and was placed on a wall on the second floor, across from a lounge that overlooks two of its rinks.

For Paul George, a longtime member of The Boston Skating Club, the parallels between the crashes are striking.

“My wife tapped me on the shoulder at 6:30 in the morning and told me, much as my father had done 64 years ago,” George said. “As Tenley has said, we lost a whole group of friends. We all grew up together, we skated together, we trained together. We even went to parties together.”

Connecting 1961 with this latest tragedy, George said, “We think and pray and hope for their families. And then there will come a time when the music will begin and we will push forward, be more resolute, be more determined.”

Ann Buckley, president of The Skating Club of Boston, noted that the 1961 tragedy inspired the club to step out into the community to hold skating lessons, identify talent and rebuild its ranks.

“Perseverance and resilience have been guiding values of our club,” Buckley said.

By 5 o’clock, the sheet of ice at the Tenley E. Albright Performance Center remained clean and unused. But outside in the hallway, young skaters continued to arrive, some of them alone, some in groups of two, three or four, hugging and crying as they saw each other, some of them wailing. They have no direct connection with 1961. They are teenagers and young adults, many of them facing real tragedy for the first time.

They will rally.

For now, nobody feels much like skating.

“We will be back out there tomorrow,” said Misha Mitrofanov, 27, who competed in the 2025 U.S. national pairs championship in Wichita with partner Alisa Efimova. “It’s what we do. It’s our job.”

(Top photo of Tenley Albright (left), Doug Zeghibe and Nancy Kerrigan during a news conference Thursday at The Skating Club of Boston: Craig F. Walker / The Boston Globe via Getty Images)