Dorothy Hamill's A Skating Life (and more)

Isn't it funny how in life, you start out with a plan in mind and it kind of goes another way at the end of the day? I was reminded of this a few weeks ago while chatting with Deborah Amelon (see lower right), the author who collaborated with Dorothy Hamill to write A Skating Life: My Story. A Skating Life details Dorothy's road to becoming the 1976 Olympic champion and "America's Sweetheart," but is also about her tough childhood, two failed marriages, personal tragedies (her first husband, Dean Paul Martin, died in a plane crash), financial woes, and the depression that ran through her and her family. A Skating Life started out as the story of Dorothy's life, but in the end, Dorothy also ended up being an advocate of sorts for people seeking treatment for depression and her message was, "It's ok to talk about it and confront it head-on."

Deborah told me that she came to co-author the book partly because of her relationship to Dorothy -- she's known Dorothy since they were both nine-years-old, training together in Lake Placid, New York. Their paths kept crossing into their adulthood  and as a writer, Deborah had always wanted to tell Dorothy's story for a TV audience, from her gold medal, to her marriages, to owning Ice Capades and beyond. So there was already a built-in trust between the writer and subject prior to their collaboration.

I imagine that detailing one's depression with anyone other than a close confidante must be very tough, and tougher when one has fame and fortune. There must be a bit of shame in admitting something like that because people can easily roll their eyes and think, "Ugh, what are you depressed about? You're Dorothy Hamill! There are people who would give their left arm to be you AND have your depression!"

Deborah said that,

Dorothy's feeling was, "Who cares about me? I'm just a skater. Why would it matter?" What she didn't understand was that Dorothy Hamill managed to win a gold medal, and smile, and keep moving, so look at what hope she gives to other people...She felt like she first felt it [her depression] when Dean Paul Martin [first husband] left her. When it really hit hard was with Ken's [Kenneth Forsythe, second husband] affair with another woman...I think when she was doing the book signings, book festivals, meeting people, giving interviews, like on Larry King, that it finally hit her that she can help people by telling her story. Because of the kinds of questions that Larry King was asking and viewers were calling about and e-mailing questions to the show, she was suddenly talking to real people. They were asking, "How did you pick up your career? How did you start all over again?" Once she realized that she could tell people, talk to people, it was still very hard. Then next month, she finds out she has breast cancer and has to undergo treatment...Skating was, and is, Dorothy's saving grace.

A Skating Life also discusses how generations have dealt with depression differently. In a lot of interviews, Dorothy said that her parents "self-medicated," whether through alcohol, their own cocktail of medicines, and that this problem was not confronted head-on. I remember that on Larry King, Dorothy revealed that her own daughter, Alex, 19-years-old, was also being treated for depression and that they were helping each other through it. This type of openness between parent and child was not available to Dorothy in her family while growing up. So although the book is not about depression per se, it certainly became the topic that ordinary people like us related to -- whether we experienced it, had loved loves going through it -- it resonated with the public because the picture-perfect spokesperson seemed very much, well, like us! I know the book will help others to at least talk about it, which may be the first really important step.

Deborah, by the way, is an established television and movie screenwriter, so the book world was relatively new to her. She and Dorothy did something right though -- A Skating Life made the New York Times bestseller list. After the book came out in the fall of 2007, I read it in the span of two days at my local bookstore. (Hey - I bought two coffees there!) Even Deborah told me that she was completely floored, but not surprised, by the book's success given what Dorothy means to the world. She said, "We were competing with books by O.J., Bill Clinton, Rosie O'Donnell, Steven Colbert, it's amazing!" Interestingly, in the mid-nineties, Deborah was slated to write a television script for Tonya Harding's story because as she put it, "I felt I could redeem her." But the project fell through after Tonya kept getting into trouble. Deborah believes based upon her interactions with Tonya, that she was not directly involved in the attack on Nancy Kerrigan.

In case you were wondering about Deborah's own skating background, after she got her gold medals in figures and dance, she joined Ice Follies at age 17 and skated with them for three years. She made enough money from performing to pay for her college education at UCLA as well as a new car, so she was very grateful for the opportunities that opened up for her from skating. Deborah also emphasized the value of doing any sport as a young person, in terms of building character, teaching concentration and discipline, and also taking the person outside into a much bigger world. She's makes her life in California with her architect husband and two sons, who are in college and high school.

NOTE: A Skating Life: My Story will be out in paperback on October 7, 2008, but I've already reserved several copies as stocking stuffers. (For the holidays, I usually prepare a skating care package for my skating friends. Click here for my list of items that I include.)

Comments

[Laura@requiredelements]

I just started reading this book, so glad you wrote this! Great post.

[Lela]

It's amazing how the most seemingly perfect person can feel terrible inside.

[shelby]

dorothy cant wait to read your book