Dick Button, for years synonymous with figure skating on television, died Thursday on a dark day in the history of the sport.
Button, 95, served as a figure skating television analyst for five decades from 1960 through 2010, most recently contributing to NBC’s coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics. Before Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir, before Scott Hamilton, no single broadcaster was more associated with the sport. He spent most of his career with ABC, but covered Olympics for any network that had them — from his first on CBS through his last on NBC.
In his role, which he occupied at a time when the sport was far more popular than today, he was not unlike Johnny Miller on golf or Charles Barkley on the NBA — often opinionated, at times caustic, but widely regarded as a steward of the game.
His death occurred on a day when figure skating reeled from the Wednesday night commercial airline crash in Washington D.C. that claimed the lives of more than a dozen young figure skaters, coaches and family returning from an academy at last week’s U.S. Figure Skating Championships. Six of those skaters belonged to the Skating Club of Boston, of which Button was one of the most famous alums.
Button had already begun his broadcasting career when figure skating suffered its previous mass tragedy, the 1961 plane crash that killed the entire U.S. delegation traveling to the World Figure Skating Championships. That event, it should be noted, is being hosted by the Skating Club of Boston this year.
Prior to his broadcasting career, Button was an accomplished skater who won Olympic gold medals in 1948 and 1952.
