The Fighting Spirit
Written By Scott Hamilton
(as told to Tommi Lewis Tilden)
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(as told to Tommi Lewis Tilden)
Scott Hamilton's mom was the source of his strength.
I was a senior in high school, fresh from winning the Junior National Skating Championships, when I got the news that I had to quit the sport.
For years, my father, a biology professor, and my mother, a second grade teacher turned professor, had managed to scrape up enough money to keep me on the ice. But then my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. For a while, powerhouse that she was, she continued to work while undergoing chemotherapy and surgeries. Finally, though, it became clear she had to stop working, and the money for skating stopped too.
Just as I began to absorb the disappointment of my involuntary retirement, an anonymous couple who'd gotten wind of my plight offered to sponsor me, surely a hopeful sign for my continued ascent. But it wasn't. I moved up to the Senior National level and my first year I was out of shape and hadn't applied myself. I pretty much bombed. I'd just turned 18. The U.S. Championships was the last competition my mother saw me skate in.
The day she died I sat on the floor of her hospital room until 3:30 in the morning, watching her. My own long-term, undiagnosed childhood illness had fostered a significant bond between us. She'd been with me through all the scary stuff. She was the person I loved the absolute most. When my illness went away and I took up skating, she was the one who brought me to every practice and came to each competition.
I thought about all she had gone through to make sure I was given the opportunities. With the powerful loss of her setting in, I made a vow to myself never to be less than she knew I could be. And that's when the world changed for me.
— After his mother's death, Scott Hamilton went on to dominate his sport in the early 1980s, winning the U.S. and World Championships four years in a row and an Olympic gold medal in 1984.
