Dick Button

Birthdate: July 18, 1929
NJ Town Affiliation: Englewood

There is no one more synonymous with figure skating, on and off the ice, than Dick Button.

His remarkable life included skating competitively for 20 years, becoming a television broadcaster for 50 years, and serving as a TV producer and entrepreneur.

Raised in Englewood, New Jersey, he began skating at age 12. Four years later, he took the podium as the United States figure skating champion.

Onto the Olympics as the two-time men’s individual gold medalist and then five consecutive world championships, he claimed back-to-back gold medals at the St. Moritz 1948 Olympic Winter Games and Oslo 1952 Olympic Winter Games.

He was an athletic pioneer landing the first ever Double Axel, Triple Loop and the Flying Camel Spin known as “The Button Camel”. To add to Button’s “firsts”, he was the first and only American to win gold at the European Championships and was the first athlete, in figure skating, to win the prestigious Sullivan Award. Dick is also the first American male figure skater to win 5 world titles (from 1948 through 1952 along with 7 U.S. National Championships (from 1947 through 1953).

He did all this while attending Harvard and later graduating in 1956 from Harvard Law and was admitted to the bar in Washington, D.C.

But it was in television where he became a true national icon, covering 10 Olympics for CBS, ABC and NBC Sports for five decades.

He won an Emmy Award in 1981 for Outstanding Sports Personality – Analyst. The epitome of the Jersey grit and determination with style and flair.