Published June 1, 1982

KIAMESHA LAKE - The lilacs are filling the air with their special perfume while orioles, robins, and redwinged black birds play out their symphony for all who remember to listen. Sullivan County waits with open arms for the tourists who will revitalize an economy waking from its winter sleep. All across the county there's a pervading energy - it's spring again.

But all of that seems incongruous with the sadness of Ruth Mack McGowan. For her, springtime will be the time she lost her husband, famous showman and figure skater Everett McGowan, who died early in May of this year.

The modest apartment in which Ruth McGowan now lives alone belies her 53 years as wife to a man who was nothing less than a wonder on ice and one who was truly “born before his time” in the world of sports.

In 1920 he won the national and international world speed skating championship. In 1921, 1922, 1923 he was the professional world speed skating champion. He played on four hockey teams, including the New York Rangers. He was tabbed by sports writers in the 20's and 30's as the “Jim Thorpe of Ice”, “Iron Man McGowan” and “The Three Letterman of Skating”.

A Skating Phenom

Everett McGowan was born in skating country - St. Paul, Minnesota - in 1900. According to one sportswriter, Don Riley, of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, “He could have been a professional golfer, baseballer, or just about any type of athlete.” As a student at St. Thomas Military Academy in St. Paul, McGowan made the all-state football team. But his skating was his choice and he went after it with all he had.

According to Riley, “He made the old Hip (The Hippodrome in New York City) famous.” And Dick Young, then with the New York Daily News, said, “He was the greatest thing on skates that this speed-conscious world had ever seen. With a flying start he did the 100 yard dash in :04.2, that's almost a mile a minute.”

As impressive as McGowan's accomplishments are, and there are more, he is seldom thought of by himself. His diminutive wife, still filled with the grace and poise which she demonstrated night after night while she and her husband headlined Shipstead and Johnson's Ice Follies, Ice Capades, Holiday on Ice, and the McGowan and Mack Ice Revue, is as much a part of this striking pair as McGowan himself.

They met in St. Paul, just at the time of the bank “holidays” which signaled the Great Depression.

“I was visiting my sister in St. Paul,” Ruth recalls. “I met Mac at a roller skating rink. He left shortly after that to play hockey in Springfield, Massachusetts. And then he sent for me, and we got married.”

Ruth also remembers her husband's hockey playing days.

“I wouldn't say that Mac was a fighter,” she says. “But the other players he always got into fights with. And they would all end up in the penalty box. At some places they would boo Mac and say, “Get McGowan.” Well when they booed, we booed too, otherwise you might get knocked on the head.”

The hockey playing days didn't last long for the McGowans. As Ruth says, “There just wasn't enough money in it.” (What would he have been worth to a pro team today?)

McGowan and Mack

In the mid-thirties, McGowan gave up hockey and turned his energies to figure skating, developing an act with his wife.

“I had never been on skates before I met Mac,” says Ruth, who was born and grew up in Nebraska. “We took lessons from Howard Nicholson, Norval Baptie, and Nate Walley. We worked up an adagio act on ice and developed the Apache dance for ice skating. We worked at fairs, night clubs and theatres. Sometimes we had to perform on roller skates. It was the days of vaudeville.”

“We were performing at the Sherman Hotel in Chicago one night along with Oscar Johnson, and Eddie and Roy Shipstead. Mac had grown up with them in St. Paul. They were doing the Ice Follies. By the next performance we were headlining the show.”

For more than the next 35 years McGowan and Mack headlined numerous ice revues all over the United States. It was during this time that McGowan developed a workable and safe portable ice rink.

“It was before World War II, and a lot of the equipment was difficult to get,” Ruth says. “We were just lucky because Mac had all the equipment. We would go into a night club or theatre and the movie wouldn't get over until midnight. Then we would have to set up and be back for a matinee performance. It was all work and no play.”

Disaster

The all work caught up with McGowan in 1939. He was stricken with a supposedly incurable form of arthritis which crippled his back.

“He went to the Mayo Clinic in Washington. They told me that Mac would never skate again. He was in so much pain that he couldn't even lace his shoes.”

But McGowan did skate again in spite of medicine's prediction.

His friend and trainer, Ralph Cressler, said that he had seen the same type of disease in horses when he worked with them at race tracks, and that there was a way of getting rid of it. But that it would take a lot of work and it would be painful.

It was 1939, McGowan was 32 years old. He had beaten Olympic Champion Irving Jaffe in 2 out of 3 races that year, and now he was faced with one of his greatest challenges.

He accepted Cressler's advice, and the trainer went to work on him.

“He would put a big lamp over his back and work on the spine to break up the calcium,” says Ruth. “It was very painful for Mac.”

Cressler had warned him that he couldn't use an anesthetic on his back.

Within a year McGowan was back on the ice and the McGowan and Mack Ice Revue was in business again.

‘Souvenirs'

Ruth has her painful moments, too.

“Sure Mac dropped me when we were doing our lifts. But in our business you get used to falling. I guess I've got souvenirs from all our shows.”

One of those souvenirs came during a performance in Philadelphia.

“We were doing the Apache dance. At one point Mac throws me on the ice. When I went down I grabbed a piece of the scenery. I guess it had a sharp edge. Mac was supposed to pick me up and carry me off. But a friend, who was backstage, called me over. My finger had been cut to the bone.

“They rushed me to the hospital and, although the bone hadn't been cut, the flesh had been severed all the way around. They decided to cut the bone off too so that it wouldn't get infected. It was a good thing that they did. We always worked with resin, and my whole arm got infected from it.”

On another occasion she tripped on a penny which someone had thrown on the ice while performing in Sacramento.

“I was spiked and was out of the show awhile.”

JoAnn

Somewhere in their career Everett and Ruth McGowan had a daughter, JoAnn. Ruth tactfully avoids any questions as to just when that might have been.

“Once,” she says, “We had to get visas to go to Mexico. They called me in about my age. It seems that my age wasn't compatible with my daughter's age. You see, she had told the truth about how old she was. The man told me that he didn't want to know personally, but that he was concerned that the officials in Mexico might ask about it.”

(That's as close as we got on the subject of age - and that seems fitting.)

JoAnn spent much of her early childhood at Villa Maria, a private girls school, while father and mother toured the country.

“If it had been up to me she would not have been on skates,” says Ruth. “She had a break from school once and she went to visit Mac's father in St. Paul. He bought her a pair of skates. She liked it. She still likes it,” says Ruth with a smile, “it's her livelihood.”

JoAnn McGowan picked up where her famous parents left off. She is considered one of the most traveled figure skaters in the world. A map dotted with push pins hanging on the McGowan's living room wall attests to the fact. “Mac put that up,” says Ruth. “It's all the places JoAnn has been to.”

The places JoAnn has performed include cities throughout the United States, Mexico and Canada and Europe. They included cities in Japan, China, the Soviet Union, South America, Africa, South East Asia, and Australia. She and her husband, Martin Minshull, a three-time world professional figure skating champion headline Holiday on Ice.

“JoAnn appeared with her father in Ice Follies, a 1939 movie starring Joan Crawford.

“Joan would only let Mac help her,” says Ruth. “She had a trick knee, and wasn't very good on ice.”

“The couple also played in “Lake Placid Serenade” in 1942. And in 1954 Mac installed a portable ice rink for Arther Godfrey's show, and he and his family appeared on the popular CBS T.V. program.

Sullivanites

Thirty-one years ago the McGowans came to Sullivan County where they met Ted Simenitzky, who was the skating pro at the Concord.

“The Concord was the first hotel to put in an indoor skating rink in Sullivan County,” says Ruth. “Ted helped us both when we first came here. He's one of a kind. I don't know what I would have done without him during this time.”

Simenitzky and McGowan worked closely for several years on installing portable rinks.

With the death of Everett McGowan an age of ice skating which flourished during the golden age of vaudeville came to an end. Today is an age of electronic wizardry in which television and computers have teamed to give entertainment what they want. Everett and Ruth McGowan are of a generation in which entertainment meant hard work on the part of the entertainer.

“We didn't have the type of productions that there are today,” says Ruth. “Back then everyone had to give their blood and sweat to get the show on.”

Ruth is still the skating pro at the Raleigh Hotel in South Fallsburg. The glamour of being a big time star hasn't convinced her that she needs to act like one. She knows how to handle herself in an interview in front of a camera. That comes from countless sessions with reporters and photographers. And she knows how unimportant the glitter was that went with that stardom.

“I leaned on Mac too much,” she says. “He took care of the bookings, the agents, everything. Now all I have are memories.”

The memories of the good old days, Ruth Mack McGowan has a treasury of experiences few people ever have. She recollects with a mixture of humor and sadness all that hard work and fun. But through it all runs the pure strain of love. And that makes it special.