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William Swallender

1961 U.S. World Team coach

Carl William ("Bill") Swallender, 52, taught in nine different cities in his 25-year coaching career. One of seven children, he began skating as a teenager at the Minneapolis Arena and won the junior men's title at the 1933 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. After competing at the national level in senior men for two years, Swallender turned professional and taught in Kansas City. In 1937 he married childhood skating friend Genevieve Nelson, who performed in the professional touring show Ice Follies as a member of the sister act "The Four Nelson Sisters." Swallender then taught in Baltimore, Colorado Springs, Chicago, Berkeley, Philadelphia and Detroit. He met his first potential champion, Virginia ("Ginny") Baxter, while teaching during the summers in Lake Placid, N.Y. Baxter placed fifth at the 1952 Olympic Winter Games and third at that year's World Figure Skating Championships. By the mid-1950s, Swallender regularly taught at Michigan State University in East Lansing during the summer. In 1955, he opened his own rink, the 37-by-43 Swallender Ice Studio in Detroit. Doug Ramsay, who he began teaching in 1952, was the 1960 U.S. junior men's champion and the 1961 U.S. World Team alternate courtesy of his fourth-place fourth at the 1961 U.S. Championships. A week before the 1961 North American Championships, Ramsay was invited to join the 1961 U.S. World Team. Swallender's family had never traveled with him to competitions before, so he invited his wife and sons, Bill, 17, and Erik, 7, to accompany him to the North American Championships in Philadelphia prior to the flight to Prague.

Bio written by Patricia Shelley Bushman, author of Indelible Tracings.