Scott Hamilton

He's always done "whatever it takes" By Debbie Gardner PRIME Editor Even Olympic Gold can lose its glitter. Just ask 1984 men's figure skating champ Scott Hamilton. He was on top, a household name at the age of 26. But there's a lot of years that come after that kind of achievement and world-wide recognition. So, where do you go from there? "It's about the future, about moving forward," Hamilton told an audience of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance employees when he spoke at the company's home office in September. A true survivor Hamilton knows all about moving forward. He's survived a mysterious childhood illness that stunted his growth, the death of his beloved adopted mother when he was just 19, an ego-bending firing from the Ice Capades, the challenge of launching his own Stars on Ice skating company, and two bouts with cancer testicular cancer in 1997 and a benign brain tumor in 2004. He's also seen changes in the skating world that have all but closed a more recent career path, that of sports commentator. "I went from athlete to Olympian to entertainer to character skater to schmoozer to what my friends say is an imposter," Hamilton joked with the MassMutual audience during his appearance as a national spokesperson for Insurance Awareness Month. "The day after tomorrow I'm doing [skating] commentary in a movie ["Blaze of Glory"]. Will Ferrell is playing a one of the world's greatest figure skaters [in an international competition]," Hamilton said, referring to the role in this "outrageous" movie, in which he plays himself. "It's really out there," he said of the script. "Some might find it tasteless." Movie actor is just one of the roles this former Olympian, entrepreneur and sports commentator is trying on as he reinvents himself one more time to better fit his life as father and two-time cancer survivor. Spokesperson for the Life and Health Insurance Foundation is another. It was his role as national spokesperson for the Foundation's Life Insurance Awareness campaign in September that brought Hamilton to Springfield. "Whatever it takes" Hamilton came to the Mass Mutual campus to talk about the importance of life insurance, and how his mother's lack of it had nearly ended his skating career before it really began. But the story he told was about so much more. It was about doing whatever it takes to achieve a goal. "I look for the good in everything," Hamilton told the audience as he began his talk. He told the audience about being adopted by "two amazing people from Massachusetts." "My mom was from Weymouth, my dad from South Deerfield," he said. "They met at UMass and fell in love." The couple moved to Bowling Green Indiana, where he became a college professor, and she taught elementary school. Hamilton talked about his mom's struggle to have children, and how they finally had one healthy baby a girl but wanted more. So they adopted. First Scott, and then his older brother. "He was very tall, very muscular. And about that time, I stopped growing," Hamilton said, joking about "That counter I could walk under, well, a year later, I could still walk under it." He was diagnosed with everything from Celeriac Disease to Shumaker's Syndrome. Life was a countless round of hospital visits and special diets. Then, a skating rink opened not far from his house. A family down the street took him to the rink for lessons on Saturday mornings, just to give his parents a break. And he started to improve. "A few months of skating, beyond the physical development, I had self esteem," Hamilton said. "It's hard to make friends with a feeding tube in your nose." Skating became a lifeline for Hamilton, and he said his family particularly his mother did whatever it took to keep him in the sport. At one point, the "whatever" even meant the family downsizing to a smaller house to pay debts and "keep me in skating." Then, in Hamilton's senior year of high school, his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. "I was told, this is your last year in skating .. Go, have fun. Next year you'll be starting at Bowling Green University," he said. Just before he was to compete in the Junior National Championships, his mom had her left breast, and most of the muscle of her left arm removed. "She was smiling . even though she was in pain, she was smiling," Hamilton said, talking about his mom at the Junior National competition. A Chicago couple had stepped forward and volunteered to take over his skating expenses because they believed he had promise. Hamilton said his mom died shortly after the Senior Nationals, a competition where, in his own words, he "thoroughly underachieved" as a competitor, coming in ninth. "That was the last time she saw me compete," he said. "The day she died, I decided to be the best skater I could be, " to honor her memory and sacrifices. He talked about how she'd never been able to do things like buy new clothes because of his skating expenses. How she's been working full time and going to school to try and earn a promotion even while battling cancer to have the money to keep him in skating. How, because of his skating, she died without life insurance, which devastated his family financially on top of the emotional blow of losing the "center of our universe." Hamilton was 19 when she died. "That year I went from being ninth to third [in the U. S.] and was ranked 11th in the world," he said. Hamilton made it to the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid "against all odds" and spent the following four years preparing to compete at the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo. He came home with Olympic gold. After the glitter Olympic success got him a spot with the Ice Capades. But the glitter of that soon faded. After just two seasons he was let go. "[They just didn't pick up my option," Hamilton told PRIME in a post-appearance interview. "Every now and then when a company changes hands it goes through a philosophy change. The gentleman coming in felt women were the only ones who sold tickets." "It was a huge blow," Hamilton said of being fired from the Ice Capades. "I'd worked as hard as I could, I'd stepped in for other skaters who were injured . I felt I was a model employee and then not to get picked up . it was beyond my worst nightmare." But two good things came out of his Ice Capades experience. One, as he told the MassMutual audience, was that he "took out a life insurance policy" with the money from his signing bonus. "I've been a MassMutual policy holder since 1984," he said. Second, he felt he'd learned enough working in the Ice Capades to launch his own touring skating show. He launched Scott Hamilton's Tour of the Stars, which later became "Stars on Ice" in 1986. "Starting over was hard," Hamilton told PRIME. "But I had enough ambition and drive." "Creating a positive environment was muscle that was built into my brain," Hamilton told his audience at Mass Mutual. "You do whatever it takes to do the best you can." "I'll unload trucks, I'll hang costumes . that's how we built Stars on Ice," he said. "To see something come from nothing . it's a feeling you can't get anywhere else." The show, which celebrated its 20th anniversary this past winter and is now known as Smuckers Stars on Ice, is still going strong. Hamilton told PRIME he though he's no longer an active member of the cast he's been absent for two years before he performed this winter for the 20th anniversary tour he's still involved in the show as a creative producer and fund-raiser. Coming off the ice With his performing days with Stars on Ice pretty much behind him and his broadcasting days also waning as the world of skating itself undergoes huge changes, Hamilton finds himself in a position familiar to many 40-something men and women. He's at a crossroads in his career. "Now that Olympic eligibility is open to professionals, the sport has shrunk and there are fewer competitions," Hamilton said as he talked about how his work as a skating commentator on sports programming is virtually drying up as non-pro competitions downsize and cable TV finds other things to run on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.. "ABC and ESPN have their own broadcast teams," he explained. "When it comes down to me it's NBC and the Olympics." "The pro competitions [have run on] CBS all these years and because I worked for NBC they decided to go somewhere else [for their commentators]," he continued. But this man who's already survived so many challenges and, as he told the MassMutual audience has been blessed with "the unusual hobby of collecting life-threatening illnesses" seems undaunted by an uncertain future. "It's transition. It's rolling with it and paving your own way and respecting the gravity and momentum of where life it taking you," Hamilton told PRIME as we discussed his life and career at this point in time. And it's not like he's sitting still, waiting for things to come to him. "I still have my C.A.R.E.S. Initiative," Hamilton said, talking about the philanthropic work he does with the Cleveland Cancer Institute. "The other one is St. Jude's Children's Hospital . I love them." And he was thoroughly enjoying his spokesperson gig for the Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education. "It's exciting to be a part of this," he said. "I'm doing more speaking engagements, and getting around." But one of his biggest joys has been watching his son, Adian, born six years after his 1997 bout with testicular cancer grow. Especially since surviving his second cancer scare. In November of 2004, just six months after Adian was born, Hamilton went to the doctor because he "just wasn't feeling like myself." He was diagnosed with an benign, but inoperable, brain tumor. Radiation shrunk the tumor. But this third brush with mortality has changed his outlook on life. "I always looked ahead," Hamilton told PRIME. "Now I'm just in the phase of getting up in the morning and it's just great and it's just an amazing gift. I look at my son and it's hard to believe you can love something that much." After facing the scary outcome of the exploratory surgery to determine what type of brain cancer he had Hamilton shared with the the MassMutual audience that he was told by his surgeon that he could be left blind in one eye, or paralyzed, or with memory problems by the operation losing a job doesn't seem so bad. "It's made me appreciate the now," Hamilton told PRIME. "It's relaxed me and I don't fear anything anymore. I take each day as it comes."