Lorraine Hanlon Comanor: "I Was Supposed to Be on the 1961 Flight That Crashed, Killing the U.S. Skating Team"

[Sylvia]

This Newsweek essay (Feb. 5, 2025) originally was posted in the D.C. plane crash thread by @Karina1974 and I decided to create a new GSD thread for Lorraine Hanlon Comanor's figure skating-related writings (since I found several links today and the 64th anniversary of the Sabena Flight 548 tragedy in Belgium is coming up on February 15): https://www.newsweek.com/i-was-supposed-1961-flight-crash-killing-us-skating-team-2025163
Excerpts:

How much of my post-crash life had I spent in a numb state, eventually retreating to an invisible life of monitoring? Anesthesia, also likened to piloting: hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror. Goaded into learning to fly, but afraid of landings, I'd wisely given it up. However, later I would retrace the path of Flight 548 through the solar eclipse of its final hours, scientific data, a foil for grief. [...]
Slowly, I began to appreciate how the event divided my life into a before and after. The opportunities the disaster made possible: a national championship, U.S. team membership, perhaps a place in America's top universities. I've spent a lifetime jumping through hoops, trying to live up to all that came my way.
Although I left skating, skating never left me.

After a devastating loss, return to a once-shared venue is not easy. Go together to the rink, share memories, write about them, find a way to process a random, senseless event, and its complicated emotions of horror, grief, and opportunity. Don't wait, as I did, half a century to do so.

From USFS' Skating Magazine archive (December 2021) - Lois Elfman's "Where are they now?" article on Dr. Lorraine Hanlon Comanor: https://skatingmagazine.azurewebsites.net/article/Skating_202112_23

As the 50th anniversary of the Sabena crash approached, friends urged her to write about that day. Her essay, "Even if the Roof Is Falling Down," was published online by U.S. Figure Skating and portions appeared in SKATING magazine.
"I wanted to do a better job and write other stories, but recognized I needed to learn the craft," Comanor said.
She selected the Bennington Writing Seminars, a low-residency MFA program that involved 10 days a semester on campus and the remainder by correspondence. Her fiction program included an optional semester in nonfiction. When she wrote about the trains that had coursed through her life in various scenarios, her professor told her he thought "the heat was in the train ride between Davos and Oberstdorf." That story featured the train ride between Davos, where she was living, and Oberstdorf, where a handsome German skater trained.
That story, titled "In the Shadow of Parsenn," became part of her master's thesis and was eventually published in the New England Review and nominated for a Pushcart, a literary prize for which nominations are submitted by magazine and small book press editors. It detailed her final year in skating, a problematic romance, a parental battle and an introduction to German literature. Comanor calls it a coming-of-age story.

SKATING magazine also described her forthcoming essay in 2015 as follows:
As a sequel to "Even if the Roof is Falling Down" published on the 50th anniversary of the 1961 U.S. World Team plane crash in Brussels, Belgium, "In the Shadow of Parsenn" tells of Lorraine Hanlon Comanor's last year of skating in the Swiss alpine village of Davos.
The 1963 U.S. champion talks of the residual images from the crash, the pressure to measure up, the devastation of a disappointing romance, and how, under the influence of a German philosopher, she goes against her parents' wishes and decides on a new direction in life.

Lorraine Hanlon Comanor's "In The Shadow of Parsenn," published in the New England Review 36.1 (2015), can be read in its entirety online here:

In the Shadow of Parsenn – New England Review

www.nereview.com

As well as her "Behind the Byline" Q&A:

Behind the Byline | Lorraine Hanlon Comanor

Welcome to “Behind the Byline,” the column in which we share conversations with current NER writers in all genres. This month, NER editor Carolyn Kuebler speaks with former US Figure Skating…

www.nereview.com

2021 thread in GSD on the 60th anniversary anniversary of the 1961 plane crash with article links:

Sixtieth anniversary of U.S. figure skating plane crash conjures heartfelt memories

https://www.latimes.com/sports/olympics/story/2021-02-15/us-figure-skating-plane-crash-60-anniversary-olympics This time of year, February 15, always gets me. Interesting that Frank Carrol thinks that Bradley Lord and Gregory Kelly would have been his competition in producing new talent! I...

www.fsuniverse.net

 

[AngieNikodinovLove (ANL)]

Beyond fascinated with it