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- This is One-On-One.

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(upbeat music) - This is "Remember Them."

I'm Steve Adubato with Jacqui Tricarico.

Jacqui, the book over my left shoulder is the autobiography of the great Dick Button.

People may not know named Dick Button, but he was in fact the voice of figure skating, made figure skating, what it is in this country, and also internationally as well.

And in this interview that I do with Scott Hamilton, who was a mentee of Dick Button's and also an Olympic gold medal winner in figure skating.

What did you take from that interview with Scott about Dick Button?

- Well, what a privilege to speak with Scott Hamilton about Dick Button.

I know you felt the same way.

And Dick was a 2024 New Jersey Hall of Fame inductee as he should have been.

And we talked so much about his career in skating.

But, Steve, I think it's just so important to, and we dipped into this a little bit with Scott, but he did so many other things.

He was a lawyer, an author, a Broadway producer, a gardener.

And everything that he touched, he wanted to make sure he was doing the best in that area.

And it's just really interesting to learn all these fun facts about the folks that we remember here on our series.

And just to think of Dick Button outside of the voice of figure skating, he had his hands in so many other things.

- Yeah, and for those who think media was always what it is today, it wasn't.

So back in the day when ABC's "Wide World of Sports," which was the most important sports programming at the time, there were only a couple of networks, right?

ABC was big sports operation.

Dick Button was so smart, so creative, such an entrepreneur and a visionary, he convinced the folks at ABC's "Wild World of Sports" that there was an audience for figure skating.

And we would not have become as obsessed and root for Americans who compete in the Olympics the way we do, particularly as it relates to figure skating if it were not for Dick Button.

So we talked to Scott Hamilton, a great Olympic gold medal winner in the Olympics, talks about his relationship with Dick Button, an important person to remember.

Jacqui and I and the team work really hard to figure out who we should remember.

We remember the great Dick Button.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] 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, a television broadcaster for 50 years, and TV producer, 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, an athletic pioneer, landing the first ever double Axel triple loop, and the flying camel spin, known as the Button camel.

To add to Buttons first, 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.

He did all this while attending Harvard undergraduate and Law School and then admitted to the bar in Washington DC.

But it was 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.

- We are honored to be joined by Scott Hamilton, who's an Olympic gold medal winning figure skater who knew Dick Button very well.

It is an honor to have you with us, Scott.

Thank you.

- Oh, thank you.

Just having some time to talk about Dick's legacy and who he was as a man is just an honor and a thrill.

He was the greatest skater of all time.

- Your connection, your personal and professional connection to Dick Button, talk about that, please, Scott.

- Well, it was long standing.

I mean, I probably met Dick, you know, it's really hard 'cause, you know, people are like, "Where did you, when did you meet Dick Button?"

And it's like, "I don't know, he is just always been there."

You know, he is always around the championships and he is always interacting with, you know, all the skaters that was back in the day.

He would host the exhibitions, you know, like the gala after the national competition.

He was just always a fixture.

And it's really hard to know when you meet somebody that's that iconic because it's like some people can think of a moment, but most people I know with Dick just say, "I don't remember."

He's just always been there, you know, so he was bigger than life and he was the champion of the sport, because he figured out early on that television and skating would get along very well.

And he went from, you know, everything I've been told is he went to the International Skating Union and owned the rights to the World Championships, went to US figure skating, owned the rights to the television for the US championships.

And then he invented the whole commentary game in figure skating.

So he's always been there.

I remember, you know, just always as a skater wanting to be on television, and just wanted to make the TV show, just, I want to be on, I just wanted to be on "Wide World of Sports."

And Dick Button was always the voice.

And he was a character.

He was always joking around with the skaters, and he had a lot of, you know, funny things that he would do with each skater, especially if they were younger.

And he was just an amazing man who took our sport from really just being an activity to, you know, it was just sort of like a dedicated activity for a lot of these skaters that wanna go to the Olympics.

And the whole Olympic movement I think was totally blessed by his broadcasting, his commentary.

But our relationship, you know, our friendship was, you know, went through him broadcasting me then me working for him in his different competitions and shows to, you know, a lot of life events, you know, that, you know, where he, you know, he had an injury, a head injury and just all those amazing things that he survived and that he thrived through.

And I love his children.

And his former wife, Slavka Kohout, was a skater that I went to Illinois to take from.

And she only taught two young men, and I wasn't one of them.

So I went to another coach named Pierre Brunet, who was an Olympic champion in pair skating from France.

And it was probably a better fit for me because Slavka was a very much a disciplinarian in those days.

And she scared me to death.

So I was really okay with just skating with Pierre Brunet.

- Let me follow up on this.

So for those of us who appreciate figure skating but don't really understand it, you know, and how could we?

Help us understand this.

So Dick Button, the entrepreneur, the commentator, the business person who helped make figure skating what it is in this country and around the world, and understanding media the way he did.

Talk about Dick Button and only the way you can, Scott Hamilton, as a figure skater winning those two Olympic gold medals.

- Well, he was a pioneer.

You know, his coach Gus Lussi was remarkable and bringing him along and understanding how the body worked and it should work in skating.

So Dick was able to really revolutionize the sport by doing things that no one had ever seen before.

He was the first one to do a double Axel in competition.

That's a two step- - Scott, do us a favor.

I'm sorry for interrupting it.

Go back.

And I read the double Axel, and then the triple, you'll talk about in a second.

Explain to folks who barely know, how I'm still working on, you know, staying up on skates, what the heck that really means.

- (laughs) So each jump, there's six different takeoffs in skating and all those jumps look alike because they rotate the same and they land the same.

Dick figured out a way to rotate more revolutions in the air than anyone else had ever done before.

He was about 25 years ahead of his time.

So if it weren't for Dick Button, the sport wouldn't look like it does today.

So Axel Paulson was a champion way back and he figured out that he could do a one and a half revolution jump that would just revolutionize skating his time.

So it's a forward takeoff obviously, because every jump rotates and lands, going backwards on the right foot.

You know, some skaters rotate clockwise, most rotate counterclockwise.

So I'm a counterclockwise jumper.

Dick Button was a counterclockwise rotating jumper.

And he was the first one to do an extra revolution on the Axel, calling it a double Axel.

So that's two and a half revolutions in the air.

You're only in the air for about .6, .7 seconds.

If it's huge, .7 seconds.

But it's, you've gotta get in, you rotate those jumps and then you gotta be able to control, stopping the revolutions in the air to be able to land with complete control on a toe to edge, outside edge going backwards.

And Dick was the first one to do double Axel.

He introduced triple jumps, which nobody ever thought they would see.

And he invented spins and flying spins.

- I'm sorry, what's the flying, our producers are putting in the chat.

Dick Button created the flying camel spin.

Come on, Scott, the what?

- The flying camel.

So basically it was a flying Button spin.

So it was basically, you'd be rotating on the back, on your right, on your right foot, and your leg would be, and your body would be parallel with the ice.

So you have one leg here, you're like that and you're rotating.

And it was the Button spin, and he created it.

And then when he started doing commentary, he felt weird saying his own name so he renamed it the camel spin.

- But it was the Button- - I guess 'cause there's a hump there where your rear end is.

I don't know.

- Hold on, but wait a minute.

Scott, when the first, this is in the forties, right?

Late forties?

- Yeah, yeah, year '48, year '52, yeah.

- Yeah, because he retired in '52.

So here's the thing I'm curious about.

If had it never been, if it had never been done before, Scott, how the heck did the judges know what they were seeing?

- Ah, so they were seeing things that they knew were gonna change the game.

You know, he was undefeated for five years and he should have probably been undefeated for six years.

Ulrich Salchow, who's the famous, Salchow you know, jump that everybody talks about, what's a Salchow, huh?

That's an edge jump that was invented by the, probably the most winning champion of all time was Ulrich Salchow.

But he loved Dick.

He was, when Dick should have won a World championship, I think it was in '47, Ulrich Salchow, he just said that, "I was wrong, you should have won that competition."

And he took Dick into his trophy room and he said, "pick out any trophy you want and that's yours."

And so Dick picked out a trophy of Ulrich Salchow trophy room.

He was a, I think a Swedish skater.

And he was like the early great champion way, way back.

And so there was a trophy that now has been passed down from skater to skater to skater.

Dick thought that John Misha Petkevich, who won the US National title in I think 1971, he, Dick said, you know, "You're the greatest thing I've ever seen, and you're never gonna win a world championship," because he was a Rhode Scholar, and he was doing all these things.

So he awarded him this Salchow trophy.

And then over the years there was another Harvard graduate.

These are all Harvard to Harvard to Harvard.

Another Harvard graduate- - And by the way, he was a Harvard guy.

- Yeah, he was a Harvard guy.

- Dick Button was.

- Yeah, Dick Button was.

I think he did post grad work at Harvard.

The urban legend is that he graduated Harvard Law and Harvard business at the same time.

I think it was more like it was Harvard Business School, but he was a brilliant man.

And so he gave it to John Misha Petkevich.

John Misha Petkevich gave it to Paul Wiley.

Paul Wiley ended up winning the silver medal in Albertville, the 1992 Olympics.

And then Paul Wiley gave it to Jason Brown who has it now.

So this trophy is going to be passed down.

And it's another legacy thing from Dick that, you know, these skaters that have incredible quality and incredible just magnificence in the way they skate, but may not win a world championship, they need to be rewarded, and that's where the Salchow trophy came from.

- And we appreciate the detail about Dick Button and- - Keep me honest, Steve, just keep me honest.

If it's too inside baseball, call me out and I'm happy to walk you through.

- Scott, we have you on to talk about the inside because we're so far on the outside, so don't worry about that.

But here's what I'm curious about.

As someone in the media who now is, we're all of us in public broadcasting, we're trying to figure out where media's gonna be and how we can be entrepreneurial and still journalistically sound.

Dick Button as a student of media, as I not a student of ice skating, figure skating, I am amazed at his entrepreneurial ability, his vision.

He was a strong and solid business person.

How the heck did he sell the idea to ABC's "Wide World of Sports," that there was an audience for figure skating, not football, not basketball, not baseball, figure skating?

How the heck did he do that?

- United States was crushing it in figure skating, you know, back in the day.

You know, he was the first to win an Olympic gold medal.

The next was Tenley Albright, 1956.

She was the first woman.

You know, Dick's predecessor was Hayes Alan Jenkins.

He won in '56.

His brother, David Jenkins, won in 1960.

Carol Heiss Jenkins, Carol Heiss, who married Hayes Jenkins, won in 1960 as well.

So all of us.

And Dick got the Olympic, He was a broadcaster in the first televised Winter Olympic Games, which was 1960 in Squaw Valley.

And he was the commentator, he was doing all the interviews rink side.

And he was, he just, you know, this was an Olympic sport.

The Olympics were going to be telecast.

And it was a lot easier to telecast figure skating than it was a downhill at that time because just all the cameras and syncing and doing all of the, just down there.

And, you know, I would imagine back then, and I'm guessing now, so please forgive me, that all of that was done on film and then televised.

I don't know if it was done on video tape, but it just was, Dick understood that he loved skating.

He knew that there was something there, there was something to mind.

I mean, he was such a huge star when he came back from his second Olympic gold, there was ticker-tape parades and there was this hoopla.

And he was just recognized and celebrated.

And, you know, a lot of skaters would go in and try to build a professional career.

That was sort of the normal path when I was skating.

And a lot of that was created by Peggy Fleming who Dick- - She '72?

- I'm not sure what- - Scott, help folks understand what- - Oh, no, no.

Peggy Fleming was in 1968.

I thought you were asking me her age and I would never know about that.

(laughs) - No, I'm not going there.

But she was 68 and you were?

- '84.

Yeah, it was, Peggy Fleming was '68, Dorothy Hamill was '76, and I was '84.

I was next in '84.

- To what extent did Dick Button raise the bar and the standard of excellence for American, for US figure skaters?

- He was the original torch bearer.

You know, he was the one that sort of revolutionized the sport and, you know, skating became popular I think in many respects because of him.

You know, every Olympics there was this huge bump in learn to skate and all these people wanted to learn how to, you know, do what they saw in the Olympics.

And it's always been very important.

And he knew that his voice carried a lot of weight.

You know, he was very descriptive in his criticism.

There were certain things that were just, you know, peeves that he just was not going to let go.

If a skater was in the wrong position, let's say they didn't complete a line with their hands or their toe was turned down in a certain move, he'd say, "Turn it up dear, turn it up."

And then he would always have very- - On the air?

- On the air.

And they couldn't hear him, obviously.

But he was always- - I'm sorry to interrupt, Scott, when heard afterwards his commentary about you, how much you revered him.

And by the way, Scott Hamilton accepted the New Jersey Hall of Fame.

You are in fact the person receiving that on his behalf.

- [Scott Hamilton] Yes.

- I just wanted to be clear.

So the connection is personal, professional, all of it.

How the heck did you deal with his commentary and criticism of you when you heard?

- Oh, it was so easy.

You know, if Dick saw something he didn't like, he'd always be complimentary if you did things well.

Like it was not gonna be one of these things where he was just looking for bad things.

He always would, you know, reward you.

He liked the way that I would, to kind of put my more difficult elements throughout the program instead of front loading them when I had, you know, like a lot of stamina.

You know, it's harder to do those jumps at the end of the program.

And he always recognized that.

But there were certain things they didn't like.

And you know, for me, I was just competitive enough, competitive enough to say, "All right, thank you, Dick.

I look upon that as constructive and healthy criticism.

You'll never be able to say that about me again."

(chuckles) You know?

So, you know, it was all those years that Dick, you know, would do my commentary and it was '78 and '80, '81, '82, '83, '84.

Every year he would have something that he wanted to point out that was a weakness in my skating.

And I would always say he is never gonna be able to say that again.

So my job ultimately when I was skating, was to shut Dick Button up.

- I love it.

Hey, speaking of strutting people up and people critiquing and judging, The judges or the judging in the Olympics is always an issue.

And this is beyond the Dick Button conversation.

Help us again, outsiders understand this, how subjective is judging?

- Less than ever.

- Because?

- Well, it used to be a 6.0 system.

So a judge would, you know, they'd hold up their marks, you know, five-nine, five-seven, five-six, five-nine- - Six is the highest?

- The perfect score is six.

So they changed it because there was a lot more skaters, they were allowing to compete at world championships.

You know, there was that whole idea that we really don't want the sport to be looked upon as a judging thing.

You know, it was always, you know, if an event didn't turn out the way someone wanted it to, they wanted to look down the judging panel and see who the culprit was.

That it was very much, you know, a melodrama, you know, like 6.0 is the benchmark.

And then there was the good and evil of, is that a judge from an Eastern Bloc nation or was that, you know, you- - The Russian judge.

The whole thing of the Russian judge.

- Well, it was a Russian judge and then in 2002 it was the French judge, and then it was all this, you know?

And there was always this, you know, I wonder if judges are talking amongst themselves.

you know, there's always this, you know, kind of conspiracy theory about that.

But generally after the 2002 Olympics where a Russian team won the gold medal over on the night a superior Canadian team, that's where, you know, everybody was like, okay, something's gotta be done about this because it just, it isn't right.

- Was it political?

- It was alleged to be political.

- What do you think?

- The French judge said in the judge's meeting that she felt pressured to vote for, and then she took that back.

There was a great documentary that released last Olympics, produced by Tara Lipinski and her husband Todd Kapostasy.

And it was a brilliant, it was like a three-part series.

It was amazing how they went deep, deep, deep into all of it.

And basically what they decided out of that sort of scandal was that they were going to change the way skating was judged to be more of a merit-based system.

So if you do a difficult jump, there's a point value attached to that jump.

So on the technical side, you could build points by doing the most difficult program.

There's different levels of spins.

Like if you do a level four spin, it counts a lot more than a level two or three spin.

Footwork sequences are judged very specifically as well.

So what they did was they, instead of having like the whole variety of fruit in the basket, it was apples to apples.

And it rewarded excellence.

The new system does.

But I don't think necessarily, it's great for crowning a champion.

It's just doesn't ignite an audience interest like it used to.

So basically, there is no perfect score now and- - There is no 6.0?

- Well, there there's no 6.0, but there's, you know, there's personal bests and there's these, everybody takes it to the next level.

So skaters are doing more difficult jumps than have ever been performed before.

And it's remarkable that there's a young man, he's an American born Russian named Ilia Malinin.

And well, he is an American, and he did, and he does the a quadruple Axel.

So he is taking off forward, he rotates four and a half times in the air and he lands with perfect control landing backwards on his right foot.

And he has all the quadruple takeoffs.

That means for all six different takeoffs of jumps, Axel, Salchow, Toe, Loop, Flip, Lutz, he's got them all quad and they're all in his program.

And he is creating these weird rotational jumps in the air that they go like, and he back flips.

And he does, he is remarkable.

- We got a few seconds left.

Can we look for him in the upcoming Olympics?

- Expect him to win by a lot.

- By a lot.

- (laughing) Yes.

- You heard it here first on public broadcasting.

By the way, Scott, I wanna thank you, not only for sharing your insights, or your insight on where figure skating is today, but also most importantly, for honoring and paying tribute to the great Dick Button.

- He was the GOAT.

- Well, you're right up there- - Greatest of all time.

And you know, no one will ever be able to do what he did.

And he just, I mean, remarkable man.

Everything that he approached, he wanted to do it at the highest level of excellence.

And that was in television, that was in skating.

It was in horticulture, it was in farming, it was in antiques.

And it was everything that he took an interest in, he wanted to be the best he could possibly be or maybe the best ever.

And that was just the quality of the man.

- You heard it from Scott Hamilton, one of the best of all time, Olympic gold medal winning figure skater.

Scott, we wish you all the best.

And thank you so much for joining us down in Tennessee.

- Down in Tennessee, y'all coming out and see us.

- (chuckles) Thank you, Scott.

I'm Steve Adubato for our entire team at Remember Them and One-on-One, particularly my colleague Jacqui Tricarico.

Thank you so much.

That is the great Scott Hamilton.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by The New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities.

The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

Newark Board of Education.

Johnson & Johnson.

United Airlines.

Atlantic Health System.

And by Kean University.

Where Cougars climb higher.

Promotional support provided by NJBIA.

And by BestofNJ.com.