JanFeb2014 PS Magazine

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Did you know

By the 1920s the M.N. Arnold Shoe Company had established a national reputation with exclusive Arnold "Glove Grip" stores in cities nationwide. The company closed in 1931, victim of the Depression. M. N. Arnold Shoe Co. Arnolds Authentics (1944), endorsed by Maribel Vinson

several years, Hyde purchased 70 percent of Mitchel & King Skates Ltd. of England. MK Skates was founded in 1946 in England. By 1976, Hyde's revenues grew to $15 million. In 1977, Maxwell Hyde retired, turning over the company to son-in-law Leonard R. Fisher. The company sold its interest in MK in 1979 to its managing partners.

The S tanzione Company was founded in 1905 by a 22 year old immigrant shoemaker from Naples, Italy, named Gustavo Stanzione. He made his first skating boots in 1908, quite by accident when Belle Butler, a famous skater of those days, gave him an order. She was so pleased with his work that she told her friends and business began to pick up. He began by laboring on his own, but by 1940 Gustavo was joined by four of his eight sons. Their very successful family enterprise was located upstairs at 50 W. 56th Street in Manhattan. During their reign as supreme craftsmen, they made boots for the elite in both roller and ice skating, which included Charlotte, Maribel Vinson, Karl Schaefer, Irving Brokaw, Norval Baptie, and Swedish figure staking champion, Vivi-Ann Hulten. As a matter of fact, Sonja Henie had Stanzione make her a pair of red boots. It was Miss Henie and her family that had realized early on how important her costuming was to her performances. According to Maribel Vinson’s book Advanced Figure Skating, Sonia first changed her skates from black to beige, “…to allow for a greater variety of light color, more spectacular costumes. After many skaters copied her in Europe by wearing beige, Sonia changed to white skating boots. Like Chicago in the late 19th century, Minnesota had a large population of Scandinavians who loved to skate. In 1914, John Strauss, a custom blade maker from St. Paul, Minnesota, developed the “first closed-toe blade of one piece steel.” Strauss, who emigrated from Germany in 1881, opened his first skate shop in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1887. Strauss made his first pair of figure skates in 1888 for local athlete Harley Davidson. His first pair of racing skates followed in 1889, ordered by Axel Paulsen, inventor of the Axel skating jump, who was living and racing in Minneapolis at the time. Strauss’s innovation did more to advance free skating than any other design. Dorothy Curtis, Strauss’s granddaughter, wrote in her book Changing Edges that the blade was not only more stable with the teeth under

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the boot as opposed to in front, but it also permitted more lift that allowed skaters to complete more rotations. Strauss skates were also unique because of how they were made. Each blade was hand-cut from a sheet of custom highcarbon steel, first imported from England and later brought in from Reading, Pennsylvania. Then the blades were put through a secret hardening process involving heat that Strauss had learned while working in an arsenal in Naples, Italy. He shared the process with no one but his family. This process made Strauss skates unusually flexible for their hardness, something that was very desirable to serious skaters. Hardened blades were tempered and polished, then nickel- and chrome-plated. Finally, they were attached to skate boots. John Strauss retired in 1941 and his son John E. Strauss continued the family tradition until he made the last pair of Straus Blades by hand, using the technique his father developed in 1880. With the exception of an improvement in the quality of the steel and modifications in design that have produced specialized blades for the various disciplines of figure skating, figure skate blades have remained relatively unchanged during this century.

Another St. Paul company was the Oberhamer Shoe Company, established in 1927 by Ferdinand Oberhamer, an immigrant from Austria. His son Roy eventually took over the business. Roy too was a master boot maker, expanding the business to include roller boots. As Roy prepared to retire, his plan was to give the company to his son-in-law. But before that could take place, his son-in-law was killed in an automobile accident. Roy sold the company instead and the new owners changed the name to Oberhamer Sports. The new owners of Oberhamer Sports were in trouble almost from the start. The owners decided to push production of recreational skates at the expense of the custom business. The quality of the boots fell drastically. In order to get the company back on track, Roy came back as a consultant. It was too late; Oberhamer Sports filed for bankruptcy and was taken over by the bank in 1981, which soon began liquidating Oberhamer’s assets. One investor, according to Moira Harris, author of Wonders on Ice: Figure Skating in Minnesota, purchased Oberhamer from the bank but was convicted on embezzlement charges and jailed in 1988. The bank still had possession of much of the assets when PS Magazine announced the formation of a new company. Olympian Mark Cockerell and ice show comedian Kent “Kento” Orwoll purchased the remaining assets from the bank and incorporated as Oberhamer Skates, once again with 69 year old Roy Oberhamer consulting. The new Oberhamer Skates Company made a complete line of figure, roller (artistic and speed), ice speed skates, some accessories, and their own line of designer skate wear. At first, the new Oberhamer skates were looking for a shoe company who could manufacture the boots. After a lengthy process, Mark and Kento settled on the Leverenz Shoe Company of Wisconsin. Leverenz had been in business for 69 years, making shoes under the Armadillo and Morgan Quinn brands, as well as private-label brands for J.C. Penny. Ironically, what Oberhamer Skates didn’t know was Leverenz Shoes owed creditors more than one million dollars and was placed in general receivership the evening before they were to start production on the Oberhamer skate. Oberhamer


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JanFeb2014 PS Magazine by Professional Skaters Association - Issuu