Maribel Vinson Owen started her two daughters skating when they were two years old. Mrs. Owen had been nine times United States figure skating champion, and she hoped to train her daughters to succeed her.

Mrs. Owen's husband died in 1952, and after that she began to live a dedicated and incredibly arduous life. At times she worked seven days a week, from early in the morning until late at night. She trained her daughters, and she gave skating lessons at places all over Boston, including Harvard's Watson Rink. She got by with three and four hours' sleep a night, and sometimes without three meals a day.

It took long hours and hard work for Mrs. Owen to support a family and pay the expenses involved in national and international competition. But all the hard-ship must have seemed worth it this winter, as her hopes started to be realized.

Her oldest daughter, Maribel, an extremely pretty B.U. student, teamed with Dudley Richards '54, to win the U.S. pairs title. These two did well also in the North American championships, although they finished second to a Canadian pair.

But 16-year-old Laurence was the star. She swept to the American ladies' singles title, and then recovered from a first-round slip to capture the North American championship. Laurence was a very popular and pretty girl, with a dazzling smile, and her picture on the cover of the Feb. 13 Sports illustrated won many admires.

And now all of them are dead--Mrs. Owen, Maribel, Laurence, Dudley Richards, Bradley Lord, Gregory Kelley, and the rest of the United States national skating team. In all, 73 people died yesterday in the flaming crash of a Boeing 707 jet outside Brussels. The U.S. team was en route to the world championships in Prague.

This community should strongly feel the loss, Richards was one of three Harvard athletes ever to win a major varsity letter in a non-college sports, and Laurence was planning to go to Radcliffe next year.

It is still hard to believe that so many fine athletes have been lost so quickly, and that Mrs. Owen's lonely sacrifices have ended thus.