Owen, Laurence (1945–1961)

American figure skater. Born in Massachusetts in 1945; died in a plane crash on February 15, 1961; daughter of Maribel Vinson Owen (1911–1961, a skater and coach) and Guy Owen (a top-ranked skater who died in 1952); sister of Maribel Owen (1941–1961, a figure skater).

Placed 3rd in the U.S. Nationals and 6th at the Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley (1960); placed 1st

in the U.S. Nationals senior singles and 1st in the North American championship (1961).

Sixteen-year-old Laurence Owen was at the beginning of a more-than-promising career in figure skating when she boarded a Boeing 707 in New York on a Sabena Airlines flight to Prague, Czechoslovakia, by way of Brussels, to compete in the World championship. Three days earlier, she had won the North American singles championship in Philadelphia, preceded by the January 27th singles title at the 1961 U.S. National figure skating singles competition held in Colorado Springs. She had topped her main competition Stephanie Westerfeld . "Her free-skating has an air, a style," wrote Barbara Heilman for the cover story in Sports Illustrated, "an individuality which sets it apart from all the work done in free skating in recent years." Owen also had, said one photographer, "the greatest natural smile I've ever seen." With her bronze-medalist mother Maribel Vinson Owen as team coach, Laurence Owen was America's hope for the 1964 Olympics in Innsbruck. (The door had been opened when Carol Heiss-Jenkins retired to teach.)

After the jet had circled for a landing over Brussels airport, it veered north, away from the airport toward the small community of Berg. Workers in the field reported that they heard a noise, and the jet began to lose altitude; suddenly it rose in the air and then fell. When it slammed into the countryside and burst into flames, all 72 passengers were killed, including Laurence Owen, her mother, her sister Maribel Owen , 16 members of the U.S. figure-skating team, and four other coaches; one farmer on the ground also died.

At the time of her death, Owen was living with her mother, sister, and grandmother in Winchester, Massachusetts; her father had died when she was seven. Dreaming of a career as a writer, she was a senior and honor roll student at Winchester High School and had just been accepted to her mother's alma mater, Radcliffe. Steffi Westerfeld was also killed in the crash.

sources:

Boston Globe. February 15, 1961.

Heilman, Barbara. "Mother Set the Style," in Sports Illustrated. February 13, 1961.