Lawndale Tribune
AND lAwNDAle News
The Weekly Newspaper of Lawndale
Herald Publications - El Segundo, Hawthorne, Lawndale & Inglewood Community Newspapers Since 1911 - (310) 322-1830 - Vol. 80, No. 9 - March 4, 2021
Lawndale High School Counselor Receives Award
Lawndale High School counselor, Mrs. Karen Hicks, was named the inaugural Los Angeles County Office of Education Counselor of the Year. Congratulations Mrs. Hicks on such a well deserved accomplishment. Photo courtesy Centinela Valley Union High School District.
Richard Ewell from front page
Hollywood, which eventually burned down in
1963. Surprisingly, the Ewell kids, who had
been complaining about the cold, took to the
freezing confines of the Polar Palace.
“We loved it,” Ewell said while relating
that his Mom had taken him and his sister to
performances by the Ice Capades and Holiday
on Ice when those shows came to town. Later
in his career, when Ewell was drawing a paycheck
from the now-defunct Ice Capades, he
performed at the old L.A. Sports Arena with
the Ice Capades three times—revisiting the
sheet of ice where he used to watch performances
from the stands, stoking his interest
in pursuing a skating career. “That was kind
of spooky,” he said, speaking of getting paid
to perform in his hometown.
About two weeks before the Polar Palace
fire, Ewell and family had visited the rink
and were treated to a group lesson from renowned
skating coach Mabel Fairbanks, who
had paved the way for minorities to receive
opportunities to participate in the pursuit of
ice skating. Fairbanks was later elected to the
U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame.
Once the Polar Palace burned down, LA-area
skating coaches and budding skaters scrambled
to find a new venue to sharpen their skating
chops. Ewell said that he took a respite from
skating for a bit, but then discovered the Culver
Ice Arena. When the family checked-out the
Culver City facility, they were happy to see
Fairbanks gliding out on the ice, resuming her
teaching duties. Ewell said he started taking
lessons again.
Ewell was under the coaching tutelage of
Fairbanks for about seven and a half years.
He started progressing through the local figure
skating championship tiers. “It was OK, and
I was moderately successful,” he said. Unbelievably,
he said, he won his first foray into
the novice level tier back in Nov. of 1966. “I
was shocked,” he said. Ewell began climbing
the figure skating competition ladder with
some success.
He then moved up to the junior level,
which Ewell said, was initially challenging.
He struggled with the required compulsory
figures mandatory in skating competitions,
but excelled in the “jumping and spinning”
movements that were part of the competition’s
free-skate program.
Ewell worked on improving his compulsory
figures and his free skate program and soon
made it to his first national competition in
January of 1969, but was still lacking in
racking-up points with his compulsory figures.
The next year, Ewell was still working with
Fairbanks, but had also started collaborating
with a renowned skating coach, Englishman
John Nicks. When Ewell went to the nationals
in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the association with
Nicks clicked, with Ewell capturing his first
national title.
For a couple of years, Ewell skated in pair’s
competitions with partner Michelle McCladdie,
another Fairbanks protégé. The duo captured
the junior national pairs crown in 1972 in the
competition that was held in Long Beach.
Soon, Ewell and McCladdie decided to turn
pro and joined the Ice Capades. McCladdie only
lasted on the circuit for two years, wearying
of the constant travel and off-kilter hours. But
for Ewell, he was thriving, because he was
“doing what I loved to do. Skate. I would
have skated until my legs fell off.”
Ewell said that skating with a partner
requires precise synchronization and that mistakes
made by the team are more noticeable
to the judges, while skating singles allows a
little more room for improvisation. He related
a story about a singles competition in Tulsa,
that when he came out of his solo spin, he
got turned around and exited the spin heading
in the wrong direction on the sheet of ice. He
completed his program and wasn’t aware that
he had made a miss-step until he was preparing
to exit the ice when a security guard quietly
pointed-out to Ewell that he was trying to
exit at the completely wrong end of the ice.
Ewell spent 12 years with the Ice Capades,
the first Black soloist performing with the
company. “So much happens in twelve years,”
Ewell said, noting “falls, costume malfunc-
tions, splitting of the pants while doing a
split-jump...”Ewell estimates that during his
Ice Capades tenure, he was performing somewhere
in the neighborhood of 325-350 yearly
shows, sometimes dodging wayward balloons
and rolled-up snow cone cups chucked onto
the ice by mischievous youngsters.
After his Ice Capades career concluded in
1984, “I was very fortunate to have lasted
that long,” Ewell said. He took a year off
from skating, biding his time working as a
bartender with Denny’s restaurant chain. He
looked-up his old coach John Nicks, who saw
that Ewell still had his skating chops, and
counseled him to hook-up with the European
version of Holiday on Ice, a gig that lasted
for the next eight years.
Next, Ewell started his teaching career at a
rink in Anaheim, which lasted for thirteen years.
On being a trailblazer in the somewhat insular
surroundings of ice-skating some 50 years
ago, Ewell said, “I think that I was treated pretty
fairly. There were times that I wasn’t.” But he
thinks that because he was closely scrutinized,
it helped him sharpen his skating talents because
he was always under the microscope.
“I knew if I won something, like Nationals,
I must have done well, really earned it because
(the judges) weren’t going to give that
(award) away.”
As a youth, Ewell attended Hamilton High
School, and because of the vagaries of the
schedules inherent in pursuing a skating career,
he popped in-and-out of junior college, until
he put schooling “on hold” and then landed
the job with the Ice Capades.
Ewell moved to El Segundo in 1999,
prompted by his wife at the time, Viera, who
was the one who contacted Herald Publications
about this profile. “I have just loved El
Segundo since we moved here,” Ewell said.
Ewell has two sons, Kail and CJ, currently
a freshman at El Segundo High School. Ewell
said that his current hobbies include “losing
weight” and, as a 70+-year-old man, trying
to stay a step ahead of the COVID-19 virus.
A big football fan (Rams/Patriots), Ewell
said that he was in a quandary this football
season about whether his allegiance was to
the Patriots or to some quarterback named
Tom Brady. He decided his allegiance was to
Brady, even though most of his sporting merch
is imprinted with the Patriot logo.
Ewell continues to teach figure skating,
working in Torrance. And, according to former
student, and current skating coach Stephanie
Horton, it is to skating’s benefit that Ewell
still glides over the frozen ice, dispensing
coaching nuggets and life-lessons.
Horton said that when she started working
with Ewell, she had “terrible technique.”
Over the next sixteen years, Ewell was able
to straighten out some of her technique flaws.
“He has been like a second father to me,” she
said. “He was not just a coach, but became a
family member,” attending students birthdays
and investing in his students, on-and-off the
ice. “I learned a lot of life-skills from Richard.”
Pam Hanley’s son Josh was a beneficiary of
Ewell’s on-ice tutelage. She said that before
one 20-minute lesson with Ewell, Josh was
“the worst skater in the boy’s group. After one
20-minute lesson with Richard, he became
the best skater in that group.” Said Hanley:
“Richard is extremely personable, the (was)
the perfect coach for my son.”
Danielle Ugarte coached with Ewell at what
is now the Toyota Sports Performance Center
in El Segundo. She has known Ewell for more
than 35 years. “He is a very talented skater
and wonderful coach,” she said. He is “very
generous” in sharing information with the other
coaches and noted that Ewell continued to
excel in launching jumps and spinning spins.
As we wrapped-up our 35-minute phone
interview, Ewell related that the interview
went “great!” saying that “I don’t go out of
my way to do interviews. I have always been
a little shy. When I have to put myself out
there, I panic every time.”
Well, as a trailblazing figure skater and
beloved coach and father, it seems that Ewell
has done a pretty good job of harnessing his
perceived panic attacks. •