Aly Hansen will tell you she did her share of crying the day after learning about the ill-fated American Airlines Flight 5342 that collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter outside Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Va, with both aircrafts plunging into the Potomac River.
Sixty-four lives aboard the aircraft were lost, including 11 U.S. Figure Skating athletes ages 11-16, two coaches and family members, according to USA Today, all who were returning from a national development camp in Wichita, Kan. All three on the Black Hawk died, according to published reports, including Durham native Capt. Rebecca M. Lobach, 28, who was a military graduate in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps at UNC-Chapel Hill.
“We are a close, tight-knit community,” said Hansen, 39, who is managing editor of Up and Coming Weekly and also coaches figure skaters at Cleland Ice/Inland Skating Rinks on Fort Liberty.
Hansen doesn’t know all of the skaters, but she knew of Jinna Han, 13, of the Skating Club of Boston, and Cory Haynos, 16, of the Skating Club of Northern Virginia.
“I knew them from watching them over the last two years,” Hansen said of Han and Haynos. “I watched her skate in September. Jinna was amazing. She was bubbly. She struck me as someone who was going to do well in our sport.”
Hansen remembers Haynos, too.
“I saw him in Charlotte,” she said.
Vadim Naumov, 55, and his wife, Evgenia Shishkova, 52, were Russian coaches who died in the airplane crash. They won the 1994 world championship in pairs figure skating, according to published reports, placed fifth in the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France, and fourth in the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway.
“I had a friend who was a friend of the Russian coaches,” Hansen said. “Apparently, they were really good coaches.”
A passion for the sport
Figure skating is a sport of athleticism, strength, beauty and grace. We have been mesmerized by it from American skating legends to include Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill, Scott Hamilton and the late Dick Button.
“I started skating at about age four,” said Hansen, who grew up in Bozeman, Mont. “I’ve been skating most of my life. There wasn’t a whole lot to do. My brother and I would grab our skates” and head to a nearby ice skating park. “My brother was a hockey player. I took [ice skating lessons] at the park.”
She never has lost her passion for the sport. Hansen says she qualified in Philadelphia for the 2020 U.S. Figure Skating Adult National Championships.
“COVID canceled it,” she said.
A graduate of Montana State University with a degree in fine arts photography, Hansen is a military wife who spends her time managing publisher Bill Bowman’s Up and Coming Weekly publication and coaching ice skating five evenings a week to students from ages 3 to 70 at the ice rink on the military base.
These have been some difficult days at the rink for Hansen and fellow coaches Kelda Nolen, who is director of the Airborne Ice Skating Team, and Amanda Ransom.
Hansen gives thought to the tragedy of Flight 5342.
“Yes, it’s devastating on several levels,” she said. “It’s a lot of East Coast skaters and coaches gone.”
Her mind drifts almost daily to the young figure skaters, and perhaps their dreams of one day becoming Olympians of gold and silver and bronze.
Hansen says she and her fellow coaches have talked among themselves.
“We have talked about a moment of silence,” she said. “It would be good for the kids” they mentor on Fort Liberty, “and good for us.”
Meticulously, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is overseeing recovery of the wreckage of the aircraft that collided just before 9 p.m., and so close to Runway 33 and safely delivering the 60 passengers and four crew members before everything went so wrong over the Potomac River.
Aly Hansen grieves for all, as well as the three lives lost in the Black Hawk helicopter.
“Some days are better than others,” Hansen said, but “on Jan. 30, I did a lot of crying.”
Epilogue
Figure skating clubs from Charlotte, Greensboro, Raleigh and Fort Liberty are close to one another, and they’ve bonded closer in wake of this tragedy overlooking the nation’s capital, just as the figure skating world grieved the loss of 18 members of the 1961 American figure skating team bound for the World Figure Skating Championships in Prague, when their Boeing 707-329 crashed Feb. 15 on its landing approach at the Brussels Airport in Belgium.
Hansen said a “a moment of silence” was held Monday afternoon at 3:35 EST on LiveBarn, a live streaming service offered in several U.S. skating rinks, which included a candlelight vigil in honor and memory of those lost on Jan. 29.
“The U.S. figure skating world really came together, and even some rinks in Canada participated,” Aly Hansen said. “We all feel it.”
Bill Kirby Jr. can be reached at billkirby49@gmail.com or 910-624-1961.
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