SWAMPSCOTT — History moves in weird and fluid ways, like the winding of a long, jagged stream that stretches out into unexpected directions.
Take the recent collision between the American Airlines jet and the Army helicopter, for example. It was a tragedy that took the lives of everybody on board — including the deaths of several figure-skaters from Massachusetts —but the painful truth is that the event is a dark echo of a collision in Feb.1961, which claimed the lives of an entire skating team.
Among those that were lost in that 1961 collision was Swampscott resident and talented skater, Bradley Lord, who was on his way to the World Championship in Prague when the plane crashed in Belgium.
While Lord was training to win the U.S. National Championship (in which he received a sixth-place finish), he was busy working at becoming a commercial artist as he studied at Boston University, according to an article by WickedLocal. Before the crash, he had dedicated himself to his craft and his studies, and for a second it seemed like his future was about to truly bloom.
Skating Club of Boston CEO Doug Zeghibe spoke previously with NBC10 on the unusual similarities between the two tragedies. He noted that “This isn’t the first time this club has experienced a tragedy like this,” Zeghibe said.
He continued, “It’s now a ways back, but in 1961, the entire team of U.S. figure-skating en route to the World Championships in Prague was lost in a plane crash in Belgium.” According to him, roughly half of the passengers in the 1961 crash were members of the Skating Club of Boston.
The devastating nature of the tragedy in 1961 made no sense, aside from the random spontaneity of destruction and utter doom to everyone who witnessed it – and the collision this week makes no sense for anybody, either. Events like these leave the brain in a stupor – a sort of blind paralysis that leaves you questioning whether or not you’re dealing with reality.
