UD skating coach finds gold during search for bronze

3:30 p.m., July 8, 2003--Barbara Roles-Williams knows a thing or two about keeping the faith. As a former Olympic figure skater who won a bronze medal in the 1960 games, she learned early that luck often plays as much a role in victory as does perseverance, and that lesson has continued to serve her later in life. In 1983, some 23 years after her triumph, she had her medal stolen from her and remembered quickly that it isn’t so much what you do in life as how you do it and when.

Coach Barbara Roles-Williams works with 13-year-old student Katie Hadford while NBC cameraman Bill Angelucci tapes for the “Today Show.”

That lesson came into play again last January. After two decades of going down blind alleys in search of her lost medal, Roles-Williams, who now coaches at the University’s Ice Skating Science Development Center, happened to cross paths with the right person at the right time during a chance meeting on an airport shuttle bus to the U.S. championships in Dallas. Out of sociability, Roles-Williams struck up a conversation with a fellow traveler who turned out to collect Olympic memorabilia. Not so unusual, given the setting. But, what was unusual were the circumstances. Roles-Williams’ newfound acquaintance had a stableful of leads to other dealer-collectors whom she urged the former Olympic champion to contact.

“I’d stopped looking years before because I never had any idea where it was,” Roles-Williams, 62, said, recalling her gradual acceptance of her lost medal. “When it was stolen, I had it in a box of things in my car, and when my car was stolen, I filed a police report. But, when I got my car back the box was gone. I just figured somebody had trashed it and there wasn’t much I could do to find it. I did go into a few pawn shops one time, but there was nothing there.”

Still, despite her abandoning the search, the memory of the loss haunted Roles-Williams, and when she saw a new opportunity to retrieve her medal, she couldn’t resist taking up the challenge once more. After returning to Delaware, she followed a number of leads, eventually making contact with Greg Gallacher, a collector from Long Island, N. Y., who had a bronze skating medal from the 1960 Olympics.

“I knew there was only one medal missing, because for all Olympic medals they break the molds, and there were only four made,” Roles-Williams said. “The other three were still in the possession of their owners.”

Just because the medal was hers, however, didn’t ensure that Roles-Williams would be able to reclaim it without a struggle. Gallacher, who at first agreed to sell it back to her for $4,300, quickly put up barriers the minute Roles-Williams requested an invoice.

“I talked with the New York police and my accountant, and they both said I shouldn’t just give somebody the money without knowing that I’d actually be getting the medal,” she said. “Gallacher e-mailed me for the money, and I e-mailed him back saying that I’d like a paper of some sort stating what I’d be getting for the $4,300. But then I never heard from him again, so I thought maybe he didn’t have the medal after all.”

That was the point, Roles-Williams said, when luck and fate really came into play. After hearing of her plight, a Baltimore-based journalist named Amy Rosewater contacted Roles-Williams and began some digging of her own for an article she was writing for USA Today. Taking matters into her own hands, Rosewater contacted not only Gallacher but several other collectors as well, and, more importantly still, the United States Figure Skating Association (USFSA).

“Amy took over and started being chief detective,” Roles-Williams said. “She did all the phone calls, all the legwork. She got the USFSA involved. I owe 120 percent to her.”

Shortly after Rosewater launched her investigation, the USFSA contacted Roles-Williams with exciting news: They’d purchased the medal with privately raised funds; it was in their possession and would soon be in hers once again.

During a live broadcast on NBC’s “Today Show” on Tuesday, July 8, Roles-Williams was presented with her medal by Chuck Foster, president of the USFSA. In that same heart-wrenching moment, she immediately turned around and gave it back to him, saying: “I’m breathless. This is great. But I’m going to return this to the USFSA for their collection.”

The gesture seems in keeping with Roles-Williams’ generous nature. “This is a miracle in my eyes,” she said, adding the caveat that has become the leitmotif of her life. “I don’t think you can make luck. Luck kind of finds you. But positive thinking and positive attitude always keep you moving in the right direction, and this experience has given me great faith in human nature. That someone like Amy Rosewater, whom I don’t even know very well, could devote months of her time to doing this was a wonderful insight. She got an article out of it, but that’s not why she did it.”

Article by Becca Hutchinson
Photo by Kathy Atkinson

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