Nathan Chen!
When I was in middle school, a friend influenced me to collect celebrity autographs. I don’t know what prompted her, but I got intrigued. I wrote to some actors (Brian Austin Green from Beverly Hills, 90210, anybody?), and I wrote to some athletes.
Back in the day, there was no such thing as the internet, so I had to be resourceful to find these celebrities and hand write letters to them or their agents.
Some of these public figures did respond back, surprisingly.
My quest for skating autographs continued into my adult years, and I make it a point to ask for autographs when the situation presents itself.
What I’ve learned over the years is that several skating celebrities will make appearance at Adult Nationals. Sadly, I have not competed at the past 2 Adult Nationals, so I missed out.
Thankfully, a good friend (hi, S!) looked out for me at last year’s competition. Nathan Chen happened to be in town and stopped by the rink to do a meet-and-greet. S was able to get an autographed postcard for me and mailed it to me as a Christmas present.
So now my skating celebrity autograph collection includes:
- Paul Wylie
- Nathan Chen
- Kimmie Meissner
- Jason Brown
- Elvis Stojko
- Scott Hamilton
- Ekaterina Gordeeva
- Kurt Browning
- Gracie Gold
- Brian Orser
You’ll see that my red notebook below contains several of these skating celebrities.
Do you collect celebrity autographs? If so, how did you obtain them?
Eva, what a collection of skating stars! And the list goes on and on–that is a fun way of marking skating and personal history. I especially like “jump for joy!” So true!
Author
That was written by coach Doug Haw. He was actually impressed that I attempted some difficult jumps during a clinic he co-taught with Brian Orser last summer. Even though I didn’t land any, I tried!
Always follow your heart from Jason– I love it. I do have some skating autographs, but I don’t always– even don’t usually anymore– collect them. Sometimes it just seems awkward when you kind of know the person. But just from being around skating events I have a fair number. I went to a fundraiser after the earthquake in Japan at Detroit Skating Club where we each had a card signed by a lot of skaters including Meryl and Charlie, the Shibutanis, Alissa Czisny and Yuka Sato. And I have a ‘lucky’ warmup jacket signed by Johnny Weir.
Author
AHHH – I’m so jealous that you got to meet all these skaters!