Bill "Flash" Bogash (November 22, 1916 – March 20, 2009) was a
roller derby
Roller derby is a roller skating contact sport played by two teams of fifteen members. Roller derby is played by approximately 1,250 amateur leagues worldwide, mostly in the United States.
Game play consists of a series of short scrimmages (jam ...
skater and coach.
Born in
Chicago, he began his career in 1935 during the
Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
, and skated until 1958.
Bogash's career began after he and his mother attended the first
Transcontinental Roller Derby in Chicago on August 13, 1935, a six-week race that tracked skaters' total distance traveled in laps around a track on a US map. He and his mother,
Josephine 'Ma' Bogash joined the second race in September of that year, in
Kansas. After racing with many teams throughout the 1940s, Bogash led the New York Chiefs to their first Roller Derby World Championship in 1949. Towards the end of his career, Bogash skated for the Los Angeles Braves.
After retirement in 1958, Bogash went on to be a
restaurateur
A restaurateur is a person who opens and runs restaurants professionally. Although over time the term has come to describe any person who owns a restaurant, traditionally it refers to a highly skilled professional who is proficient in all aspec ...
in
Los Angeles,
California, with some of the most incredible steaks and twice-cooked potatoes on Earth! He died of
respiratory failure on March 20, 2009.
He was inducted into the
National Roller Derby Hall of Fame The Roller Derby Hall of Fame, also known as the National Roller Derby Hall of Fame, was founded in 1952,William H. Young and Nancy K. Young, ''World War II and the Postwar Years in America'', p.596 by the editors of the ''Roller Derby News'' paper. ...
in 1953
[ ]
References
1916 births
2009 deaths
Roller derby skaters
American roller skaters
Sportspeople from Chicago
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