Marilyn Meeker (born February 16, 1942) is an American former
ice dancer
Ice dance (sometimes referred to as ice dancing) is a discipline of figure skating that historically draws from ballroom dancing. It joined the World Figure Skating Championships in 1952, and became a Winter Olympic Games medal sport in 1976. Ac ...
. With partner
Larry Pierce, she captured the junior title at the
1959 U.S. Championships. Competing on the senior level the following year, they won the silver medal at the
1960 U.S. Championships and placed fifth at the
1960 World Championships.
World Dance results 1960, at estakefans.com
Meeker broke her ankle in training in December 1960, six weeks before the 1961 U.S. Championships.[ Pierce joined forces with Diane Sherbloom and won the gold medal at Nationals. Pierce and Sherbloom were killed, along with the rest of the U.S. Figure Skating team, when their plane (]Sabena Flight 548
Sabena Flight 548 was a Boeing 707-329 flight operated by Sabena that crashed en route from New York City to Brussels, Belgium, on February 15, 1961. The flight, which had originated at Idlewild International Airport, crashed on approach to Br ...
) crashed near Brussels, Belgium on the way to the World Championships.
As of January 2014, Marilyn (Meeker) Durham resides in New Braunfels, Texas
New Braunfels ( ) is a city in Comal and Guadalupe counties in the U.S. state of Texas known for its German Texan heritage. It is the seat of Comal County. The city covers and had a population of 90,403 as of the 2020 Census. A suburb just nor ...
with her husband of 52 years, John. They have two adult children, Diana and Mark, and two 21-year-old granddaughters Sarah and Sterling. Durham attended the 2011 National Championships in Greensboro, SC, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1961 World Team disaster. She stated that she finally found closure at this event, which she attended at the insistence of her close friend Sandy Schwomeyer Lamb.
Results
(with Larry Pierce)
References
American female ice dancers
Sportspeople from New Braunfels, Texas
Living people
1942 births
21st-century American women
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