‘When something is given you, you owe it right back.’

Alis McCurdy, 56, maintains a distant but good relationship with her three full-grown, successful children. She is an ice skating and tennis activist, and donates huge amounts of unpaid time to the kids pursuing these sports. In addition to her tennis job and environmental protection work, she also co-chairs the annual Leukemia Society Ice Spectacular fund-raiser .

I was born in Philadelphia and I have an identical twin. Our father left when we were about 5 months old because he wanted a boy and he got twin girls. Never to be seen again. Our mother really wanted a career and didn’t want to be bothered with kids.

When we were about 8, my sister and I got polio, and we turned to ice skating at a local rink to help rehabilitate ourselves physically, and really enjoyed it.

Our mother became a very famous author, Emily Kimbrough, who wrote a book called “Our Hearts Were Young and Gay,” and she wrote for the movies. So we had a really interesting life. When you move around a lot, you become--not self-centered, but your world is in yourself--and skating became a way of saying “OK, here I am and I know what I’m doing here.”

We were taught that, when something is given you, you owe it right back. So that later, after years of competing and spending time on the ice, the Philadelphia Skating Club said, “You have to become a judge to put back what you’ve taken out.”

I was a gold medalist; I knew exactly what was required. I had skated in all national and international competitions, and I knew what it was like. . . . The fear, the horror of judges and the technical aspects.

There are a series of eight tests which you take to get your gold medal and to get into Olympic Seniors competition. I have passed all of them in Canada and in the United States. I almost made it into the Olympics in 1948 and ‘52, and I think that if I had a little more parental support. . . .

It’s just that it’s nice to have parental support. I think you can only do so much on your own, and when I see the kids, I try to tell them that I think they are terrific. I never put anybody last.

I have rules, you see, and I have a little philosophy about judging. There is no such thing to me as last place. You can tie last and next to last place very easily.

I think the parent that lives vicariously through the child is going to create the child who can’t do anything for themselves. But the (child of the parent) who says: “Listen, carry your own skates, clean them up, wipe them and get there. Do it!” is the child who is going to be able to cope with a lot, with life.

I’m discouraged about the children who don’t realize there is more to life than skating. That aspect is sort of new in the last 10 years.

One of the problems is they don’t know how to get along with each other. The give-and-take in a relationship. How are these kids going to turn out if they get married? Will they get married, divorced, remarried and divorced? What kind of relationship are these kids going to have with their children?

So I feel strongly about telling them: “Why don’t you go write, or get off the blades for six weeks, and do something else.” “Take the month off, it’s not the end of the world.” Parents go right up in smoke, and I really don’t care.

The kids look as pale as the underbelly of a fish; they look awful, bored and there is no life to the music in their programs. I see the change in the kids that have taken off.

I tell them what the judge sees. I’ll tell them we have 30 seconds to judge this figure. These are the important things. Don’t fuss around with clothes, nobody gives a damn whether you’re naked or dressed. It’s what’s on the ice. These are the things we are looking at. Pay attention. Get down to the basics and stop fooling around. And I tell them I love them all.

I love people to understand how exciting it is to skate and to do it well. I wanted other judges to realize how gorgeous it can be, whatever the maneuver is, if it’s done well. You have to be very fast, very quick of the eye, to see a quick change of edge or shoulder maneuver.

They have a thing called Judges Education Training Seminar, and you get sent all over the United States to train judges. I would like to be a part of that. Because I just feel strongly about it. I want to make sure that we all agree. I want everybody to care as much as I do. Maybe that’s a little bit too much, a little overboard, but I want them to think about what they are doing (when they’re judging these kids).

I care about people, and about skating. I’m a sharer, and I want to share my love and enthusiasm and concern for the sport.