A Family Pays Price of Success : Figure skating: Eldredges sacrifice money--and their time together.

Something to consider when planning the youngsters’ weekend activities:

John and Ruth Eldredge took their boys, Todd and Scott, to the local ice skating rink one night. They wound up taking out a second mortgage, raising funds in the community and living apart for more than five years.

Too late to mention the benefits of simply staying home to the Eldredges.

Said Coach Richard Callaghan, “There was one spot in the skating schedule where it had gotten so busy that Todd was home a total of 12 hours in two years.”

Todd now is the two-time U.S. national figure skating champion and is competing in the World Championships in Munich this week.

Next stop, the 1992 Olympic Games in Albertville, France.

“The end is in sight,” John Eldredge said. “If you’d told me 10 years ago what we would go through, I wouldn’t have believed you. But we’ve made this commitment on Todd and we cannot cut back on what we’re doing because it takes a total commitment.

“In fact, it takes more than a total commitment for somebody like that to get where he’s going because there’s only room for one where he wants to go.”

The Eldredge’s determination to give their boy the opportunity to succeed, however, nips at everything dear to a family. They knew nothing about the demands of figure skating, and now know too much to quit.

John and son Scott have remained in South Chatham, Mass., working as commercial fishermen, while Ruth and Todd have followed Callaghan across the country.

When Callaghan took up residence in Colorado Springs more than five years ago, so did Ruth and Todd. When he accepted an assignment as the director of skating for the San Diego Ice Arena three years ago, they packed again to begin training here.

In a good year, Ruth makes it back to South Chatham to see her husband maybe three times. This year has been tough, and John has been unable to visit San Diego.

“How do you explain that to people?” John said. “You don’t. You tell them what we’re doing and they look at you like you’re crazy. And sometimes when I’m sitting here alone, I wonder about that.

“I know it’s very different. Would I do it again? That’s a question I’ve been asked several times, and my wife and I have discussed that several times. I don’t know. I suppose . . . I don’t know.”

Scott is 16 months older than Todd and plans to attend college, but money is tight and there can be no skimping on Todd’s rise to prominence.

“There are some people who feel it’s unfair to Scott, but that’s the situation,” John said. “It’s not a problem with Scott. We have to do what we’re doing for Todd, and we’ll try to do what is best for Scott.”

It has been an emotional and financial tug of war for the Eldredges. Skating success has rewarded their perseverance, but family outings simply aren’t the same.

“We started off as a family of four,” John said. “It dwindled to three when Todd joined Callaghan in Philadelphia at age 10, and now we’re down to two. We’re two here, and they’re two there.

“People ask me, ‘How’s his life?’ and I tell them they know as much as I do. When I get to see him, it’s almost like seeing a different person. You know how fast they grow.”

In the beginning, Mom and Dad were simply trying to do what was right for their child. It’s not their fault their boy couldn’t hit a baseball.

“I did play Little League and I was horrible--struck out every time,” said Eldredge, who is 5 feet 8. “In football, I always got wasted and I was too short for basketball.

“From watching figure skating on television I remember seeing champions like Scott Hamilton and Robin Cousins and seeing the glory they got. I think that would be just phenomenal to achieve what they have achieved.”

Mom and Dad, meanwhile, were simply out for some fun with the family.

“A Sunday night on the ice, and that was going to be that,” John said with a laugh.

Said Ruth, “We started the boys in hockey skates on that outing, but after going to the rink, Todd wanted to jump and spin. We spent $35 for hockey skates, and of course you can’t jump and spin in hockey skates. So it was, ‘What are we going to do, buy this kid who isn’t even 6 yet another pair of skates?’

“To this day, I blame my husband, because he’s the one who said yes.”

This year, it cost $1,000 merely for the costume their son will be wearing in his short program in Munich. The skating lessons continue, now too many to keep track of, at $65 an hour. And there is the cost of practicing and private and group lessons with the American Ballet School.

There is also the expense of maintaining two households on opposite coasts.

“We have no security in our future,” Ruth said. “But we have our kids, and that’s more valuable than money in the bank. There isn’t any money in the bank, and I don’t give a damn.

“John and I both feel (Todd is) only a kid once and he will have this opportunity only once. It’s only a few years of our life. If we’re not here to give them what we can give them, then what are we here for?”

By the middle of 1985, John and Ruth had given everything they could to Todd’s development. They had been to the bank so often to apply for loans they were mistaken for employees.

They were two weeks away from ending Todd’s competitive skating career when their plight came to the attention of neighbors in South Chatham, a summertime resort that shrinks to 6,400 residents in the winter.

“They had literally exhausted their own funds,” said Norman Howes, a friend of the family. “So some people got together and had a clambake to raise some money. We also had videos of his skating and had little house parties.

“We’d have people look at how good he was, and no one knows at that age what’s going to happen, but we asked them to sign five-year pledge cards. That first year we raised $10,000. We’ve been doing it every year since, and I think our biggest year is something like $32,000 or $33,000. It’s a piece of Americana.”

Eldredge has returned to South Chatham to perform for his patrons and they have been impressed.

“Everybody has had to sacrifice,” Howes said. “He’s given away his childhood, and they have obviously sacrificed a normal family life for the dream of one person. But I don’t think there’s anyone more appreciative of that than the person himself.”

The U.S. Figure Skating Assn.’s Memorial Fund also helps defray expenses, but it’s South Chatham that keeps Todd on ice.

“Thank God for those people,” John said. “We could never have kept it up. It would have buried me.”

Meanwhile, Todd has advanced steadily and now has won the U.S. senior title twice.

He first won it in 1990 on the strength of his performance in the compulsory figures when flashy Christopher Bowman had been forced to withdraw because of a back injury.

“The win was considered a fluke,” he said. “I had something to prove this year.”

The International Skating Union, however, eliminated the compulsory competition this year. For a technically sound skater like Eldredge, it was like taking the fastball away from Roger Clemens.

But Eldredge went triple axel to triple axel with Bowman and emerged the champion once again. His long program was ranked first by six of the nine judges, and it has propelled him into the spotlight at this week’s World Championships.

“It gives me a better shot at the worlds,” Eldredge said. “They know I successfully repeated as champion. They’ll open their eyes and say, ‘Maybe this guy is pretty good after all.’ ”

His fifth-place in last year’s world competition was an eye opener.

“The first time you’re in a world event, you have to pay your dues,” Callaghan said. “But he was beating people who had six and seven years of paying their dues. I think Brian Boitano was ninth in his first worlds and Scott Hamilton 11th.”

A former Ice Capades and Holiday on Ice performer, Callaghan expected to find a long and bumpy journey to the top for Eldredge.

“The fact he mentally pulled off the national competition this year makes me think he’s even stronger than I thought he was,” Callaghan said. “When Todd won last year, that put him way ahead of schedule. He had previously ranked fifth, and all we were trying to do was break into the top three and he wins the thing.”

Eldredge’s fascination with figure skating became evident to Callaghan at their first meeting.

“He was one of a 100 in a skating camp in Rochester, N.Y., but you couldn’t help but noticing him,” he said. “He had such concentration and such a love for skating.

“He talked his parents into coming down on weekends to Philadelphia, where I was coaching, and then he moved into a skaters’ house we had there at age 10.

“I don’t know how they’ve done it. I can’t comprehend emotionally and financially what he and his parents have gone through. I have a 16-year-old daughter, and I can’t picture sending her away at age 10. And I wouldn’t.”

But there is no pressure from Mom and Dad. Never has been.

“It isn’t difficult to please my parents,” Todd said. “They are really behind what I’m doing. I know the sacrifices they make--Mom and Dad don’t get to see each other as often as they like.”

At this year’s national competition, Callaghan thought that maybe things were moving too rapidly for his protege.

But Eldredge won again, as he had at 18, when he became the youngest national champion since Scotty Allen in 1966.

This week Eldredge will skate to the upbeat “Master of the House” from “Les Miserables” as he takes another step toward the Olympics. Both Ruth and John will be in attendance.

“If he gets there, great,” John said. “If he doesn’t, no regrets. He’s had a great career and I think he’ll turn out to be a very successful person in whatever he decides to do.”