ROLLING ‘ROUND AGAIN : Skating enjoys freewheeling days after boogieing off the scene with disco.

Meet Pat Hathaway of Reseda, Dave Schwam of Burbank, Thelma Sutton of Montrose, Lillian Fait of Garden Grove, Percy Moor man of Eagle Rock, Bill and Mary Chandler of Altadena, and Manny Dwork of Los Feliz.

They’re well into their 60s and 70s, but each can be accused of impersonating a fun-loving minor.

At an age when many of their peers think of themselves as retired and not rewired, they converge every Tuesday night in Glendale to swerve, sway and swirl to the beat of live organ music.

On roller skates .

Here they come, on a roll at high speeds, weaving effortlessly and often backward through hordes of skaters at the Moonlight Rollerway--open since 1956 on the site of a World War II aircraft parts plant--and making it all look so outrageously easy that everyone seems 19 again.

Roller skating.

It’s still ice skating’s stepchild, a pastime born in 18th-Century Europe and first popularized in America in 1863 when a Massachusetts inventor named James Plimpton introduced a “rocking skate” that enabled skaters to maneuver in curves.

And it’s an activity that stumbles and all but crash-lands every now and then, still trying to shed what one promoter calls its once tawdry image of “roller domes, resin on the floor and 12-year-old kids sneaking a smoke in the aisles.”

Now, a dozen years after it toppled hand in hand with its partner-in-music, disco, roller skating scrambles to its feet again--tugged by the rise of in-line (or Rollerblade) skating among teen-agers but given even bigger nudges by upgrades in conventional four-wheeled skates and by the health and fitness revolution.

At Moonlight and San Fernando Valley area rinks such as Northridge Skateland and Holiday Skating Center in Lancaster (a Santa Clarita rink is scheduled to open late this summer), roller skating comes in assorted packages for kids ages 8 to 80 (not counting newborns pushed by “stroller-skating” parents): just for fun, private parties, dance and figure skating competition, and roller hockey, a demonstration sport in the 1992 Summer Olympic Games in Barcelona. (Sherman Square Roller Rink in Reseda offers no public skating, but opens for private groups and roller hockey.)

Why do they do it? What it is about roller skating that appeals to so many senior citizens (and, for that matter, youngsters and in-betweens)?

“At my age, it’s the good-looking men!” Pat Hathaway, 63, a regular from Reseda, quips as her friends--all confirmed skaters she’s cavorted with since they were teen-agers in the 1940s--dissolve into gales of laughter.

Hathaway describes herself as a “roller derby queen,” 1947-vintage. She says she still has the combat medals to prove it--a chipped left elbow and a broken tailbone that she says never fully healed (“I can’t sit too long”)--along with mementos of her work as a stand-in actress in “The Fireball,” a 1950 motion picture in which Mickey Rooney plays a hotshot roller skater who suffers from an economy-size ego.

One of Hathaway’s longtime skating companions--Dave Schwam, 65, a Burbank carpenter--agrees that roller skating can keep you young at heart, if not help fight off Father Time.

“You see those older gals out there,” he tells a visitor, “and you’ll see that they don’t have that wrinkly fat on the back of their legs.”

Schwam, Hathaway and many other senior citizens at the Moonlight Rollerway trace their friendships to the 1940s when, as youngsters, they hung out at the Hollywood Roller Bowl, the Shrine Auditorium and other roller palaces.

Many have skated together through the decades, while others took time off to pursue careers and raise families before rediscovering roller skating--and each other--at the Moonlight Rollerway, a place stuck in a time warp.

On this Tuesday night, owner-operator Dominic Cangelosi plays live organ music--”Ain’t Misbehavin’,” “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” “Bye Bye Blackbird,” “Boogie Woogie.”

The fare is clearly tailored to the crowd of mostly svelte and remarkably supple seniors among the 150-odd skaters, along with a few younger couples and small children who glide counterclockwise atop a 17,000-square-foot hardwood floor, amid swirling lights from two reflecting-mirror balls overhead.

It’s a place where the fun never sets, a world so distant from the headlines and cacophony of the Los Angeles riots and the Rodney G. King case that it’s not unusual for black and white skaters to join hands as partners whenever Cangelosi uses the public address system to invite patrons onto the rink for a “couples only” set.

“What you see here is the most natural kind of integration,” said Thelma Sutton, 74, of Montrose, who is white and took up skating last fall. “Skating makes us all feel happy.”

A longtime skater, Lillian Fait, 63, of Garden Grove, who is also white, slumps onto a bench, clad in a skimpy costume held up by thin shoulder straps.

“I don’t know of anyone who’s prejudiced here,” she said. “If there was, we wouldn’t tolerate it.”

A black skater, Julian Jackson, 58, of Los Angeles, grins at the mere mention of racial harmony among the Moonlight’s regulars.

“We’re all over the hill,” he said. “We’re too old to fight.”

It’s late afternoon at Northridge Skateland--and school’s out.

Throngs of children--many from day-care centers--strut their stuff on traditional skates with four wheels made of urethane (“quad skates,” the kids call them) and on in-line skates.

Rock music by Rosala, the Movement and the B-52s blasts from 16 loudspeakers mounted on two walls, just below a ceiling with flashing strips of multicolored lights.

Suddenly, a young skater screeches clumsily to a halt, his skates grinding across the blond northern maple floor.

“Will you stop showing off!” a girl shrieks from alongside the rink. “You are a crazed maniac!”

It’s galaxies removed from seniors night at Moonlight Rollerway (which also caters to youngsters with recorded contemporary music that one senior calls “junk stuff”).

At Northridge Skateland, sandwiched between a U-Haul dealership on one side and a pizza parlor, Chinese eatery and liquor store on the other, the mood smacks of up-tempo Hollywood--a place where celebrities such as Cybill Shepherd and Michael Jackson have skated, Henry Winkler’s daughter learned to skate and the late Michael Landon filmed a TV commercial.

“It’s almost like a nightclub for kids,” said David Fleming, 38, who with his brother, Mike, purchased the facility from their father.

The Flemings say they are vigilant about security and warding off rowdyism by youngsters. The rink has no gang problem, officials say, adding that their behavior and dress codes address discipline and safety.

“If a skater’s hat falls on the floor, it could cause a major accident,” says Josette McGlynn, the rink’s marketing director. “We take a common-sense approach to discipline. Children need to understand that they must obey rules, and parents must know that they can feel free to leave their youngsters here in a safe, family-oriented environment.”

David Fleming says the rules also combat loitering. “If they want to come in, they’ve got to skate,” he says.

With 100 to 500 skaters coming to Northridge Skateland on most nights, it’s easy to wonder what keeps so many others away.

“They think roller skating is hard,” said Sahar Karimiha, 13, a student at Northridge Junior High. She said she has skated since about the beginning of the year. “It’s fun, once you get the hang of it.”

A show of hands among youngsters ages 6 to 12, who visit Northridge Skateland once a week from a nearby day-care center, accorded equal popularity to “quad skates” and in-line skates (the latter have their wheels in a single line and are said to be faster but less maneuverable).

In-line skates have what David Fleming calls a positive effect on roller skating’s current appeal, accounting for about 10% to 15% of its surge, he said.

“The quads,” he said flatly, “make it easier to learn to skate.”

Roller skating is also said by some experts to boost self-esteem and to improve youngsters’ social skills.

As youngsters, David and Mike Fleming met their future wives at Northridge Skateland, back when they scrubbed floors and painted walls for their father, who purchased what was then Valley Skateland in 1968 (and who also met his wife-to-be at a roller rink).

The Fleming brothers plan to build another roller rink--the first in Santa Clarita--late this summer as part of a planned $4-million family entertainment center called Mountasia, on an 8.8-acre site on Golden Triangle Road next to Soledad Canyon Road. The facility will also include miniature golf, a large game room, go-carts, bumper boats, batting cages and a retail shop.

It will be the first Mountasia project in California--there are more than 20 others across the United States--and the first with a roller rink, David Fleming says.

“It’s getting harder for skating centers to make it on their own,” he said, “especially in places where real estate is so expensive. I think the wave of the future is going to be skating centers as part of a larger complex of activities.”

Of the more than 2,000 roller rinks nationwide, about 70 operate in California, according to experts who monitor the sport.

“I keep seeing very encouraging signs around the country,” said George Picard of the U. S. Amateur Confederation of Roller Skating, headquartered in Lincoln, Neb.

The number of roller skaters in the United States has increased to 32.6 million--up from 30 million in 1990, according to estimates by the Roller Skating Assns., a promotional group made up of more than 1,100 skating-center operators nationwide.

“But in many ways,” Picard said, “roller skating is like jogging. It’s cyclical. I can remember when you couldn’t pick up a copy of People magazine without seeing photos of hot-dog skaters and Dustin Hoffman, Cher and Elvis Presley at private skating parties.”

A key to roller skating’s success hereafter, Picard says, will be its hold on youngsters and their parents, many of whom increasingly rely on skating rinks for day care.

“Many parents feel good about their kids at the roller rink,” he said, “because, frankly, most of these kids are safer there today than they are in school.”

“Roller skating,” said Allen Selner, a Sherman Oaks podiatrist, “is one of the best fitness sports around that’s not all that well-known.”

A decade ago, little if any scientific data existed on roller skating’s health benefits. So Selner and UCLA’s Department of Kinesiology studied 25 men and women between the ages of 22 and 54 who hadn’t participated in aerobic exercise but were taught to roller skate. They skated for an hour, four times a week, for 10 weeks.

Result: Roller skating, like running or cycling, boosted aerobic capacity and reduced body fat and stress, Selner said, adding that skating at 11 m.p.h. (a moderate pace) will burn about 660 calories per hour, about the same as jogging at 6 m.p.h.

“The best thing about roller skating is that it burns calories without the trauma, the jarring of running or aerobic exercise,” Selner said. “And when you skate in a rink, you’re fighting centrifugal force, which also helps burn calories.”

Percy Moorman, 78, of Eagle Rock--a regular at the Moonlight Rollerway--agrees, although he says he needs no testing to prove it to himself.

“I don’t feel any older today than I did when I was 16,” said Moorman, who learned to skate as a child on the sidewalks of Pittsburgh, where he later taught dance skating and skated as a floor monitor at public rinks.

Bill Chandler, 63, and his wife, Mary, 62, of Altadena also grew up in Pittsburgh, where they met at (where else?) a skating rink. They, too, frequent the Moonlight Rollerway, where, as Mary puts it, “we’re all one big family.”

Long after proprietor Cangelosi steps down from the organ platform and shuts off the houselights, one “family” member is the last skater to leave.

“This is our life,” 75-year-old Manny Dwork of Los Feliz said wistfully, gazing at the dark, dead-quiet roller floor. “If they ever sold this place, I don’t know what I’d ever do.”

Where to Roller Skate

Public skating sessions only.

Holiday Skating Center, 45431 23rd St. West, Lancaster. (805) 945-4543 or (805) 945-4544. MONDAY: First Monday each month, 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. (Christian music), $3.50 admission (free skate rental). TUESDAY: 10 a.m. to noon (adults), $3 admission (free skate rental). WEDNESDAY: 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. (after-school skate), $2 admission (free skate rental). 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. (adults), $3 admission ($1.50 skate rental). THURSDAY: 10 a.m. to noon (adults), $3 admission (free skate rental). 7 to 9:30 p.m. (family night), $9 family admission (up to five members of one family; must include one parent), skate rental free. All others, $3 admission ($1.50 skate rental). FRIDAY: 7 to 10 p.m. first session, 9 p.m. to midnight second session, $3.50 admission ($1.50 skate rental). Both sessions, $5 admission ($1.50 skate rental). SATURDAY: 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. (tiny tots, 12 and under), $2 admission (free skate rental); adults, free admission ($1.50 skate rental). Noon to 3 p.m. and 3:30 to 6:30 p.m., $3 admission ($1.50 skate rental). 7 to 10 p.m. first session, 9 p.m. to midnight second session, $3.50 admission ($1.50 skate rental). Both sessions, $5 admission ($1.50 skate rental). SUNDAY: 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. (tiny tots, 12 and under), $2 admission (free skate rental); adults, free admission ($1.50 skate rental). 1 to 4 p.m., $3 admission ($1.50 skate rental). 6:30 to 9 p.m. (family night). $9 family admission (up to five members of one family; must include parent), skate rental free. All others, $3 admission ($1.50 skate rental).

Moonlight Rollerway, 5110 San Fernando Road, Glendale. (818) 241-3630. TUESDAY: 8 to 10:30 p.m. (organ music), $5 admission. WEDNESDAY: 8 to 10:30 p.m. (organ music), $5 admission. FRIDAY: 3:30 to 5:30 p.m., $3.50 admission. 7:30 to 10 p.m. (first session), $5 admission. 9:30 to midnight (second session), $5 admission. Extra session (skaters who stay over from first to second session), $3 admission. SATURDAY: 10 a.m. to noon, children 12 and younger and parents, $3.50 admission (free skate rental). 1:30 to 4 p.m., $4 admission. 7:30 to 10 p.m. (first session), $5 admission. 9:30 to midnight (second session), $5 admission. Extra session (skaters who stay over from first to second session), $3 admission. SUNDAY: 1:30 to 4 p.m., $4 admission. Skate rental: Add $1.50 to each admission unless otherwise noted.

Mountasia Family Entertainment Center, Golden Triangle Road near Soledad Canyon Road, Santa Clarita. Scheduled to open in late summer.

Northridge Skateland, 18140 Parthenia St., Northridge. (818) 885-7655. Schedule through April 10: MONDAY: 7:30 to 10 p.m. (Christian music), $4 admission. TUESDAY: 7:30 to 11 p.m. (17 and over), $5 admission. WEDNESDAY: 10 a.m. to noon (adults), $4.50 admission (skate rental included). 3 to 5:30 p.m., $4 admission (skate rental included). 6:30 to 9:30 p.m., $4 admission. (Family rate $8 for up to five family members; one parent must be present; skate rental extra). THURSDAY: 8:30 to 10 p.m., adult pickup hockey. $7.50 admission. FRIDAY: 7:30 to 10 p.m., $5 admission. 9 to 11:30 p.m., $5 admission. $1.50 extra admission for those who stay over from first to second evening session. SATURDAY: 10 a.m. to noon (suggested 10 and under), $3 admission. 12:30 to 4:30 p.m., $4 admission. 7:30 to 10 p.m., $5 admission. 9 to 11:30 p.m., $5 admission. $1.50 extra admission for those who stay over from first to second evening session. SUNDAY: 12:30 to 4:30 p.m., $4 admission. 7 to 10 p.m., $4 admission. (Family rate $8 for up to five family members; one parent must be present; skate rental extra). Skate rental: Add $1.50 to each admission unless otherwise noted.

Sherman Square Roller Rink, 18430 Sherman Way, Reseda. No public skating, but private skating parties and pickup roller hockey (7 to 11 p.m. Fridays and 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays). (818) 345-6902 or (818) 344-0866.