USASJ Story Project- Dec 23 SHEFFIELD

Art Roscoe in the New York Times in 1954

STORY No. 66

MICK SHEFFIELD

Age 60

North Hampton, NH

It seems to me that ski jumpers are some of the best story tellers.  Maybe it's just that they do crazy stuff and so the stories are better when told later in life.  I'm related to one of those story tellers.

My uncle, Art Roscoe Jr, grew up in Allegany State Park in western NY during the 1940's.  He attended school at a one room school-house in the Park which taught grades 1-6 for all the kids of the area.  The school happened to be across the street from two ski jumps- a 30m and a 50m- that had been built in the 1930's.  Art loved to tell the story of his start in ski jumping which began during recess from that one-room school house.  The kids would go across the street to the jumps and if they really hurried, they could get in two or three jumps before the teacher called them in. (I doubt that any elementary schools today would allow five and six year old kids to practice ski jumping at recess unsupervised).

Art went on to be captain of the ski team at Syracuse University and almost made the 1956 Olympic team in Nordic Combined.  He was unable to compete after college primarily because he was commissioned in the Air Force and kept getting stationed down south.  

 I have attached two pictures.  The first shows the kids in front of the ski jumps during recess.  Art is the youngest on the far left.  The second picture is from the front page of the Sunday NY Times in January 1954.  It was taken at Bear Mountain near New York City.  The actual competition was rained out that day.

Sadly, Art passed away three years ago.  He would have loved to have read these stories of other jumpers.

We all miss him and his stories 

School is in session:  the jump across from the one-room school house in Allegany State Park in western NY.
Art Roscoe is far left.

Editors note-  In communicating with Mick, he offered the following by way of explanation for how he came to be on the USASJ list:  In keeping with the story telling theme, I should probably tell you how it is that I am even on the list to receive these emails from USASJ.

  I was on a flight from NH to Baltimore a few years ago and happened to be seated next to a young guy who it turned out had been a competitive skier.  He was quite modest, but after some prodding he did admit to being a ski jumper.  More questions and it turned out that he had been a world class jumper.....national team, Olympic team and all that sort of mundane stuff.  I think he might have even had a world record for a short period of time.  I finally got his name and it was Mike Holland.  He really was very modest about his career, but upon learning that I had some family connections to the ski jumping fraternity, we struck up a long conversation.  When he found out that I was in the Property Management business in NH,  he said that I should look up his old friend Rex Bell in Portland Maine.  I did that and it turns out that Rex had jumped in some the same hills in Western NY that my Uncle had jumped, but obviously not at the same time as Art Roscoe Jr who was a generation older.