The Skater

J. MICHAEL MCG'EAN '49' lives on the edge,

As a 1991 U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame inductee, McGean knows a lot about pressing against the edges to get outstanding results. His latest achievements have been on the ice in Thompson Arena, where he has coached the Dartmouth figure skating team to three intercollegiate championships in as many years. This winter he and daughter Loren McGean '92 were preparing the club team to host this year's national intercollegiate team championship in mid-April.,

McGean has been on the ice since he was 8. As a college freshman he played hockey against veterans who were returning from combat to complete college under the Gl bill. "It was hard-nosed hockey," he says. "Coach Eddie Jeremiah would throw out the puck and everyone would compete. After I lost my teeth I turned to squash."

Despite a crooked smile, he didn't lose his passion for skating. During one summer break McGean took up figure skating in Lake Placid, New York, where he met U.S. ice dancing champion Lois Waring, who would later ask him to be her partner. He agreed. "You don't pay a lot of attention to the man in ice dancing," he says. "I was along for the ride." Dancing to live orchestral music in England, the pair won the first-ever world championship in 1950. They married two years later.

He returned to Hanover in 1953 and for almost 40 years filled the post of Secretary of the College, serving as head of alumni relations for four presidents and thousands of alumni until his retirement in 1992. Through some significant changes—coeducation, the implementation of the year-round Dartmouth Plan, the enrollment of an increasingly diverse student body— McGean was a familiar and popular campus presence. Alumni from the late 1950s onward will recognize many of the programs McGean initiated or managed: the organization of Dartmouth clubs and the many events held around the world for students accepted to the College, the Wearers of the Green Hall of Fame, and a vast continuing education program through the Alumni College and the Institute for Lifelong Education at Dartmouth (ILEAD).

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