MY SUMMER NEIGHBORS

Back in the summer of 1993 I had some interesting neighbors rent the house next to me in Dennis Port on Cape Cod. Two figure skaters rented this house; Paul Wylie and Nancy Kerrigan.
After they moved in one afternoon I was speaking with Paul and I mentioned that I had heard of and followed his skating career in the past. I hadn't heard of Nancy Kerrigan when they moved in but Paul mentioned that she was rated the third best skater in the world. Both Paul and Nancy were training for the 1994 Olympics at the nearby Tony Kent Area in South Dennis under their coaches Evy and Mary Scotvold.

I used to see Paul and Nancy come and go in their red and white Hondas with Olympic plates. I would also run into Nancy at the local video store and other places around town. Quite often I would see TV camera vans parked at their house.

One afternoon that summer my parents arrived from Connecticut to visit me. I went out to greet my parents and noticed that it looked like Nancy's parents had come to visit her at the same time. We were about 20 feet away from Nancy and her parents but her parents particularly Nancy's mom wouldn't look over to where my parents and I were in my yard. Later
I found out why Mrs. Kerrigan didn't even glance over at my parents and me. While watching the Olympics in January of 1994 there was a segment on Nancy's mother Brenda and how she is legally blind and how she would have to get about 1 to 2 inches from the television screen to watch her daughter perform. So, as radio announcer Paul Harvey would say "that is the rest of the story".

Later of course Nancy Kerrigan became a household name when the Tonya Harding gang whacked her in the knee. "Why ? Why?" did that happen? I don't know.

Nancy ended up finishing 2nd to Oksana Baul at that Olympics by 0.01 of a point. Oksana trained in Simsbury,Connecticut which is where I went to High School.