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Olympic gold medalist talks seriously about insurance

Olympic Gold Medalist Scott Hamilton addresses the audience gathered at MassMututal Life Insurance Company last Wednesday. Reminder Publications photo by Debbie Gardner
By Debbie Gardner

PRIME Editor



SPRINGFIELD Skating made him a household name.

And he did share some Olympic memories with his audience.

But it was another story that brought 1984 Olympic Gold Medalist Scott Hamilton to the campus of Mass Mutual Life Insurance Company the morning of Sept. 6.

It was the story of how a lack of life insurance nearly ended his skating career before it really got started.

Hamilton appeared at Mass Mutual's Springfield Campus, and later that day at the company's Enfield office, as a national spokesperson for Life Insurance Awareness Month, a nation-wide event sponsored by The Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education (LIFE).

Hamilton, a Mass Mutual policyholder since 1989, talked about how his mother's death from breast cancer when he was just 19 devastated his family, not only emotionally, but also financially.

His mother was a teacher, and her salary had been critical both to supporting the five-member family and to paying for Hamilton's ice time and other skating expenses.

"Because of the financial burden of my skating, she had no life insurance," Hamilton said. "Not only had we lost everything [emotionally], we were about to lose our future [when she died]."

According to Hamilton, had it not been for an anonymous Chicago couple who volunteered to take over his training expenses shortly before his mother died, he never would have made it to the Sarajevo Olympics in 1984.

"And there are 68 million Americans today with no life insurance, when it takes everyone [contributing to a family] to make it work," Hamilton said, quoting industry figures.

He then told another story of tragedy equally close to his heart, of taking a practice skate with his friend, Olympic Skating Pairs Gold Medalist Sergei Grinkov just hours before Grinkov's three-year-old daughter was to come and watch her father perform in Hamilton's Stars on Ice show.

"Ten minutes later, 28-year-old Sergie Grinkov died of a massive heart attack. He had no life insurance," Hamilton said. "[Insurance] is about security for your family you never know what can happen."

Joking with his audience about his own hobby of "collecting life-threatening illnesses" he overcame a mysterious illness that stopped his growth and development as a child and as an adult has survived both testicular and benign brain cancer Hamilton said his message to the public as a Life Insurance Awareness spokesperson "isn't about paranoia, but preparedness."

He related how, now that he is the father of a three-year-old, he's glad he took the advice he was given as a young, single, healthy Olympic Gold Medal winner that the time was right to buy life insurance.

"I was broke, I had no family . but it was the best piece of advice I've ever been given," he said.

"The only way to truly be immortal is by what you leave behind," Hamilton said, referring to his own brush with death shortly after the birth of his son.

He referred to raising a family without life insurance as "skating on thin ice."