When Roy Blakey was 10, and roller skating along the level horizons of Enid, Okla., he saw an ice-skating movie with Olympic sensation Sonja Henie gliding over mirror-like black ice.
"With all the swirling and dancing and jumping, I thought, this is the most magical thing I've ever seen in my life," he said.
He began clipping stories about ice skating shows, and snaring posters when he could. He charmed five-star hotels into mailing him anything — anything — from their latest ice skating extravaganzas.
This was in the 1930s and '40s, when many grand hotels had small ice rinks, around which their clientele of swells could nibble at lobster or sip champagne while watching ice skaters in lavish costumes (or sometimes, barely any costumes at all) twirl and glide. Minneapolis' Hotel Nicollet, now long gone, had its own 20-foot-square rink.
Blakey eventually became a professional skater, touring 15 years in ice shows around the world and performing in those swank hotels himself. "I was at the Conrad Hilton in Chicago for five years," he said. "Two shows a day, seven days a week. It was a magic, magic time."
And he kept collecting.
Today, his assemblage of skating memorabilia is, by all accounts, the world's largest. He has 10 of Henie's spectacular costumes, along with publicity photos, posters and programs from shows in Europe, Japan, the U.S. and South America. He has lunchboxes, ashtrays, Wheaties boxes and coffee mugs featuring skaters — from 1920s superstar Charlotte to current Olympians.
The IceStage Archive is on public display Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the first time Blakey has opened his doors since the World Figure Skating Championships were held in Minneapolis in 1998. (Answers to unasked trivia questions: Alexei Yagudin and Michelle Kwan.)