A Skate Odyssey: The Rise and Fall of an American Family

By Dennis Hinton

This memoir is about an incredible skating family that started with Iley and Marie Hinton, two extraordinary visionaries within the skating community. They birthed a lifelong love, four children, eight grandchildren, but also opened their arms and lives to so many. This book is a rare and intimate glimpse of their struggles and achievements, and their abiding love for their family. Dennis “Deserio” Hinton invites his readers on an odyssey to uncover personal stories of growing up under the watchful eyes and generous hearts of his family. His experiences give a raw peek into an iconic skating era that spanned decades, and of their family that started over 50 years ago. This bittersweet collection of milestones helped to shape Dennis and his iconic family, and the thousands of lives that grew up within the walls of Skate Odyssey. As the story reminds us, the Hintons were brought together by destiny, passing on lessons in hard work, dedication and love of skating.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781365217531

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A Skate Odyssey: The Rise and Fall of an American Family

A Skate Odyssey:

The Rise and Fall of an American Family

Dennis Hinton

Edited by Paula M. Bradley

Copyright © 2016 by Dennis Hinton

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2016

ISBN 978-1-365-21753-1

Published by: Cara Hinton, Tampa, FL

www.facebook.com/Dennisdeserio

Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, educators, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the above listed facebook address.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the memory of

Carol McCory

Skate Odyssey North organized a speed skating team soon after opening its doors in 1977, when there were no regulations or laws regarding helmets. Carol was on that team. One afternoon at practice she fell, striking her head on the floor, and was taken to the hospital. Several days later, Carol died in the hospital as a result of the swelling to her brain. Iley Hinton vowed to prevent that from happening to other skaters. He lobbied the Roller Skating Association, which eventually enacted a regulation for helmet use in competitive speed skating. Carol McCory saved the lives of many as she skated into heaven.

Acknowledgements

Many athletes, when they win championships, will thank God, or even Jesus Christ, for their success.  I would like to do the same.  As my mom always says, Life is Strange!  If you have a personal relationship with the Creator, then strange it may be, but divine as well. 

I too thank God for all of life’s good times and the bad ones.  I thank him for my creativity, and for my ability to see life's creation for the pleasure it is.  Through my journey and my family’s business, Skate Odyssey, I have had the pleasure of meeting so many wonderful people.  For that, I thank God.  It was His plan that I had that experience.

My wife Cara and her family did not enter my life until after the Skate Odyssey era; however, she and they came into my life at a time when I really needed family balance and heartfelt love.  Eventually, Cara's mother, Barbara Bulgarelli, took it upon herself to do a genealogy search of my family, which taught me a lot about my heritage and background.  Barbara’s work is partly what inspired me to write what I always felt should be shared: the story of my family’s amazing roller skating (and life) journey.  It's not necessarily better than other families’ stories; it's just our story, and I think it is an interesting one. 

Another member of Cara’s family, her sister Paula Bradley, has some experience writing and, more importantly, editing (perhaps another divine placement in my life).  I want to thank Paula for editing this book with family love and care, and for taking the time and effort to help make my family’s story (which she is now a part of) into a book I am proud to offer to the rest of the family.

Preface

This book was written to tell the journey of Iley and Marie Hinton and their four children; the history and legacy of a competitive roller skating family. It is told through my eyes as their youngest son. 

It was destiny that brought fourteen-year-old Marie and seventeen-year-old Iley together at the Fountain Ferry skating rink in Louisville, Kentucky, where they discovered their shared love of skating and their love for each other.  These loves would become the foundations for their future, including marriage, family, reward and loss, chances taken, business successes and struggles. This journey saw their roller skating business, Skate Odyssey North, make its mark as one of the greatest roller rinks of the great skating era.  It also dealt them a turn of fate that forced them to start their business over at a time when that great era was waning.  I learned so much about my parents by watching how they handled each situation.

I am writing this book to honor my Dad and Mom.  They were genuinely good people.  They always gave my siblings and me everything they possibly could.  Of course, they didn’t have a Parents’ Instruction Book, but learned from mistakes along the way. They both worked hard to provide food, a home, plus wonderful experiences of traveling through competitive skating.  They also showed us how success can be achieved through discipline and hard work.

This story is written only from my own perspective, aided by the stories, comments and memories that others have shared. My timeline might be vague, however I have done my best to provide an honest account of the Skate Odyssey journey, and the way it affected our family and others.

Thank you Mom and Dad for giving me life, for always loving me and, most of all, for forgiving me.

Just a skating rink, I think not! A once in a lifetime chemistry, Iley and Marie Hinton, with the help of destiny, created a 20-year business that touched the lives of so many people.  This story, like so many families, would have their ups and downs and hidden secrets that only a family knows about each other.  From the valued employees, the coaches and competitive skaters, and the general public that roller skated every week, the Skate Odyssey legacy was born.  Skate Odyssey, Tampa, Florida, opened in 1977, and officially closed its doors 20 years later, however lives on in the hearts of all those who rolled across its floor.  A few hundred skaters gather annually to remember this icon, even to this day.  I grew up at Skate Odyssey on Facebook has approximately two thousand followers.  It is a true testimony for the memories and the love for roller skating these followers share.  Skate Odyssey created an amazing extended family; for so many a home.

Odyssey: a journey or voyage; to travel in time

A skate Odyssey is the story of Iley and Marie Hinton, how the love for each other and for skating took the young couple on a journey to find success.  Although success can be measured in awards and accolades, it comes with a cost.  Iley and Marie would face failure and grief with the highs and lows of their journey.  From the time I could walk, I was raised to roller skate, compete, and win.  Dennis Hinton would become the competitor, who shared a body with Dennis DeSerio, the entertainer.  This story is told in my honest review as Dennis Hinton, of how the Hinton family was like a Rising Phoenix, from the fire and burning ashes arose a legend.  For all the people Skate Odyssey touched, we will forever be the children that grew up at Skate Odyssey

Dennis Hinton

Chapter 1: Kentucky Poor

My parents were born in Kentucky, and met in Louisville (pronounced Loo-a-ville by the locals).  The state of Kentucky has always been predominantly agricultural and rural in nature.  There is some industry and a few urban centers, but on the whole you can get a feel for Kentucky by describing its beautiful hills and soulful bluegrass traditions. 

Iley Gilbert Hinton and Marie Jean Hall were born around the time the United States was entering the Great Depression.  Whenever I hear stories about their lives in that time, I have a visual image in my mind of the events taking place in black and white.  If color movies can be defined as rich with color, then black and white seems poor and desolate to me. These mental images are strengthened by the fact that all the old photographs are in black and white.

I really know more about my mother's past than my father’s, and her early life is really interesting, so I thought I would start with who she was first.  (I have to thank my mother-in-law Barbara Bulgarelli, an avid genealogist, who helped me put some pieces together on Mom’s early life story.)  Mom was born in 1930.  She had two older sisters, Mary and Anne.  Mom always told me that her birth father had left the family when she was born, and that her mother, my grandmother Ruth, raised her and her sisters in an alley (later described as an attachment on the rear of a building) in Louisville.  At the time, my grandmother worked at a laundromat in Louisville cleaning, ironing, and folding clothes.  Mom always bragged later in life about the excellent laundry skills she was taught by my grandmother, which I always thought of as an odd thing to be proud of, but it highlights the family’s poor, working-class Kentucky roots.

The research and historical records suggest that my grandmother was a bit of street person and a little bit of a hustler, too. In fact, we believe that Marie’s actual birth father was not my grandmother’s husband (although I have never shared this new information with Mom).  It appeared that my grandmother was having an affair with a neighbor, and along came Marie (oh, the