Honor Richardson, a former speed skater who trained generations of children in the ice sport and helped run a farm-tractor sales business, died of complications of Parkinson's disease Saturday at her Marriottsville home. She was 84.
The winner of two gold medals at the 1974 U.S. Senior Olympics at Lake Placid, N.Y., she taught at Northwest Family Sports Center, a Mount Washington ice rink. She retired about 14 years ago.
Born Honor Elizabeth Miller in Baltimore, she grew up on Haddon Avenue and was president of the junior class at Forest Park High School, where she graduated in 1938.
Family members said she became interested in ice skating at age 13 and walked daily to the old Carlin's Iceland near Park Circle. A year later, she was presented a silver cup for her speed skating by Charles Jewtraw, a 1924 Olympic speed-skating gold medal winner.
She won the Maryland Speed Skating Championship in 1937 and 1938 and caught the eye of skating performer Roy Shipstad, a founder of the Ice Follies.
"He had asked me to join the lineup in the Ice Follies, and my parents didn't want me to do that," she said in an Evening Sun article in 1975. "I married at 19 and then, even after children, I kept on skating."
In 1939, she married Norbert John Richardson, who survives her. They opened a Gravely farm-tractor dealership, N.J. Richardson & Sons, at Windsor Mill Road and Gwynn Oak Avenue in Woodlawn in 1954.
Mrs. Richardson was the dealership's vice president, kept its books and demonstrated tractors at the Howard County Fair and Maryland State Fair. They later added a line of Kubota tractors and had salesrooms in Towson and Woodbine.
Mrs. Richardson continued her skating at Carlin's and at the old Sports Centre at North Avenue and Charles Street, where a photograph was taken for the Baltimore News-Post of her doing barrel jumps. She then moved to the Northwest rink, where she taught speed skating for many years.
In 1964, she founded the Silver Blades Speed Skating Club of Baltimore and the Maryland Speed Skating Association.
"There was no speed skating south of New York at that time," said Jackie Eliasberg, a friend and fellow skater. "Her driving force was to do the best. She stressed that to her pupils, to always do your personal best. She wanted to help children to gain a competitive edge they would need in their adult life. She saw it as part of good sportsmanship."
