Dick Button, a two-time Olympic champion in figure skating, embodied the sport. He is the 'godfather of this sport,' Tara Lipinski once said.

Sam Lilley, a young fiancé awaiting his fall wedding, was piloting the American Airlines flight that was minutes away from a safe landing when a collision with an Army helicopter plunged both aircrafts and everyone on board into Virginia’s Potomac River.

The European figure skating championships have carried on, even as the skating world mourned athletes who died when an American Airlines jet collided with an Army helicopter near Washington, D.C.

Evgenia Shishkova and her husband Vadim Naumov were from Russia but lived in Norwood, Massachusetts, close to where they coached.

Two-time Olympic gold medalist and five-time world champ was also an influential broadcaster for more than five decades.

The U.S. Figure Skating Championships took place Jan. 21-26 in Wichita, Kansas. U.S. Figure Skating did not identify any of the members of its team that were on board. Doug Zeghib

Several members' of the U.S. Figure Skating community were onboard the American Airlines plane that collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk Helicopter over Washington, D.C., the governing body said in a statement.

In addition to winning two Olympic gold medals and five consecutive world championships, he helped transform a niche sport into the showpiece of every Winter Olympics.

The figure skaters who died in Wednesday’s plane crash are mourned not just because they were young and talented but because, to anyone associated with the sport, they are part of the family.

Dick Button was the first American Olympic figure skating gold medalist in the sport back in 1948, then again in 1952.

Dick Button, the legendary figure skater who became the first American to win Olympic gold in the sport, died Thursday at age 95, according to U.S. Figure Skating. In 1948, Button, then 18, won the first of back-to-back Olympic titles.