Daily News | Gerry Mahoney Tilghman, ice skating prodigy, Ice Capades star, model, and teacher, has died at 88
Gerry Mahoney Tilghman, 88, formerly of Bryn Mawr, a dynamic ice skating prodigy who became a headliner for Ice Capades, and Holiday on Ice, a model, and skating teacher, died Friday, Sept. 16, of a pulmonary embolism at her son’s home in Colorado Springs, Colo.
She trained with pioneering coaches Gustave Lussi, Bob Dench, and Rosemarie Stewart. John Harris, then producer and president of Ice Capades, told the Main Line Times in September 1951 that Ms. Tilghman “is the best possible prospect we have had for stardom in the 12-year history of Ice Capades.” Fame and fortune, Ms. Tilghman often said, were unintended consequences of her spending so much time on skates. Her real joy, she said, was that “I found peace on the ice.”
Her son, Bill, became a professional ice skater in the 1980s, and she taught skating at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs while he was in the area to complete his skating instruction. “The ice was like a magnet for her,” her daughter said. “She could spin like a top into her 70s.” Born Oct. 30, 1933, in Philadelphia, Gertrude Mahoney was the oldest of seven children and attended Misericordae Academy, now Merion Mercy, and the Academy of Notre Dame de Namur before leaving to skate on tour. She met medical student Walter T. Spelsberg while working in a department store after she retired from skating, and they married in 1956.
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