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

"Several members" of the U.S. figure skating community were on American Airlines Flight 5342, according to U.S. Figure Skating.

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 Skating Club of Boston lost two coaches, two young skaters and their two mothers in the deadly crash of American Airlines Flight 5342 in Washington, D.C.

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.

Those involved with the University of Delaware’s High Performance Figure Skating Center have celebrated many triumphs, including in the U.S. Nationals and Olympics. On Thursday they endured the opposite extreme,

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

'I cried. It was tough'; A figure skating mother reacts to the death of a friend in the Washington plane crash

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.

There were 64 people on American Airlines Flight 5342 from Wichita, Kansas to DCA — including 60 passengers and four crew members. The Blackhawk Army helicopter had three soldiers on board. None of the 67 people on either aircraft are believed to have survived, officials say.