Bill Bogash, 92; Was Pioneer Roller Derby Star
Bill Schenley
'Flash' Bogash started out as a team with his mother,
fellow Roller Derby Hall of Fame skater Josephine
'Ma' Bogash. He was also a coach and popular player
representative for the sport.
Photo:
http://rollerderbyfoundation.org/db2/00197/rollerderbyfoundation.org/_uimages/BillyMaBogash.jpg
(Kind'a creepy)
FROM: The Los Angeles Times ~
By Dennis McLellan
Bill Bogash, a pioneer Roller Derby star who launched
his legendary career on skates as a teenager during the
Great Depression when he teamed up with his mother,
has died. He was 92.
Bogash, a resident of Yucca Valley, died of respiratory
failure March 20 at Hi-Desert Medical Center in nearby
Joshua Tree, said his wife, Georgia.
"Billy Bogash was truly one of the greatest stars on the
banked track," wrote Gary Powers, executive director
and curator of the National Roller Derby Hall of Fame
in New York City, on the hall's website. "He shaped and
guided the sport like few other skaters and was
instrumental in helping make Roller Derby the sensation it
became during the late '40s and '50s, when the
banked-track sport was the talk of the nation."
Dubbed "Mr. Roller Derby" by his fellow skaters, Bogash
launched his 23-year skating career in 1935 when he was 18.
The impetus came when Bogash and his mother,
Josephine, attended the first Transcontinental Roller Derby
race at the Chicago Coliseum in August of that year.
Roughly patterned after six-day bicycle races and
Depression-era dance marathons and walkathons, the
Transcontinental Roller Derby was the brainchild of Leo
Seltzer. He was the former owner of a chain of Oregon
movie theaters who staged commercial walkathons
before tapping into the popularity of roller-skating.
The Transcontinental Roller Derby simulated a race from
one end of the country to the other: Each two-person
team -- consisting of one male and one female -- skated
laps around the track and covered about 100 miles a day
over a period of six weeks.
A large map of the United States on the wall kept track
of the distance the skaters traveled each day.
Bogash's mother, a diabetic who started roller-skating
after her doctor told her she should exercise, tried out for
the Roller Derby and was offered a job. But she told Derby
officials that she wouldn't go on the road unless they also
took her son.
Josephine and Billy Bogash made their team debut that
September, at the second Transcontinental Roller Derby
race, held in Kansas City.
Bill Bogash, who was born in Chicago on Nov. 22, 1916,
was an ice skater when he started "but not much of a roller
skater," former Roller Derby skater Mary Youpel told The
Times this week.
"He became one of the very best skaters we ever had,"
said Youpel, who joined the Roller Derby in Chicago in
1936 and skated until 1958.
Youpel, who spelled her name Youpelle during her skating
days, said Bogash "used his ice-skating skills to become
a great skater. He skated low, with long strides; he was
a very graceful skater, really."
Recalling those early years, Youpel said the Roller Derby
skaters traveled by bus and lived in the buildings they skated
in. And Ma Bogash, as she was billed, "was kind of the
mature person for the whole Derby, so she looked after the
girls."
"You stayed in your quarters at night, and she told you
what to do and what not to do," Youpel said. "She was the
mother hen, I guess you'd call her."
Youpel said both Ma and Bill were "wonderful."
"All of us girls would go to Ma if we had a problem, and
Bill was a very quiet kind of guy, but a very jovial guy,"
she said. "He always had a joke or something to say and
got along with everybody. Even on the track, if things would
go wrong, he was there to try to calm it down."
Roller Derby soon evolved from a marathon-style event
with two-person teams into a competition involving two
teams of five men and five women each. The men and
women alternated time on the track, and reworked rules
brought more crowd-pleasing physical contact among the
skaters.
When Roller Derby was televised in the late 1940s, Youpel
said, "it became a big deal because now people that couldn't
go to the games could see it at home, and we drew a lot of
fans that way."
In 1952, Ma Bogash became the first female skater inducted
into the Roller Derby Hall of Fame.
Bill Bogash was inducted a year later.
"He was called 'Flash' Bogash; he was very fast and very
agile," recalled Nellie Wilson, who skated in the Roller Derby
from 1952 to 1964 under the name Nellie Montague.
As chronicled on the hall of fame website, Bill Bogash led
numerous teams around the nation during the 1940s and
coached the New York Chiefs to the first Roller Derby
world championship at Madison Square Garden in New
York in 1949.
Bogash later led the Los Angeles Braves when the Derby
moved west from New York in 1954 and continued skating
with the Braves over the next several years. He also was
the player representative for all skaters in negotiations with
Derby management.
"If there was a problem with management, you went to Bill,"
Wilson said.
After hanging up his skates in 1958, Bogash spent 24 years
running Sanborn House, a Los Angeles restaurant that he had
bought a few years earlier.
In 1971, Bogash helped launch the Roller Derby Has Beens,
a group of former skaters who met for annual reunions.
"To us, he's Mr. Roller Derby; he's been around so long
and involved so long," Wilson said. "Last year, when he
came to the reunion, all the skaters stood up and applauded
when he came through the door."
Bogash, who was married three times, is survived by his wife
of 50 years, Georgia; his sons, Billy Jr. and Scott; his
daughter, Sharon Guccione; three grandchildren; and 10
great-grandchildren.
A celebration of Bogash's life is pending.