Isaac Irving Brokaw was an American figure skater, artist, lawyer, and financier. He represented the United States at the 1908 Summer Olympics in the figure skating competition, becoming the first American to compete in a sport included in the Winter Olympic program. After he won an international prize in Switzerland, he brought the International Style of skating back to the United States. His book, "Art of Skating" was known as the figure skater's bible.
Personal life and family
He was born in New York City on March 29, 1871 as Isaac Irving Brokaw to Isaac Vail Brokaw and Elvira Tuttle Gould. He was a member of a wealthy New York City family, his father having founded the Brokaw Brothers men's clothing stores. His brothers were lawyer and sportsman George Tuttle Brokaw, Howard Crosby Brokaw, and Frederick Brokaw, who drowned at Elberon, New Jersey, while a student at Princeton. Noted cousins included sportsmen William Gould Brokaw and Clifford Vail Brokaw, their sisters Florence Brokaw, of Martin Hall, and Lilla Brokaw. On February 4, 1903, Brokaw married Lucile Nave in St. Joseph. Her family co-owned the Nave & McCord Mercantile Company, a chain of wholesale stores in the Midwest. They had three daughters:
Barbara Lucile, who married Leonard Jarvis Cushing.
Louise Elvira, aka Mimi, who married Richard Derby Tucker.
Lucile, who married, first, James Duane Pell Bishop; second, Rombout van Riemsdyk; and third, Roelof Carel DeBoer. She became an artist. Lucile Brokaw was the model for what is considered the first "action" fashion photograph, taken by Martin Munkacsi and published in Harper's Bazaar in 1933. In it she appears running down a beach.
As a figure skater, Brokaw competed in early national championships in the United States that predated the U.S. Figure Skating Championships and won the events in 1906 and 1908. He competed at the 1908 Summer Olympics in figure skating, where he placed 6th. The 1908 Olympics were the first Games in which figure skating was contested. Brokaw became the first American to compete in skating, and by extension any Winter Olympic sport, at the Olympic Games. He was later elected as an honorary president of the U.S. Figure Skating Association, and made large contributions to skating techniques. Brokaw graduated from New York Law School and 1907, but never practiced law as a profession. He was also a well-known artist, and a member of The Salons of America, an art society, and also of the Huguenot Society. In the 1910, Brokaw wrote the book "The Art of Skating", which was referred to as the "figure skater's bible" by Time Magazine. In 1976, he was posthumously inducted into the United States Figure Skating Hall of Fame.
