David Jenkins

To become a world and Olympic champion in any sport is an achievement only a few can claim. For brothers to achieve this with back-to-back victories in closely paralleled careers is an even more unique happening.

This was the case with Hayes Alan and David Jenkins who joined the state’s most elite group of athletes in 1969 when elected to Colorado’s Sports Hall of Fame. Like Earl “Dutch” Clark, one of the charter members of the Hall of Fame, they are graduates of Colorado College and while gaining their athletic fame, were residents of Colorado.

Hayes Alan, the eldest of the brothers, won four world figure skating championships while working toward Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude honors at Colorado College. Under the coaching of Edi Scholdan at the Broadmoor Ice Palace, his skating came to climax in the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina, Italy, in capturing the men’s division Gold Medal for the U.S.A. He was twenty-two years old at the time.

Also on that 1956 Olympic squad from the United States was Hayes’ younger brother, David, who finished third and just behind another American, Ronnie Robertson.

David captured world titles four times from 1957-60 and duplicated his brother’s feat in the 1960 Olympics in Squaw Valley, California.

David, too, graduated from Colorado College with a Phi Beta Kappa key and Cum Laude honors in chemistry. He also went on for an advanced degree, gaining his M.D. at Western Reserve University in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. He came back to Colorado briefly in 1967 to serve at the Air Force Academy Hospital. After that, David made his home in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he taught Intestinal Disease at the University of Oklahoma, Tulsa Medical College and engaged in the practice of Gastrointestinal Disease. He and his wife, Barbara, had three children, Christa, Thomas and Andrew. David took up tennis too, and says his greatest moment in sports was witnessing his brother’s Olympic victory, although his own was certainly a close second.

While David was winning his Olympic gold medal, a pretty blond from Ozone Park, New York, was doing the same thing for the women’s division. She was Carol Heiss, who later was to become Hayes Alan’s bride.

The Jenkins’ mother, Mrs. Sarah Jenkins, remained in Colorado Springs after her sons Olympic success. She was a librarian at the Charles L. Tutt library on the Colorado College campus, a position she held while the Jenkins brothers were attending college and skating their way toward international fame and glory.