Roy Blakey, who had a photo studio on East Hennepin for many years, was a skater with Holiday on Ice. He also amassed a large collection of ice skating memorabilia. A memorial service was held for him Saturday, Sept. 7. (Provided)
Ice skater, photographer Roy Blakey passed away Aug. 23 at the age of 94.
Roy Austin Blakey was born in Tulsa, Okla., on July 19, 1930, to Bernard and Josie Blakey. As a child, he was enthralled by the Technicolor movie musicals of the 1930s and ’40s, but it was a black and white movie, starring the ice skater Sonja Henie, that he said, “changed my life.”
Blakey decided then that skating in an ice show was something he had to do. Growing up in Enid, Okla., he dealt with the lack of a skating rink in town by excelling at roller skating. At the same time, he began collecting magazine and newspaper articles about ice shows and wrote to skating stars for autographed photos. He would ultimately spend 15 years performing in ice shows around the world, while adding to what became one of the world’s largest collections of figure skating memorabilia.
A stint in the U.S. Army during the Korean War brought Blakey to Germany, where he remained after his discharge to join a local ice show.
He began studying photography while skating at Chicago’s Conrad Hilton Hotel, then embarked on a world tour with Holiday on Ice. He established himself as a professional photographer in New York City, making portraits of many famous names in show business. After 25 years of photography there, he moved to Minneapolis in 1993, sharing studio space with his niece, Keri Pickett, a local, well-known photographer with multiple published books and exhibitions, and whose works have appeared in Life, Time, People, Stern and Geo magazines.
After remodeling his living and working space in Pickett’s East Hennepin Avenue building, Blakey continued his photography business, doing mainly shots of people in the entertainment business, as well as dance photography. He continued to archive his vast ice-skating collection at https://www.ice
stagearchive.com/ and made multiple trips to Southeast Asia, a place he came to love after traveling there as a skater with Holiday on Ice.
At a Lakewood Cemetery memorial on Saturday, Sept. 7, family members recalled trips with Blakey to Belize, Key West, Hong Kong and Burma. Pickett said Blakey never married, saying he really believed in love, “and never wanted to fake it. He was very quiet person, a very private person, and his relationships with his skaters and all of his friends filled him tremendously … at the end of his life … he was so peaceful, and the last six months that we got to spend together were so special.”