Hours before her death, 12-year-old figure skater Olivia Ter was busy taking a step back in time.
Ter, who died in the Wednesday, January 29 plane crash above Washington D.C., was enjoying the exhibits at the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum the afternoon of the crash, according to a story published in The Washington Post on Sunday, February 2.
Andrew Ter, Olivia’s grieving father, recalled his daughter excitedly messaging him on WhatsApp about a typewriter she saw at the museum. Specifically, Andrew said Olivia noticed how the typewriter didn’t have a backspace.
Later that evening, Olivia and her mother, Oleysa Taylor, were killed when their American Airlines flight collided with an Army helicopter near D.C.’s Ronald Reagan National Airport. At least 14 figure skaters were onboard the flight, which was returning from the U.S. National Development Camp in Wichita, Kansas. There were no survivors.
Andrew did not accompany his wife and daughter on the trip because he was overseeing construction on the family’s new home, so he stayed behind with the couple’s older daughter, Anne, 14.
“I don’t know what to do right now,” Andrew told the Post. “I don’t need that house anymore.”
Olivia, who earned a place at the highly-selective Development Camp after placing 4th at the Eastern Sectionals last year, had become fiercely passionate about the sport in recent years.
“That’s all she wanted to do,” her father said. “All she wanted to do is ice skating and ice skating.”
Andrew explained how Olivia really committed herself to skating during the COVID-19 pandemic. “That was the only outlet,” Ter said.
Figure skater Maxim Naumov boarded a flight out of Wichita just days before his parents were killed when their American Airlines plane crashed into the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, January 29. Naumov, 23, competed at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita on Sunday, January 26, with his parents, Evgenia Shishkova and […]
Maria Elena Pinto, a coach at Ion International Skating Center in Leesburg, Virginia, where Olivia trained, said the young skater had a bright future ahead of her.
“She was on that road to Olympic level,” Pinto told the Post. “In my heart, I know she would have made it.”
Sergei Baronov, Olivia’s primary coach, described the late figure skater as “a cheerful, positive, talented, goal-oriented girl.”
“She loved listening to music and doing ballet, but her favorite activity was, of course, figure skating. She had big plans for figure skating and she made huge progress over the last season,” Baronov told The Skating Lesson. “Honestly, I learned from her every day how to be positive and what the latest news in music was. This is a very big loss for the family, for the figure skating community, and for her friends. It is very painful to accept this reality.”
