Jean Paul, Maxx, Tracie, Scott, Aidan, and Evelyne Hamilton in 2023.Photo:Courtesy Scott Hamilton
Courtesy Scott Hamilton
WhenScott Hamiltonwas a younger man, he never dreamed he’d one day be a father of four.
In fact, he never even thought he’d get married.
“I was all about the skating,” he says. “I felt unworthy of a relationship. like I didn’t have anything to offer.” That changed when he met Tracie Robinson, a nutritionist. “My heart jumped,” he says of meeting her. “Something in me flipped.”
The two married in 2002, and in 2004, they welcomed their first son Aidan. Becoming a father was so profound for Hamilton, now 65, that he stopped performing inStars On Iceand dedicated himself to being a family man.
“I was adopted, so I never really met anyone of my birth family or anything like that. So when he was born, it was the first time I saw flesh of my own flesh. It was remarkable,” he says. “I decided I want to be a full-time dad. So I got off the road, and I was a full-time dad.”
Aidan, now 20, is currently training to fight in theUFC.
“He’s loving it,” says Hamilton, whorecently celebrated 40 yearssince his gold-medal performance at the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics. “It’s given him purpose, it’s given him identity, I see all the things that I had when I was training in skating. It’s not just what he does. It’s who he is. And he’s now competing in doing jujitsu tournaments, and he’ll start doing the whole MMA [mixed martial arts] stuff sometime over the next year.”
Hamilton adds that he takes no credit for Aidan’s competitive streak.
“And I don’t take any blame either!” he jokes. “My dad was a biology professor, and I became a spandex wearing ice skater!”
His younger son, Maxx, 16, is currently homeschooling and studying theology.
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“He’s this independent, really dedicated Christian,” Hamilton says. “He’s so into scripture and he’s going to be a pastor, or he is going to be a leader in some way, shape or form. The second he picked up the Bible, it changed every cell in his body. I’ve never seen anything like it. In the last two years, he knows the Bible backwards and forwards.”
“When the earthquake happened, 250,000 people died in 30 minutes. It was unspeakable, unspeakable devastation. Tracie couldn’t stop crying, and she said, “I have to get down there to help.' About a year later she went down for the first time, and she’s been back 28 times since.”
Scott and Tracie Hamilton in 2017.Rick Diamond/Getty
Rick Diamond/Getty
Tracie was in Haiti doing a medical mission with their son Aidan at an organization when they saw a Christmas ornament with Jean Paul’s face on it. On the back it said what Jean Paul wanted for Christmas. The woman who ran the organization told Aidan that it was Jean Paul, and he was “very funny, very smart, very athletic.”
The family got Jean Paul and his sister Christmas gifts and were eventually able to visit the orphanage and meet him and Evelyne. “Jean Paul wouldn’t leave Tracie’s side,” Hamilton says. When he finally got to go to Haiti to meet them as well, Tracie warned him that Evelyne was much more shy. “She told me, don’t be offended if she doesn’t engage,” he said.
However, he said that the second his foot hit the pavement when he got to the orphanage, two arms went around his waist. It was Evelyne. “She was in my arms the entire time,” he says. “She always be sitting next to me, looking up at me, and I thought, ‘What’s going on here?’ And I realized that the Lord was preparing my heart for her to just wreck it. And so we realized we were supposed to bring them home.”
It didn’t happen immediately, but three years later they were able to bring the children to live with them in Nashville. “It took three profound instances of divine intervention for us to make that happen, but they’re now our son and daughter and they’ve been that way for nearly 10 years.”
Jean Paul, Maxx, Tracie, Scott, Aidan, and Evelyne Hamilton.Courtesy Scott Hamilton
Bringing them home to become part of their family in America “has been a big adventure,” Hamilton says. “It can be hard bringing older kids here from difficult places. There was the first time they rode an escalator, or drank out of a water fountain and you think, wow, there’s so much our kids take for granted that these kids have never seen.”
He says both children, now 23 and 18, are thriving. “Jean Paul is going into the Air Force,” he says. “And my daughter is college bound, but she’s trying to work that out, and figure out what that might look like for her. She’s just beautiful and amazing and oh so smart.”
Hamilton says he realizes that becoming a dad of four — and everything else that has happened in his life — was no mere coincidence.
“I had faith before I met Tracie but it wasn’t organized,” he says. “I’d pray, because when you’re in world championship skating, you pray a lot. When you’re putting yourself out in front of millions of people, you pray a lot. And when you are diagnosed with cancer, you pray a lot. So I knew about that, but I didn’t know really the nuts and bolts of it.”
“But when Tracie and I started going to church together, and it was amazing. It just connected every single dot for me. It was like all things that happened weren’t accidental.” He adds, “To have my children and just how amazing they are and my wife and how amazing she is? I never would have dreamed any of it.”
source: people.com
