People You Know: He's got to skate, skate, skate

LEWISTON — John L. Marquis grew up in Lewiston, one of nine children, second youngest, with a single pair of old steel roller skates to share and a long, wooden porch that beckoned.

“We’d skate back and forth, take them off, give them to the next one,” said Marquis, 78. “If I got to skate it was a miracle.”

But he hung tough and stayed with it, eventually walking almost four miles each way to the Rollodrome when it opened in 1954. Back in the day, there wasn’t much else to do.

“We didn’t have a couch, we had no TV, video games or any of that stuff,” said Marquis. “Skating was the big get-out-of-the-house. We all had chores, which was not fun, but skating was fun.”

These days, it’s just firmly, solidly entwined with his identity. He’s been on wheels for nearly 75 years, and on ice skates for almost as long.

“It’s my thing, it’s me,” Marquis said. “When I put my skates on, that’s it.”

The Rollodrome opened the same year he started high school. He and his younger brother would shovel snow or cut lawns for pocket money.

“So we would walk to the Rollodrome, rent skates, skate all night, walk back home,” Marquis said.

After high school, he joined the Air Force. For several years, he was stationed around the U.S., which gave him a chance to roller skate all over.

Once back home, he started what would be a 30 year-career at General Electric in Auburn. He got his son, Andrew, skating at age 6 and cemented a family tradition.

“(Andrew) started his (kids) at 3 and 5 and they’re skating already,” Marquis said.

These days, he isn’t fancy — “I don’t skate backward anymore, the parts are wearing out” — but he is focused.

At Thursday night skates at the Rollodrome, Marquis’ regular night out for the past 30 years or so, he gets the hi’s out of the way, then it’s all business.

“When I’m skating I can’t be distracted,” Marquis said. “You don’t skate like that while you talk to someone or the both of you are going to kiss the floor and it don’t taste good, I know. If I had one dollar for every time I had fallen down whether roller skating or ice skating, I’d be a zillionaire.

“Nobody skates and doesn’t fall,” he said. “Somebody tells me, ‘Oh, I never fell’ — you never skated.”

These days, he tries to roller skate and ice skate once a week, though he takes some of the warmer weeks off from ice skating in the summer.

If he had to choose a favorite between the two — and to be clear, he’d rather not — “I probably have a slight lean to wheels.”

He’s convinced that remaining so active has stopped him from aging. He’s maturing, he said, and having fun, with zero plans to stop.

“I have skated more than 70 years and I have greatly enjoyed it, so why not 70 more?” Marquis said. “And don’t think I’m kidding, I’m serious. I’m looking at 70 more years of skating. There’s a secret to doing this: Don’t drink, don’t smoke and don’t do any medicine.”

Marquis recently had a Bates College student marvel at his moves, telling him: “When I saw you doing that out there, dancing the way you dance, holy cow!”

Marquis let him in on his plans to keep skating another 70 years.

“He just laughed and went over to tell his friends,” he said.

kskelton@sunjournal.com

John Marquis enjoys a leisurely night out at the Rollodrome in Auburn on Thursday night. (Andree Kehn/Sun Journal)John Marquis ties up his roller skates before his regular Thursday night roller skate. (Andree Kehn/Sun Journal)After a night of roller skating on Thursday, John Marquis leaves the Rollerdrome for the evening. (Andree Kehn/Sun Journal)