[6] In 1931, he helped organize and promote "walkathon"s, which at that time was another name for dance marathons, since most dancers ended up merely shuffling around for the duration of the contests, which could run as long as 40 days.
[6] His first commercial walkathon was held in Denver, Colorado, with twenty-two more to follow,[7] including events at the Lotus Isle amusement park in Portland, Oregon.
Sometime in early 1935, Leo read an article in Literary Digest magazine that said ninety-three percent of Americans roller skated at one time or another during their lives.
Discussing the article with some of the regulars at Ricketts, a restaurant in Chicago's Near North Side, Seltzer was challenged to come up with a sport utilizing roller skating participants.
336652),[16] and on August 13, 1935, twenty thousand spectators filled the Chicago Coliseum to see 'Colonel' Leo Seltzer's Transcontinental Roller Derby, a mythical marathon race from one end of the country to the other which incorporated both male and female participants on a banked track.
Seltzer's game and traveling troupe of skaters evolved and continued to have moderate growth, but it was not until November 29, 1948, when Roller Derby, broadcast on television from New York City's 69th Regiment Armory, captivated the nation.
Roller Derby was finally the smash hit Leo Seltzer had always envisioned, although within a few years, the sport was overexposed on TV, the brand new medium that had catapulted it to prominence.
Jerry Seltzer (born June 3, 1932), once again took the sport to great heights by syndicating Roller Derby telecasts, featuring the San Francisco Bay Bombers, which were shown on a network of 120 TV stations across the country.
When she married, Atkins turned over management of the rink to a relative named Phil Hayes, but she continued to draw income from a concession business she operated there.