So many circles completed on the wooden floor in Fayette County

BY EILEEN BRADY
​THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO

Just 20 miles east of Wilmington, there is a place where disco balls still cast mirrored magic on roller skaters young and old.
At its essence, it’s just a roller rink, and it’s been there for ages. But there’s a timelessness found there that is reassuring when technology and overscheduling seem to distort spontaneous human community. Kids at Roller Haven in Washington Court House still fall under the spell of the colorful lights, the Top 40 music, the physical challenge and the hypnotic revolutions around the wooden floor.
The music may indicate it’s 2013 — think “Gangnam Style” and “I’m Sexy and I Know It” — but the DJ usually throws in a song here and there from generations back. On weekend nights, teenagers crowd the center of the rink to dance without wheels.
I can still remember my first visit, at age 6, followed by sporadic super-fun skating parties as an adolescent, when Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration” was the song

I wanted to hear. 
My husband grew up skating there (he was partial to “Saturday Night” by the Bay City Rollers) as had his mother, who skated to the Motown girl groups but also later loved “Celebration” when her sons were teenagers. They skated frequently, and their solid skills are still intact. 
My husband also kept his old roller skates — one of just a few childhood artifacts he hung on to after years of moving — and he can still fly around the floor with the greatest of ease. I can barely make it one lap without turning 50 shades of awkward.
Our fourth-grade daughter fell in love with roller skating during visits to Ohio, and over the past six months she’s been skating more times than I’ve been in a lifetime. In a place with scorching summers and snowy winters, Roller Haven Fun Center has lived up its name as a refuge for entertainment and indoor exercise, all for just a few bucks. 
Each time I’ve been there, I’ve talked to parents and grandparents who want to share fond memories while their kids streak like Thumper across the frozen pond. I’ve seen cautious children cling to the rail, while others just hit the gas until they fall. And they fall frequently, but they get right back up.
There is an extremely low tears-to-falls ratio at the roller rink, as if there’s an inherent assumption of risk, even in the smallest skaters. Crashing is just part of the adventure.
One day I saw a boy hurtling himself as hard as he could toward his mother, who called out, “Don’t do that or you’ll fall!” He looked at her as if she were crazy and said, “I LIKE to fall!”
I’ve marveled at some of the teenage skaters’ graceful gliding, and one girl told me she spends every weekend at Roller Haven. It shows. She skates like an Olympian.
But my favorite Roller Haven story started 56 years ago, when an 8-year-old Sabina girl named Vicki went to Roller Haven for the first time. For years, the roller rink sent a bus to Wilmington and Sabina to pick up kids to skate, then returned them back to their towns, so Clinton Countians have long been part of the Fayette County tradition.
At age 9, Vicki met a boy named Carl. Vicki and Carl fell in love at Roller Haven, enjoying innocent romantic moments over the years during the “couples skates.” 
Vicki and Carl Staffan were married when Vicki was 18, and they later moved out of state and started a family but eventually wanted to return home. They went into the roller-rink business after Vicki took a buyout from her career at AT&T, first with a place in Lebanon, and then, 18 years ago, when they purchased Roller Haven from longtime owner and Fayette County commissioner, the late Laurence “Bucky” Dumford.
Vicki said she and Carl “had never talked about, ‘Let’s grow up and own this place someday,’” but after their first endeavor in Lebanon, they had relied on Dumford’s expertise and occasionally checked with him to see if he was ready to sell. 
One day when Vicki and Carl least expected, Dumford informed them he was ready. Vicki and Carl took the plunge and bought their old stomping grounds. Vicki said they had been lucky enough to grow up in a “nice rink,” and they worked hard to keep it that way. Vicki works even harder now since Carl died in 2008.
Because of their work, getting to roller skate indoors has become one of our daughter’s favorite parts about moving back to Ohio. She’s celebrating her 10th birthday there this week, but she’s still 9, so I suppose it’s possible a future husband could be wheeling around. 
A few days ago I told her about Vicki meeting her future husband there at her age, but my daughter said that would be, in fact, impossible. “Those boys there are so annoying!” she said. “They just fall right in front of you!” 
I’m sure it’s always accidental.