Page 1 - 2

Transcription from Webpage of the Michigan Upper Peninsula
Mining Journal, Apr. 27, 2006

ISHPEMING - The newest inductees to the U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame will be welcomed this weekend.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm has proclaimed Saturday as 2006 U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame Day throughout the state of Michigan to honor the organization "and the contributions its inductees have made to the winter sport community in Michigan and the United States."

Four new members will be added to the hall as the Class of 2005.

The formal induction ceremony will be at 6 p.m. Friday at Marquette's UpFront and Company with the traditional Kiwanis breakfast at 9 a.m. Saturday at C.L. Phelps Middle School in Ishpeming. An open house for the public will conclude the weekend celebration at 2 p.m. Saturday with a Placement Ceremony at the hall in which the inductees will hang photos of themselves in the Honors Court.

Here is the Class of 2005:

David "Darcy" Brown, president of Aspen Ski Corporation for 20 years and one of the founders of the National Ski Areas Association. Brown, 93, was one of the chief investors in Aspen's first chairlift in 1946.

He became the president and general manager of the company in 1957. But his pioneering spirit, work ethic and banking brilliance would transform the struggling resort into a star of the ski industry.

When Brown started as Aspen president he supervised a staff of 25, and when he left 22 years later it had grown to 1,200. During his tenure, the company expanded Aspen in Colorado to include Buttermilk, Snowmass and Breckenridge. In Canada, the company also acquired Mount Tremblant in Quebec and an interest in Whistler Blackcomb, British Columbia. Volume also quadrupled from 259,000 skier visits during the winter of 1964-65 to 1.23 million in 1978-79, when the company was sold to Twentieth Century-Fox and Brown retired.

Walter Foeger, developer of Vermont's Jay Peak Resort and the "Natur Teknik" ski instruction system. Foeger was born in Austria in 1917. He got his first pair of skis when he was 10 and by the time he was 13 he won the Tyrolean Youth Ski Championships, a title he defended for three years in a row. In 1936 he won the junior combined as well as the downhill in the Kitzbuhel Hahnenkamm and in 1937 was picked for the Austrian National Team.

War interrupted Foeger's ski racing career, but in 1945 he was back on the slopes and co-founded the Austrian Ski Association serving as director. The next year he was chosen to coach the Spanish National Team and he guided them to the 1952 Olympics.

In 1956, he was hired by the Jay Peak Resort in Vermont and through his programming and books - including"Learn to Ski in a Week"- he made the resort an attraction for skiers from all around the world. By the end of the 1970s, Foeger's ski schools had introduced about 150,000 skiers to the sport.

Transcription from Webpage of the Michigan Upper Peninsula
Mining Journal, Apr. 27, 2006

Page 1 - 2