Dec 22, 2015 — We continue our series, the Adirondack Attic, with Andy Flynn. North Country Public Radio is collaborating with Andy and his sources at historical associations and museums in the Adirondack region to bring local history stories to air.

Andy recently spoke with Alison Haas, director of the Lake Placid Olympic Museum, about a fairly new exhibit honoring past and present Olympic skiers from the Adirondacks. It’s called “Memories of Olympic Skiers,” and it all starts with a pair of skis.

“These skis start from the Lake Placid Olympian Art Devlin, who was the first to go to the Games in 1948,” Haas said. “His skis here, they’re about 8 feet tall. They’re wooden. I believe they were made in Norway.

“And then you see other skis from other Lake Placid or area Olympians, the ski jump skis, Craig Lussi from 1960, Jim Shea from 1964. You see a progression of the skis getting taller up to about 9 feet tall, which is surprising for our visitors when they come in to see how ginormous they are.”

“So let’s turn around,” Flynn said. “What are we looking at here? We have 15 Olympians on the wall here?”

“There are 15 Olympians featured in individual panels on the wall, and each panel has a photograph of the athlete from when they were a child learning to ski and a contrasting image of them at the Olympic Games,” Haas said. “So there have been 15 total who have gone to the Olympics from this area here in Lake Placid for a skiing-related event.

“I wanted to record or capture their memories of when they were first learning to ski themselves, and there was joy. There were tears. They were annoying their parents or making their parents scared from the beginning. It was this sort of freedom or just pure joy, love of skiing from the beginning. If anyone has strapped skis to their feet, you also fall. You get snow in your face. You might keep going, you might not. All these athletes here kept going, and they went to the Olympic Games.”

“I see you have different disciplines of skiing,” Flynn said. “You’ve got downhill skiing. You’ve got ski jumping, nordic combined, which is cross-country and ski jumping. And you’ve got some biathlon and cross-country. So you’ve got all the disciplines?”

“Yes. Art Devlin, he was the first,” Haas said. “He made the team in 1940. The war was happening at the time, and so he did not actually go to the Games until 1948. But he was the first.

“Apparently, every day. He’s actually the only athlete out of this group of 15 that is deceased, so I’ve spoken to family members,” Haas said. “He had told his children, every day after school he would run home, grab his skis, he would go to the ski jumps and just jump until it was too dark to jump. But sometimes his teachers actually would keep him after school because oddly they thought he was never going to amount to anything. They thought he was going to turn into a ski jump.

“He ended up being very successful. He went to the Olympics in ’48, ’52, ’56, made the ’60 team but became a commentator for ABC. So he was a very successful man regardless of what his teachers originally thought of him.

“But then there’s someone like Annelies Cook. She’s gone to the Olympics for biathlon, and her first team was in 2014. She was 29 years old, and she has these wonderful memories of skiing into Avalanche Lake with her family. Her father used to pull she and her sister on a rope, and then on the downhill they would just let go, and it was so much fun for them.”
“Let’s talk about, quickly, let’s name the skiers who are currently out there competing,” Flynn said.

“Currently, from this wall, there is Lowell Bailey, who is competing in biathlon,” Haas said. “Also Annelies Cook, biathlon. Tim Burke, biathlon. He grew up in Paul Smiths. There is also Andrew Weibrecht from here in Lake Placid who is on the alpine ski circuit. There is also Peter Frenette, who is a ski jumper. He went to his first Games at age 17 in Vancouver in 2010.”

“I see on the wall you have visitors writing down their ski memories,” Flynn said. “Let’s go over to the wall here. And their all on clotheslines, these little yellow pads. Can we read one or two of these?”

“Yes, we have this area in the exhibit where visitors can come and record or write down their own memories from when they first learned to ski,” Haas said. “It’s interesting because visitors really are gravitating toward reading all these memories.

“This come from Rachel. She comes from Bluff Point, New York, and she learned to ski at age 5. Her memory was, her sister, who was 3 at the time, and herself, they got a double chair, and her dad was in the chair behind them. His instructions were, ‘When you get to the top, just jump off.’ She did that. Rachel did that, but her sister did not. And so I’m going to probably assume from there that maybe Rachel loves skiing, but her sister doesn’t. I don’t know.

“It’s interesting because all these little memories are becoming sort of artifacts in themselves, recording those and saving those.”

“Hey, could I read one?” Flynn said.

“Yes,” Haas said.

“This is fun,” Flynn said. “Sydney from Chestertown, New York, learned to ski at age 6 at Dynamite Hill. ‘First time skiing, went off the jump and took out three people on the way down.’”

“So Vern, from Schenectady, he learned to ski at age 4 in 1962,” Haas said. “He said it was ‘pure joy, sliding, falling and getting up and doing it all over again thousands of times.’ He had no fear until he was older.”