Susan Sanford

My first memory of Showdown is the rope tow, back when it ran about where the helicopter pad is now. I did not want to learn to ski. I sat up on a snowbank in the parking lot and cried. My brothers, Jim and Mike, were already skiing, and finally it was my turn. I think I was about seven. I remember the old bear-trap bindings, so hard to get back on when you fell, and the boots were awful, and the rope tow was horrible. But then I got going, and I loved it.

Dad had skied a little back in Minnesota, carrying wooden skis up a hill. We still have those skis around somewhere. He's the one who got all of us going. I got carsick on the drive up, and I hated everything about the whole idea of going. I remember throwing up on my way to Showdown.

After college I was in between things. I'd been looking at graduate school, decided I wasn't ready for it, and needed to work for a while. So I became a ski instructor, like my brothers had been. Then George Willett decided I should do the marketing. I think they called it public relations. George set up the marketing himself and made the media buys, and I did the special events and promotions.

There was a ski promotion tour, too. A rep from every ski area in Montana went out together, on a tour the Montana Ski Areas Association set up. We'd start in Dickinson and go all the way across North Dakota and down through South Dakota, or the other way around. The Canadian tour ran from Lethbridge all the way to Winnipeg and up to Saskatoon, in the fall, and one year I was out there about two weeks. We'd hand out brochures in town during the day, and in the evening there was a ski show with every area's display, a Warren Miller movie and some kind of giveaway. Showdown was a hard sell with no lodging close by, but people came. I did that about three years, and it was a blast.

I put the Showdowner together too, the newsletter that went out to all our skiers. I spent most of one summer on the fall issue, and that winter I closed it by asking everybody for four minutes a day, on both knees, praying for snow at Showdown.

I think I was one of the first marketing people to work through the summer, and there wasn't that much to do. Sometimes I'd end up playing with George's little boy, Charley. Once it was something with quarters, I don't even remember what, and George finally said, Susan, you're the one causing this, quit it and get to work.

Then came Eagle Mount. The Eagle Mount team came over from Bozeman and put on a demonstration at Showdown, bringing people with disabilities up skiing, and I just got caught up in it. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I had never thought about working with people with disabilities before, and I have been doing it ever since.

Every year a team of us from Eagle Mount in Great Falls went down to Winter Park, Colorado, for a week of training. At the time it was the best place in the country for adaptive skiing, and people came from all over. It was exhausting, with the altitude and all, and I was so sore I could hardly walk. I went two or three years.

Then I was hired as the ski director. Marian, who ran the Eagle Mount program, and I coordinated the ski program together, and Bill Macfadden did too, along with his good friend Tommy O'Connor. Dick Dailey was a key person on our team as well. We set up all the equipment, and we recruited the volunteers and trained them. There are two basic kinds of adaptive skiing. There's sit-down skiing, in the sit-skis and mono-skis, which are so darn much fun, and there's stand-up skiing. Because I had the ski teaching background, I always ended up training and working with the stand-up skiers.

I was part of Eagle Mount, off and on, for about thirty years as a volunteer. These days I've pretty much retired from it. It's hard physical work, and I work all week as a speech therapist, so a day of Eagle Mount takes the same energy as another day of work. I don't have it like I used to. I miss it a lot, though. Adaptive skiing was my thing. The people who did it were my people.

My family skis Showdown too. My husband, Scott, wasn't a skier, and it's hard to become one as an adult, but he's been a really good sport, and we all ski together as a family. Maddie started teaching skiing in eighth grade, and Parker started pretty early too. John never taught, but he made tacos. They'd all work up there over winter break from college and make a chunk of money, and we were always so grateful for that.

I try to keep kind of a low profile. I still ski, and I'm grateful for that. It's my little part of Showdown, and I feel so lucky to be part of it.