Tom and Rita of Stowe, Vermont

When Tom and Rita picked me up at the bus station and showed me to my bunk in the Winterhaus, I knew I was in for a great experience. None of us had ever met, and both sides put their trust in the other. I thought they were the coolest couple ever. Tom, a Ski Patrolman, and Rita, a ski instructor, they had turned their love of skiing into a career. At that time I was fantasizing about a way to break out of school for a ski season, and I envied their courage. So for two weeks they welcomed me into their lifestyle, allowing me to help out with their 1960-61 Christmas rush.

Winterhaus, a large, three-story building built and owned by Tom and Rita, opened for the 1956 ski season. It sat 150 yards up a driveway at 3418 Mountain Road. Thoroughly Bavarian in style, the red shutters and the scrollwork on the balcony were elaborately decorative as if right out of the Alps. Winterhaus featured oversize bay windows, giant fireplaces, and a live tree growing inside a stairwell. For the next thirty years, It would be open for skiers whenever ski lifts were operating. It was dormitory style, with 4 double bunk beds to a room. There were six bedrooms upstairs for the girls, six bedrooms downstairs for the boys (total capacity 96), and a kitchen and dining area. The price ($25 a night per person at the end of its operation, around 1990) included breakfast and dinner, featuring Rita’s famous home cooking.

Tom(II) & Rita with Tom(III) around 1968.

Both Tom and Rita were originally from Connecticut. Tom had served in the Navy during WWII as an aviation radio technician and had seen action in the Pacific Ocean (Gilbert Islands, Eniwetok, and Tarawa). After that he studied medicine at Tufts in Boston. Rita was always proficient at sports, including basketball, field hockey, and golf. She worked for a while in obstetrics and thought this would be her vocation until she met and married Thomas Fraser Buchanan, Jr, and their mutual love of skiing brought them to Stowe, Vermont. They had taken many weekend ski trips to Stowe, and in the 1950s, moved there permanently. Rita became the first female ski instructor at Stowe’s very Austrian ski school. Although she could fly single engine aircraft, her favorite activity was more sedentary—fishing.

Meanwhile, I was in my second year as a graduate student at Princeton and didn’t want to spend another Christmas break alone in New Jersey, so had written a letter to a half-dozen ski lodges. “I can wash dishes, scrub floors, wait tables, even play the guitar and sing folk songs if you wish.” (I must have had some nerve and been rather full of myself.) Between morning and evening chores, I got ski lift coupons from Tom and Rita so I could ski all I wanted. So in return for my chores, I got free room, board, and skiing.

There was plenty of snow, and Christmas was in the air. Famous for its Trapp Family Lodge of “The Sound of Music” fame, Stowe was dubbed the “ski capital of the east.” John F. Kennedy was the new President-elect, and much of the Kennedy clan was present. Avid skiers, they stayed at a lodge at the base of Mt. Mansfield. They were said to party hard, and still be the first up the chair lift in the morning. The crowd at Stowe was fashionable, and many college students were present on Christmas break.

The weather that week was sunny but cold—as low as -15 degrees Fahrenheit. Woolen ponchos were supplied for the ride up the ski lifts–Army blankets slotted in the middle to slide over one’s head. A slight rip in one of my gloves led to a little frostbite on one finger which I can still feel today. One day, going up the double chair lift on Mt. Mansfield I sat two chairs behind the Kennedy brothers, Bobby and Teddy. Arriving on top, they put on their ski poles and took off down the mountain without delay, both expert skiers. On another extremely cold day, I was about half way up Mt. Mansfield on the chair lift when it lost power. Everybody had to be rescued by the Ski Patrol, which took hours. The patrolmen climbed every tower and threw ropes over the lift cables. All of us riders dropped our skis and stood in a loop in the rescue rope while they lowered us down. Everybody had to ski down the double black diamond run called “Lift Line,” like it or not.

I skied the difficult runs on both mountains, Mansfield and Spruce, including National and Nose Dive. But I was having a bit of trouble turning my first metal skis, a new pair of 210 cm blue Hart skis with Marker long-thong bindings. I took a lesson on Spruce Peak from an Austrian instructor who didn’t seem to speak a word of English. But just the privilege to get right behind him and follow him down the mountain was worth the price.

Hang down your head Tom Dooley…

My routine was to do dishes at the Winterhaus in the morning, and wait tables for the after-ski crowd in the trendy Matterhorn Bar built and owned by Tom and Rita. At first I got yelled at by the bartenders for being too slow, but soon figured it out. On a few occasions I got out my guitar and played some of the favorite folk songs of the day — made popular by the Kingston Trio, Joan Baez, Josh White, etc. I knew all the chords and the words, but with a mediocre singing voice, it worked better for me when other people sang along.

The snow squeaked under my boots as I walked to the Scandinavian Lodge for another midnight sauna with the free-spirited Diane, a college student from Burlington. It was New Year’s Eve, and a full moon flickered among the spruce trees heavy with snow. The famous melody and words, something like “Pennies in a stream, Ski trails on a mountain side, Moonlight in Vermont,” kept playing in the back of my mind. I never felt more alive.

Gaining confidence during the week, I began skiing a bit steeper and faster. One day I was about halfway down Mt. Mansfield on Lift Line, negotiating a field of sizeable moguls, when I got going too fast and landed way too hard on the next mogul in line—with a force probably equivalent to jumping out of a second floor window. I laid there knowing that something was wrong. My right ski was OK, but when I tried to pick up my left ski, I noticed a new hinge just above the left boot-top. I yelled “Ski Patrol” to the passing skiers on the chair lift, and also got nearby skiers to send the message. I fumbled around in my jacket for a cigarette, and lit up a mangled Kent.

After 10 minutes or so, the Ski Patrol arrived with a toboggan. To immobilize my left leg, they put it in traction. Up to this point I hadn’t felt much pain. But when they put the steel traction splint up my crotch, wrapped the left boot in a leather strap, and pulled with all their might, It hurt like Hell. The ride down through the moguls was risky, with one patrolman on the front and another holding the rear of the toboggan by a rope to prevent it from running away. Every flex of the toboggan caused more pain shooting up the broken leg.

7 months like this

I was taken by ambulance to the hospital in nearby Morrisville. The X-rays showed a classic boot-top fracture of both bones, tibia and fibula. I was under anesthesia when the bones were set (slightly offset for better healing but bad for future skiing) and a long leg cast applied. I would be on crutches with this cast for the next 7 months, a conversation piece that helped me to meet people, including my first wife. (Years later I discovered that the German-made Marker Rotomat long-thong bindings were installed in the ski shop about 1.5 inches too far back on the skis, making them harder to turn. Probably a bad choice for me anyway. These bindings were the choice of top ski racers because of greater edge control. However, they released in a twisting fall, but not in a forward or backward fall like mine.)

When I awoke from surgery I was not the best patient in the world. I wanted to move to the party room with other skiers instead of sharing a room with an old man slowly dying of stomach cancer. The move never happened. I asked for some kind of chin-up bar so I could at least exercise my upper body while my lower body atrophied. It never happened. The first night they gave me an injection of Demerol to help me sleep, which worked well. The second night I got the Demerol injection and slept like a baby. The third night after dinner they just said ‘Good Night.’ I summoned the nurse, and said in a voice I’d never heard before, “WHERE’S MY DEMEROL??” They explained that it was time to cut me off before I became an addict. It was too late.

I called my research advisor at Princeton and told him I’d be flying back in about a week. He was not happy, but in actual fact I would get more research done with the broken leg than I would have with more freedom of movement. Diane came to visit me in the hospital. Tom and Rita came to visit and brought all my stuff. They could not have been kinder, even though I had in effect terminated my contract a few days early.

Though I probably exchanged Christmas cards for a year or two with Tom and Rita, after I moved to North Carolina, got married, and moved to California, I lost contact. However, it was always in my mind that someday I would come back to Stowe for a homecoming with Tom and Rita, my dream godparents.

Winterhaus ~2015. Torn down ~2019.

It was a pleasant autumn day in about 2010 when I was driving through Vermont. On the spur of the moment I decided to stop and see Tom and Rita. Stowe had grown a lot in the almost 40 years since my last visit, and looked different in the fall. I stopped in a convenience store and asked for directions to Winterhaus. The salesperson didn’t know where it was, and didn’t know Tom and Rita Buchanan. How can that be, I wondered? By now everybody should know Tom and Rita, like Stowe royalty. I said they also owned the Matterhorn Bar. Still no glint of recognition.

When I finally found the Winterhaus down the long, overgrown driveway, I was depressed to see what bad shape it was in—encroached by bushes, windows broken, a sign dangling in the breeze. I found the Buchanans’ phone number in the directory and called. Rita answered. Remember me, the ski bum from 1960 who broke his leg? She didn’t. She said that Tom was bedridden and the lodge was closed. I could see that there was no point trying to get together, reluctantly said Goodbye and hung up. For the first time in my life I FELT OLD, overwhelmed by the passage of time and the sorrow of relationships neglected.

What I learned: Don’t live your life to please or impress others. Your teachers, preachers, parents (and competitors) may be gone in the blink of an eye, leaving you alone as judge. Nurture the relationships you value, and let them know.

Rita in her element.

This year I Googled the Buchanans and found that both had died. Through their obituaries, I learned that Tom (1921-2012) and Rita (née Eno) (1928-2015) had raised 5 children. I made contact with Christine “Dede,” the middle child, who lives in Morrisville. She graciously filled me in on many details of the family and sent me photos. There are four girls and one boy, all of whom became excellent ski racers or instructors, now living in various parts of the US.  All the girls waited tables in the dining room starting at age 10 while young Tom III did a lot of dishes. In their off seasons, Tom and Rita traveled the country in their motor homes, fishing from the coast of Maine, to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, to Haines, Alaska.

Tom had been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in his 40’s which led to amputation of a leg. Later on he had heart problems and was bedridden for the last 8 years of his life, although his mind and his famous storytelling remained sharp till the end. Rita stayed by his side till he died, along with help from Dede. But Rita began to suffer from dementia in the early 2010’s, which could be part of why she didn’t remember me, according to Dede. In addition to raising a big family and running a business, it’s also true that Tom and Rita adopted many “strays” over the years, sometimes for months or years. That included people who needed help, and wounded animals brought home by Tom or his kids to nurse back to health. I was blessed to spend a few weeks as another “stray” in the caring orbit of this remarkable couple.

With many thanks to Dede, and best greetings to the other Buchanan family members.

Jim Sudmeier                            Luck, WI                     April 5, 2020