Guides and disabled participants attending their first Ski for Light event often comment on how well organized the week is. What new people don't know is how SFL got to where it is today: through the dedication of a group of people committed to a mission and constantly working to "make a good thing better."
In the 1960s, Olav Pedersen, a Norwegian ski instructor, emigrated to Breckenridge, Colorado While living in Norway, he had learned of the Ridderrenn, a program developed by blind musician Erling Stordahl, to introduce other blind and visually impaired people to cross-country skiing. Olav wondered how Stordahl's idea would work in the United States. He knew how positively the Ridderrenn had influenced the lives of Norwegians, and he committed himself to bringing the idea to America.
With the assistance of the Summit County (Colorado) Lions Club, the Sons of Norway Foundation and Stordahl, Pedersen's dream became a reality in 1975. Some sixty skiers and their guides--a large contingent from Norway, plus another twenty visually impaired, first-time skiers from the United States and Canada--took part in Race for Light. Colorado Governor Richard Lamm was paired with Stordahl for a five-kilometer race that culminated the week; however, it was apparent from the start that Stordahl was a much better skier than the governor. As soon as they were out of sight, former Olympic champion Haakon Brusveen took over the guiding. Governor Lamm took a short-cut and met Stordahl again one hundred yards from the finish line.
The Colorado event affected participants in some surprising ways. The blind people discovered that cross-country skiing was something they could do well and really enjoy. It gave many of them the feeling that perhaps they could accomplish much more in life than they had thought possible before. The guides who attended that event discovered a wonderful way to share their favorite sport--and found they got more back from the week than they gave. The Norwegian-American community, mainly through the Sons of Norway Foundation, decided to continue the program and began planning a second event to be held in Minneapolis in 1976. Two of the original group of blind American participants, Oral Miller and Bud Keith, got involved in significant ways. Both were members of the Sports and Recreation Sub-committee of the President's Committee on Employment of the Handicapped, and both knew from past experience the need for blind people to be part of the planning of such events. They successfully argued for their inclusion in the process, and encouraged their fellow planners to focus on recreational skiing instead of racing. This philosophy was adopted when the program was incorporated and the official name became Ski for Light.
Unlike the first event in Colorado, during which disabled participants stayed in private homes throughout the community, the Minneapolis event housed everyone in one hotel. This allowed for much greater social interaction and led to the establishment of the afternoon and evening programs that today are as much a part of each SFL week as the skiing. Once again, Stordahl brought a large group of Norwegian participants to teach American volunteers how to guide blind skiers. Skiing took place at a public park in downtown Minneapolis, but snow was scarce. The skiers slipped and slid on icy tracks, and so the "race" was moved to a nearby country club. Snow there was also scarce, and the National Guard was brought in to shovel snow from under bushes to lay down shallow tracks. On a very cold and windy Saturday, a race of approximately two kilometers was held. At the awards ceremony, former U.S. Vice President Hubert Humphrey handed out the medals. At this event, SFL decided to send a team of guides and skiers to the Ridderrenn in Norway as official representatives of SFL, a practice that has continued ever since.
In 1976, Bjarne Eikevik of the Sons of Norway became SFL president and led the effort to identify the next event site. Woodstock, Vermont was selected. During the visit to Woodstock, Eikevik expressed his desire to see that American blind skiers were introduced to the beauty of skiing through the woods in a relaxed manner instead of simply racing around a track. On Friday of that SFL week, guides and skiers carried their lunches and spent the day on the trails. Everyone loved the leisurely skiing and socializing; it went over so well that a ski tour became a fixture of every SFL week. The Ridderrenn in Norway also adopted the idea.
Up until this point, Einar Bergh, who worked for the Norwegian Information Service in New York, had handled the application process, and disabled participants had been provided free tuition to the event. Bergh recruited Grethe Winther to take over applications, and Keith and Miller got involved as well. They advocated for participants to pay their own room and board, an idea that was adopted. Today, most disabled skiers and guides pay the same cost to participate--an important aspect of the equality within SFL. Another product of that 1977 event was the beginning of regional programs. After the week in Woodstock, experienced guides and skiers in the New England area gathered on several weekends for recreational skiing. This led to the creation of the New England Regional SFL program. Today regional programs exist in New England, Northeastern Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado, South Dakota, Montana, Northern California and Washington. Each program is independently and locally operated--and some offer summer as well as winter activities.
The Sons of Norway in South Dakota got excited about bringing SFL to their part of the country, so in 1978, the event was held in Deadwood, South Dakota, in the Black Hills. Organized guide training was added to the SFL program and occurred at the beginning of the week.
The Sons of Norway leadership continued its active involvement and selected Squaw Valley, California as the site for the 1979 event. Despite a record number of guides and skiers recruited, there were communication problems. When board members arrived at Squaw Valley, the ski area did not know that SFL was coming and no rooming had been assigned. A handful of people completely reorganized the event in two days. Two-time participant Judy Dixon became involved in this process and has been a major voice in the organization ever since. Much of the turmoil was not apparent to the attendees, and SFL 1979 was another success.
One of the blind skiers at the Squaw Valley event, George Wurtzel, offered to organize the next program. He and his wife, Kathy Emig, worked with Sons of Norway lodges near Traverse City, Michigan so that's where SFL went in 1980. During that week, the first SFL video was produced, titled "If I Can Do This, I Can Do Anything." This motto has stayed with us. That spring a group of SFL board members began working with the New York State Office for the Handicapped and the New York Park Service to organize the 1981 event for Saratoga Springs, New York. The week succeeded despite terrible weather and nearly impossible skiing conditions; there, Bud Keith was elected as SFL's first blind president. Later, Jean Replinger, a first-time guide, stepped forward to offer suggestions on improving the guide training process, which led to the current two-day training program. SFL was invited to return to the Black Hills for the 1982 event. The skiing would again be held at Deer Mountain, but a larger hotel was needed. Participants stayed in Spearfish and were bussed to the ski trails each day. After that successful event, there were no local communities extending invitations to host SFL. The board assumed responsibility for planning and operating what had come to be known as the SFL International Week, and each subsequent event has been organized this way.
The 1983 event was held at Telemark Lodge in northern Wisconsin, home of the American Birkebeiner ski race. Again, the weather was not very cooperative, and on the final day of that event, racers crossed the finish line in three inches of slush. Lake Placid, New York, site of the 1980 Winter Olympics, was selected for 1984. Unfortunately, two weeks before the scheduled event, torrential rain settled in on the area and the twenty-inch base was washed away. After a very emotional conference call, SFL leadership decided to call every participant and cancel the event. All but three skiers were reached. These poor Minnesotans had set out early on a road trip, only to arrive in Lake Placid to find nothing but mud.
Beginning with the very first event, there were mobility-impaired participants. They sat in a modified cargo sled called a pulk and propelled themselves with shortened ski poles; the heavy sleds took tremendous strength to move. It wasn't until 1986, in Duluth, Minnesota, that the mobility-impaired program found a leader. Jeff Pagels, a newly injured athlete, developed lighter sleds that rode on skis, and found that longer ski poles offered more efficient propulsion. Over the years he has steadily improved the mobility-impaired program, and it has become an important part of each SFL event.
In the years that followed, SFL traveled to new locations and attracted many new guides and participants. The structure created in the early years has been fine-tuned over time. Today, SFL is broadly recognized as the best-organized program of its type in the country, and one that has transformed hundreds of lives through sheer volunteer power and international goodwill. For this, we owe thanks to those who paved the way--or, in skiers' lingo, set the tracks--and made it all possible.