Ski Museum Hall of Fame adding four members

• Craig Burt, 1882-1965, was a landowner, forester, and an early proponent of skiing in Stowe through developing Ranch Camp and helping to form the Mount Mansfield Ski Club, which included the first ski patrol and instruction. He also organized Stowe’s first Winter Carnivals.

From a commentary by Tom Slayton, editor emeritus of Vermont Life, on Vermont Public Radio:

“Radio announcer Lowell Thomas, who did much to popularize skiing in the 1930s and ’40s, called Craig Burt ‘The Maharaja of Stowe.’ It was a nickname that always embarrassed Burt, even though he was a lumbering entrepreneur and one of the pioneers of skiing in Vermont.

“In the winter of 1918, Burt and other Stowe businessmen were looking for ways to revitalize the nearly dormant winter economy of Stowe. They started a winter carnival that included ski jumping. And later, in the 1930s, Burt and his sons fixed up a primitive lumber camp tucked behind Mount Mansfield in the Ranch Valley, and began welcoming skiers there.

“For several years, Ranch Camp was the center of skiing activity in Stowe. … Craig Burt was one of the first to see the economic benefits skiing could bring to Vermont. He also had a native Vermonter’s appreciation for the wild beauty of the Ranch Valley area.”

• Trina Hosmer came to the University of Vermont for her master’s degree in 1966 when few women were cross-country skiing. She first skied in Putney in 1966, and from that first time on snow, she has strived to perfect her kick-and-glide.

She joined the first international Women’s U.S. Ski Team, competing in the Nordic World Championships in Vysocke Tatry, Czechoslovakia, in 1970. She competed in the 1972 Sapporo Olympics, the first with women’s cross-country events.

As a full-time mother and a statistical software consultant at the University of Massachusetts, she continued to race and to share her love of skiing with other women. Still a force on the World Masters race circuit, Trina works with the New England Nordic Ski Association and locally to build a stronger base of women skiers, and is a tireless advocate for Nordic skiing.

• Dr. Edgar Holmes III of Mendon, Vt., an orthopedic surgeon, exemplifies what a person can do in ski-related sports medicine and in supporting elite skiers and skiers at all levels. 

He was one of the first physicians to travel with the U.S. Ski Team and to go to training camps and races in late 1970s and early ’80s. Holmes firmly believed in the bond between titanium mesh and the bone that grew into it; he believed the bone would remain healthier and stronger if blood circulation was better, and activity would encourage circulation.

From 1976 to 2007, Holmes traveled with the U.S. Ski Team internationally, volunteering and paying for his travel expenses, supporting the competitors with medical care and all sorts of other things, such as rides and emotional support. Today, two doctors that Holmes personally mentored work in that role.

In 1980, Holmes was the U.S. Olympic Team doctor in Lake Placid. He was the official doctor for Killington Mountain School, Burke Mountain Academy, Stratton Mountain School and Okemo Mountain School. He started the Killington Medical Clinic sports medicine fellowship program in ski medicine to teach other physicians how to treat ski injuries most effectively. That spawned many competent ski doctors all over the U,S. With his partner, Jim Russell, M.D., he started Isport, a world-class physical therapy center that serves local athletes using their insurance via Rutland Regional Medical Center, as well as professional athletes from all over the world.

• Charlie Lord, 1902-1997, was a civil engineer who came to Stowe in June 1933 after being laid off by the state highway department. He joined the Civilian Conservation Corps as a trail engineer and by 1938 he was working on what’s now the Lord Trail on Mount Mansfield.

Lord would work on Mansfield until 1974. He also worked on mountains across Vermont with the CCC, engineering trails and ski areas.

He studied the mountains of Stowe on foot, and occasionally by airplane, and used topographical maps to lay out all the original ski trails of Stowe Mountain Resort. He was an integral part of ski history of the early 1940s.

He was also an early National Ski Patrol appointment, No. 61.