My first recollections of NWS were of riding my bike in the early ‘60s past the campus when our family spent time at our summer/winter home on Lake Placid. Originally in the early ‘50s my parents would spend a few weeks in the summer on Lower Saranac Lake in a cottage at Duso’s, and in the winter my Dad and I would drive from our home in Moorestown, NJ to Saranac Lake, stay at the Hotel Saranac, and ski at Mt. Pisgah. Later in the ‘50s we would spend several summer weeks in a cottage at the Lake Placid Club with my mother’s parents.
In the late ‘50s my mother’s parents acquired a “camp” on Lake Placid, and in the early ‘60s they built a new house on property they acquired from Henry Uihlein at the end of Bear Cub Road outside of the town. As a result my parents took over the lake property in the early ‘60s and we spent most of our summers there. By the mid-60s they had winterized the lake house and we would spend long weekends and winter holidays there and ski at Mt. Whitney or Whiteface.
I was attending the Albany Academy (6th through 10th grades) and excelled at soccer and track and field. In my sophomore year I placed 4th in the NY State New Palz Relays Championship in the discus. At that time I also became interested in ski racing. As a result I would see the Northwood Ski Team at various races in Upstate New York and New England. Northwood’s team would show up in their dark blue and yellow Roffe jackets and striped ski pants along with their legendary ski coach, Warren Witherell, and they dominated all the race results. This was during an era when there were no ski racing academies, so for elite high school level racers Northwood was “the place to go”. I found a photo of one of Warren’s mid’60s Northwood teams in an old file of photos at the school and later gave it to the alumni department to frame and display in the area outside of the dining hall. The team members are on a knoll at Whiteface all in a tuck position. Earlier ski team members included racers of great notoriety of their era like: Ni Orsi, Rebel Ryan, Phil Cole, Jr, and others.
A little known fact is that Warren was not only the World Water Skiing Champion (beginning in his teens) in all three events, but the first to jump over 100 feet. He had been a student at the Albany Academy and an All-State athlete in baseball, football, track, swimming, and soccer while competing all over the world in water skiing. His father was a teacher at Northwood and they had a camp on Lake George. After an illustrious record at Amherst in academics and sports he became an English teacher and coach at Northwood. However, he had never snow skied before arriving at the school. After taking lessons and learning on his own within 3 years he was an A-rated senior ski racer. This led to his coaching ski racing and achieving national and international recognition for producing elite level ski racers. While at Northwood and later teaching at Mt. Whitney I spent a lot of on-snow time with Warren.
In the summer of ’65 my parents decided to sell our home outside of Albany and move permanently to Lake Placid. This coincided with my father being offered the job of Bursar for Northwood by the Board…”to oversee the school’s finances”. He had previously served on the NWS Board during a period of significant transition at the school, which had resulted in the headmaster, John Howard, leaving his position and Ted Wells, the Director of Admissions and co-ski team coach becoming the new headmaster. My Dad and Ted had grown up together in Saranac Lake. At that time Warren Witherell had hoped to become the headmaster, but the Board decided to go in a different direction. As a result, Warren left NWS and later organized Burke Mountain Academy.
Ted Wells was a wonderful headmaster, who like his successor was a students’ Head. He was enthusiastic about the school and its students…even when certain bad actors let him down. He and my father grew up together in Saranac Lake, ski raced together, climbed mountains, dated the same girls, and went off to college when the winds of war were brewing. He had a vice that caught up with him, which was very unfortunate.
My brother, Todd, and I entered Northwood in the Fall of ’65. I was a Junior and he was a Freshman…along with his classmate, Brad Olch. I was billeted in the “New Dorm” as one of its first residents and a couple of my hallmates were Tom Mellor and Tim McCadam, who were renowned high school and college hockey players. Tom and Tim used the New Dorm second floor men’s large shower room as a steam room to curve and block their hockey stick blades, which made for close quarters when showering because they had over 20-30 sticks lined up. Tim was also a teammate of mine on the soccer team…and much later in life he was a guest shooting coach for my son, Charlie’s, Squirt and Pee Wee youth hockey teams in Vail, CO. Charlie was the team’s goalie, so Tim would score on him endlessly, which resulted in Tim naming Charlie – “5-Hole Charlie”.
During the summers of ’65 and ’66 I worked on the campus with a team of painters to strip, repaint, stain, and caulk the entire exterior of the main building on multi-story scaffolding. In addition, I was asked to join the local semi-pro soccer team that practiced and played on Northwood’s field. The team included among others Mike Raymaley, Warren Witherell, Jay Rand, and numerous other local and foreign competitive ski/winter sports personalities, who were training in Lake Placid during the summer. The team played games all over northern New England and NY state.
With a background in competitive soccer at the Albany Academy I was able to make the Varsity team at NWS in my Junior year, and I ski raced on the “B” Team, although my results were less than stellar because my ski racing experience had been very limited, and I had never had any formal coaching. Eventually this led to my organizing a ski school for Northwood students at Mt. Whitney, which allowed me every afternoon to hitch a ride to the mountain and spend time with the Lake Placid Club’s ski school director, Bruce Fenn, and other very accomplished instructors, who were also the reps for the top ski and apparel manufacturers. Bruce’s son, Bruce Jr, had also been a member of Warren Witherell’s famous racing teams at Northwood.
In my senior year I was appointed a student proctor and lived at the Lake Placid Club’s “Pine Rock” cottage, however I was later moved into the main school building, because the mold in the cottage was causing me to go to sleep in the middle of homework hours. In the winter the x-c ski commute from the cottage to school was fun, but the sleeping part was affecting my grades.
Things continued to evolve in the school’s Administration between 1965 and 1967, which resulted in Ted Wells leaving the Headmaster position and John Friedlander being appointed the new Headmaster. John was a real “student’s Head”, and his office was always open and inviting to every student. He also held an annual Fall 40-yard sprint challenge against all students, which he always won. John had been a very good college football lineman and was very quick off the line.
During my senior year several of my classmates and I organized an early morning donut sale program through a bakery in Plattsburgh. My Dad’s office manager, Mr. Nugent, took care of the flow of funding and receipts, and the Class of ’67 eventually made a gift to the school of several thousand dollars of profits. The donut sale operation became quite an enterprise.
During my two years at NWS my mentors were Chuck Weed, Billy O’Neil, John Friedlander, Phil Cole (a former Chairman of the NWS Board), another Chairman of the NWS Board (Dr. Herbert Bergamini)…and my father, Carter Lockwood. My Dad was also instrumental in convincing the Board that John Friedlander would be an ideal choice as Headmaster, which turned out to be a prescient forecast, and his longevity as Head was unprecedented.
My family has a long connection to Northwood beginning with my father, two grandfathers (Herb Kieckhefer and H.W. Lockwood), my mother (May Louise Lockwood), my uncle (Tom Lockwood), my wife Susan (summer school) and her sister (Leslie Wemyss Higgins), my three brothers and sister (Todd, Francie, Dave, and Herb), and Susan and my sons, Charlie and Courtney. My two grandfathers, my father and mother, and I all served on the NWS Board. My tenure extended beyond a decade. Susan, Leslie, and Francie all attended Northwood’s summer art school under the tutelage of Bob Whitney.
From Northwood I attended Colorado College and later earned a Professional Ski Instructor certification at 20 years old and a year later a High Commendation Award from the Austrian National Ski School in St. Christoph. I taught skiing at Mt. Whitney, Winter Park, and Breckenridge…and have retained my certification for over 56 years.
In the late ‘60s I was offered an opportunity to learn the ropes from the ground up in the Oil and Gas drilling business, and worked as both a roughneck and a derrick hand in southwest Texas. After this experience I was advised by a former Chairman of the Board of NWS, Phil Cole, to move to Breckenridge, following an announcement by the Aspen Ski Corporation that they had acquired the Breckenridge Ski Area at the end of 1969.
At that time Breckenridge was a very small old mining community with a tiny ski area, only one paved street, and somewhere between 300 and 500 permanent residents. And, Summit County (an area encompassing 600 square miles) was only accessible over Loveland Pass from east to west. The resorts of Keystone and Copper Mountain did not exist, and the balance of the county had fewer than roughly 500-750 residents. Today there is an interstate tunnel under the Continental Divide, I-70 bisects Summit County, there are 4 thriving resort towns and 4 ski resorts and 5 x-c ski complexes, Lake Dillon reservoir and two marinas, 5 golf courses, and numerous conference and convention facilities. The county’s resident population exceeds 25,000 and the additional resort bed capacity exceeds 65,000-75,000. The local economy is year-round, and as one example of the financial base the Town of Breckenridge’s annual operating budget exceeds 225 – 250 million dollars. When I arrived in Summit County there were no banking institutions or branches in the entire county. Now there are over a dozen.
This was the beginning of a long career in resort development, including: the reorganization of local government, leadership in community development, private real estate investment and development, real estate brokerage and property management, national and international marketing, raising capital, establishing local banking resources, engaging and serving in local politics, and organizing numerous non-profit entities to support the broader communities of Breckenridge and Summit County. In addition, my siblings and I established a centralized family office to address legal, investment, and tax planning needs of our growing family group, which was operated out of our offices in Breckenridge.
When I arrived in Breckenridge in 1970 I had no formal background or training in any of the elements that would be necessary to develop and operate a resort community. However, my exposure growing up in Lake Placid and the responsibilities I was lucky to have been given at Northwood and in the oil fields of Texas provided a foundation for knowing how to get things done; and, how to network extensively in build a broad base of mentors from all sorts backgrounds and areas of expertise. In addition, my family and our advisors were particularly supportive of pursuing a career with no borders, while Susan and I enjoyed the 2,000 mile cure of not living under the shadow of our east coast families.
Over the last 61 years of my personal connection with Northwood I have witnessed a unique education institution both survive and thrive through endless setbacks and challenges, as well as, special opportunities. Its path has been circuitous along the way, but by both long term leadership and favorable guidance (and sometimes pure luck) it has endured.
In my student era the structure and tradition of” all things under one umbrella” the academic curriculum, competitive sports, and the unbelievable access and benefits of the outdoor mountain experience and location of Lake Placid were attributes that could not have been duplicated elsewhere for teenage young men (and eventually for women). There are other boarding/day schools in mountain settings, but none with the history, culture, and unique atmosphere that Northwood and Lake Placid offer.
I recall so many experiences of student and faculty camaraderie that opened my eyes to experiences then and later in life that I had no idea existed. The small environment of Northwood’s community was a particularly beneficial component of my experience at the school. The administration, faculty, advisors, classmates were easily accessible…and, in my case the mentorship from the Headmaster, the Chairman of the Board, and my father was both special and important.
My engagement in school life and related responsibilities are noted in the ’67 Epitome Year Book, so I won’t innumerate them here. Suffice to say that no stone was left unturned.
My interests today include: my wife, Susan; my sons; our first grandchild (in 2024); other family members; our friends; maintaining good health; connecting with current events; reading; enjoying Colorado; traveling throughout the Rockies; spending time in Florida, the Adirondacks, and the Northeast; hiking/walking; skiing; playing golf; enjoying selective TV viewing; enjoying well prepared food in special settings; and, LIFE (!).
A humorous story about Northwood:
There was a seamstress in Lake Placid. Her husband was English and served as a minister in one of the churches in town, and they had a walk-up apartment along Main Street across from the Marcy Hotel. She was the “go to” seamstress for Northwood’s Ski Team to adjust ski pants, since stretch ski pants were evolving and racers did not want any “drag” from loose pants. Ni Orsi was one of the very top ski racers in North America and he was a student at Northwood. Later, he was a member of the US Ski Team…and then owned and operated a ski area in California. At Northwood he was known as a real character, as well as, a Skiing Legend. Ni did not like the cut of the Roffe team ski pants that Northwood used, so he ordered a pair of canary yellow women’s Bogner ski pants (no center zipper, but side zips) from what was later known as Ruthie’s Run ski shop on Main Street. I cannot recall the former shop’s name. The seamstress pinned these Bogner pants to the exact contours of Ni’s legs, which she told me Ni requested she be very careful in the pinning in and around the crotch (!!). So, Ni shows up at a big race on Whiteface and as the clock was running down on his start time (10, 9, 8, 7, etc) he is standing away from the starting gate talking with Warren Witherell and Ted Wells about his grade in English. As the starter is now yelling out the countdown from the clock it reaches #4…at which point Ni skates through the starting gate and wins the race by a huge margin. However, as he went through the starting gate one of the “ladies side zippers” on his women’s Bogner canary yellow custom-tailored stretch pants blows apart. At the bottom of the race Warren asked Ni what happened to his pants, and Ni says: “nothing really…those are air vents that keep me cool when I’m running hot…”.
I hope this isn’t outside your expectations of volume, but once I got started I could not just stop part way. There is of course so much else that is in my Northwood story, and some of which “is not fit to print”, but this is enough to provide you with both content and context.
Please don’t give me a “G”!!
Win