Legends of Showdown · The Ski Club years, 1936–1956
No photograph of Andy Farago is in the archive yet — send one
Andy Farago
Club president the winter the lodge opened, and chairman of Old Fogey Day
Legend of Showdown
- Born
- 25 January 1920, Great Falls
- First skied at Showdown
- by February 1946
- First worked here
- 6 February 1946, on the Great Falls Ski Club's special lodge committee
- Years at Showdown
- 1946–1960
- Positions
- Special lodge committee, Great Falls Ski Club — one of seven, February 1946
- Chairman, the club's city ski tournament at Kings Hill, 1947
- President, Great Falls Ski Club, March 1947 to March 1948
- Board of directors, Great Falls Ski Club, 1948, 1950 and 1953
- General chairman, Old Fogey Day, 8 March 1953
- Co-chairman, the club's race committee, with Dan Moran, March 1960
What they did
23 entries
- 6 February 1946One of the seven on the club's special lodge committee, under Dan Moran and Clif Rumford, that drew up the plans for a lodge at Kings Hill
- 10 February 1946Drove a carload of skiers up past Belt to Kings Hill, and when they stopped at Neihart for breakfast a pheasant was hanging from his car's bumper; the skiers wore its feathers in their caps, and Taylor's cafe cooked it for them on the way home. Jack Throckmorton was still telling the story in 1984 and 1988
- 26 January 1947Pictured in the Tribune with Jack Throckmorton, Roscoe Rowe and Bob Selzer, heading back to the highway after a day of skiing
- February 1947Named chairman of the club's city ski tournament at Kings Hill, run on 23 and 30 March
- 8 March 1947On the front page of the Leader, skiing through new snow with Stan Mowry and Lee Gendreau
- 11 March 1947Elected president of the Great Falls Ski Club, succeeding Jack Throckmorton
- 23 March 1947Entered the men's downhill at the club's tournament, as its president
- 29 August 1947Took Senator Charles Bovey's personal check for the first promissory note the club issued to pay for the lodge; the Tribune photographed the two of them
- 21 September 1947Married Bernadine Bryant, a club skier who had entered the women's downhill that March. Two days later the club met without its president and raised its dues from two dollars to three to pay for the lodge
- 7 December 1947President when skiing began at the new lodge, on the first day of Ski Week
- January 1948Announced the showing, at the club's meeting, of five rolls of movie film taken while the lodge was built, four of them in colour, running from the start of the work to the opening day of skiing
- February 1948Told the club that a fifteen-member local ski patrol would help police the Kings Hill course
- 15 March 1948Handed the presidency to C. O. McCafferty, and was elected to the new board
- September 1948On the club's board of directors
- March 1950Elected to the club's board again, with Jack Throckmorton as president
- His wife, Bernadine, worked on the club's concrete crew with her brother, Bill Bryant
- 8 March 1953General chairman of Old Fogey Day, the club's day for everyone who had skied with it in 1943 or before, and the dedication of Throckmorton's Mile; more than five hundred people came and the road was jammed
- 18 April 1953Installed as a director again, and sang in the ten-man Men's Ski Club Glee Club at the Skier's Spring Fling
- 9 January 1954His daughter, twenty-one months old, photographed at Kings Hill for the Tribune, looking the hill over; the paper said both her parents were ski enthusiasts
- March 1954Signed up among the senior men for the giant slalom on Throckmorton's Mile, and the Leader photographed him at the sign-up with Jerry Rawles
- 16 March 1958Won the men over 30 at the club races, in 1:53, the same day Bernadine won the women over 30
- Bernadine won the women over 30 again in March, and in October was elected one of the club's five directors for 1959–60
- March 1960Co-chairman of the club's race committee with Dan Moran, and second in the men over 30 downhill on 20 March, in 1:22.3
In their own words
In the papers
1 document
- Jack Throckmorton’s scrapbook Club papers, membership records and cuttingsc.1937–1957 · pages 21, 25, 32, 68, 75
Also
- Built the Great Falls Ski Club's lodge at Kings Hill, 1947 — on the seven-man committee that planned it in 1946, and the club's president through the summer and fall it was built
Still Going Downhill