Ed Schenck

Club president at the 1940 dedication

Legend of Showdown

Born: 21 April 1914, Great Falls
First skied at Showdown
First worked here: chairman of the club's ski sites committee from February 1939
Years at Showdown: 1939–40, 1946–47
Positions: Chairman, ski sites committee, Great Falls Ski Club, February 1939
President, Great Falls Ski Club, 1939-40 — he gave the dedication address at Kings Hill on 21 January 1940
Founding member, Great Falls Ski Patrol
National Ski Patrol System — national public relations committee
Class B racer, Great Falls Ski Club, 1939 and 1940
Delegate of the Great Falls Ski Club to the Montana Ski council at Butte, October 1939, and to the Northern Rocky Mountain Ski association at Bozeman, November 1946
Co-chairman, temporary ski patrol, December 1946

What they did

7 entries

December 1939Announced the postponement of the Kings Hill dedication for lack of snow (page-one news)
8 October 1939With treasurer Roscoe Rowe, represented the club at the Montana Ski council in Butte
April 1940Told the Forest Service the Kings Hill run had been overtaxed that season and needed a warming house
October 1940Left Great Falls for Casper, Wyoming, as Inland Air Lines' advertising and publicity director
30 January 1941The Great Falls Junior Chamber of Commerce gave him its distinguished service key, for the establishment of the ski project at Kings Hill
22 May 1945On the Tribune's front page, home on leave: a captain in the first American paratroop regiment to jump in combat, with jumps at Sicily, Salerno, Normandy and Holland behind it
21 February 1947At Whitefish, surveying the Hell Roaring course with the Forest Service, twenty-six days after his last Kings Hill photographs

6 in the archive

2 documents

Jack Throckmorton’s scrapbook Club papers, membership records and cuttingsc.1937–1957 · pages 1, 4, 5, 53, 55, 57, 67
Jim Hasterlik’s scrapbook Cover, 8 intro leaves, 43 pagesc.1937–1942 · pages 22, 34, 41

Built the second rope tow, the motor house and the warming house, 1939 — he oversaw all three as club president, and announced the naming of Prentice Run
Built the club's portable jeep-mounted rope tow, January 1947 — with George Prentice and Art Higgins
Built the club's emblem — the large replica that was the main decoration at the first annual dinner dance, April 1939, made with Mabelle Willcomb and Bob McKenna