When we decided to do a tribute to our founding publisher, David Rowan, we didn't know where to start. How do you summarize a 50-plus-year career in the wintersports industry? How do you shrink down the 19,440 pages of SAM he produced, not to mention the thousands of pages he was responsible for during the 20 years he spent at Ski magazine? Worst of all, how do you attempt to describe a man through words, when words were his domain, his playground and his soldiers? You don't. You can't. Instead, you let him speak for himself. His editorials were the conscience of this industry. They questioned, they cajoled, they celebrated and they rejoiced in the ridiculous.

Depending on the topic, David Rowan's editorials were infuriating to some and a godsend to others. But what everyone could agree on is that his words were filled with passion and his motivations never strayed from what he saw as the potential for this industry. In both content and style, David Rowan's words were, quite simply, awesome.

Click here to view/download a PDF of the print article. It contains some of David Rowan's finest moments on the page--at least we thought so. An introduction is provided by John Fry, who, as editor-in-chief of SKI, worked closely with David Rowan when he was the magazine's associate publisher between 1964 and 1973, and in later years when Fry wrote for Ski Area Management. The two were close friends for 40 years.

John Fry on David Rowan
In the history of ski periodicals, you can count the number of their true publishers on the fingers of one hand. A true publisher is someone who can write authoritatively and engagingly, market subscriptions, and sell advertising. David Rowan was such a publisher. They are rare in number because, following the corporate takeover of major ski publications fifty years ago, the task of journalism circulation and ad sales have been compartmentalized among specialists, overseen by number-crunching professional managers. David Rowan made a couple of unsuccessful attempts to accommodate to this corporate publishing environment, and departed. For skiing, the result was entirely satisfactory, since it allowed him to cultivate his own magazine bursting with information and ideas about operating ski areas successfully and safely. From a small base of influential readers, he could thus enhance the ski experience for millions.

Rowan’s supreme skill, in addition to marketing Ski Area Management was to write convincingly and credibly about issues and what might be needed to effect long-range benefits to the sport. He believed that if something was good for skiing it was good for the industry, and not the other way around. I’ll cite a few examples of what I mean.

More than 40 years ago, Rowan confronted the unpleasant (to area operators at the time) fact that people were dropping out of the sport because they were less than satisfied with the experience offered by the resorts. It led him to support the introduction of the more-inviting-to-learn-on short ski at a time when the instruction establishment opposed GLM.

Once he spotted a press release from the marketing department of a resort which described snow as “product.” What kind of insensitivity would cause someone to describe glistening, beautiful snow as “product?” he asked.

When the industry hired expensive consultants to frame advertising strategies aimed at ending the plateau in ski participation and to cause the growth of earlier years to resume, Rowan made the unpopular observation that leveling-off of participation is common among mature sports such as skiing. The millions of dollars and the effort to make it grow, he suggested, were perhaps not worth it. In the light of snowboarding’s spontaneous growth, unaided by national campaign, the professional consultants got it wrong.

He was perhaps the first to criticize the industry’s thralldom to legal advisors who wanted ever more severe measures to prohibit youthful thrill-seeking on skis. Within ten years, the same ski resorts that once rejected Rowan’s viewpoint opened terrain parks and tree skiing.

He was of course, famous for decrying the irresponsible statistical reckonings of skier participation. When the National Sporting Goods Association estimated 10 million skiers based not on actual physical counts, but on telephone surveys he repeatedly pointed out that the statistics yielded twice as many skier-visits as the ski areas actually experienced. My guess is that the industry didn’t explicitly reject NSGA’s, Simmons, Nielsen and other inflated figures because it feels good to tell people (including potential investors) that you are servicing a large market. Rowan, a Diogenes, saw it as a distortion which, in the long run, was unhealthy, because wrong intelligence fosters bad decisions, as recent international adventures remind us daily.

David Hamilton Rowan amused himself by conducting business under the laughably high-toned title of Beardsley Publishing. An irrepressible sense of fun infused his relations with people and the quotidian duties of running a business. He never shed the British accent he had picked up as a schoolboy. Nor the independence of uncompromising logic bred in him at Cambridge. You would not find David Rowan serving on many committees catering to consensuses. Not that such committees aren’t vitally needed and beneficial. But an industry, like society at large, also needs gadflies and ombudsmen—independent, objective observers who make us aware of the real, if sometimes unpleasant, realities of matters at hand. When this role is evidently carried out with admiration and affection for the whole enterprise, you have an exact embodiment of the sort of person David Rowan was. It’s a measure of our loss that he is gone. Happily, his words live on. –John Fry

David Rowan Editorializes…

The Drop-Out Problem—Fall 1963
Have you ever wondered how many of the roughly 150,000 who tried skiing for the first-time last winter came back, or will come back, for a second try? We are all so obsessed with the sport that we arrogantly assume that a person who tries it once is hooked forever. It just isn’t so. A lot are persuaded to try it, spend a miserable, wet day falling all over themselves, sit out the second day in the lodge, feigning a pulled muscle, and return home, silently vowing never to do that again, but now able, for status reasons, to answer “Yes” when asked if they ski.

And here is where you would do well to give long, hard thought to the shorty and short ski. This battle has raged too long on totally specious grounds. “It’s not skiing,” one will say deprecatingly. “Teaches them bad movements,” another will add. But these arguments, even if they were completely valid miss the point.

If—and I repeat the word italicized—if the shorty ski cuts the initial drop-out rate; if it keeps the older, brittler-boned skier on skis; if it creates instant enthusiasts out of the unathletic who otherwise would give it all up as a bad job after one try; if all these things are true, or even partly true, what more do you want as an area operator? The shorty ski will buy your lift tickets, he will eat your food, he will buy your goggles and gloves. Isn’t that what your business is about?

[Ed. Note} We wonder where our industry would be had it embraced the shorty ski all those years ago.

For a Supplier Voice — Spring 1973
[Ed. Note} The Speak-Out below was a bold gamble. The backstory was that of a time when, shortly after NSAA was formed and conventions/tradeshows were being organized, the buyer based membership ran afoul of the supplier-based side. The suppliers wanted more input on how the buying and selling would best take place, but without a supplier member on the board of directors, they had little say So, David wrote this:

Most trade shows and trade fairs are run by the people who have goods to sell. They get together and attract buyers. Thus, Ski Industries America is an association of vendors—manufacturers and importers of ski clothing and equipment. And SIA exists largely to stage its big and successful trade shows in Las Vegas and New York. As such, the vendors create and control the marketplace: its location, its hours, its duration, its atmosphere, its clientele. They do everything to maximize sales. And, of course, part of this is making it attractive as possible for the buyers, their customers.

As it evolved on our side of the industry, we have the unusual, though not unique, situation of the buyer association (NSAA) staging the show for the vendors. Though there is nothing unworkable about this, the unnaturalness of it does require extra care, sensitivity and awareness on the part of those who control the show. This has not always been the case with NSAA, and we hope and expect there will be change.

Suppliers should have a stronger voice—or at least their voice should be heard more clearly and listened to more attentively. The cost of belonging to NSAA and exhibiting at the trade show is very substantial indeed, especially as the transportation of heavy equipment is often involved. The market place that is created must be right if these costs are justified. And if the costs cannot be justified, then exhibitors will choose to market differently, and that would be a loss to all, especially to area operators who go to the expense of attending the shows expecting to find the broadest possible display of equipment and services.

NSAA certainly was on the right track with the oversnow vehicle presentations at the Snowbird mid-winter meeting. Dick Garis did an outstanding job of tailoring the events to the recommendations of the suppliers. The format of the May convention is different, but the principle is the same: if the trade show is to be useful and worthwhile for the area operators and their personnel, then the exhibitors must be given every opportunity to put their best foot forward.

To this end we think it might be very useful if there were an association of ski area suppliers who give NSAA and its show managers the input necessary for planning of successful trade shows. There would no doubt be other areas for discussion by such an association (code of ethics, standardization of parts, regional trade shows, etc.), but initially its greatest service would be to help NSAA in every way possible to put on the annual trade show in a way that really maximizes its value for area managers and new key personnel.

[Ed. Note] The suppliers agreed and formed the Ski Area Suppliers Association. Less than six months later, faced with the loss of 40 percent in revenues represented by suppliers, NSAA agreed to the supplier demands and the board voted to place a supplier member on its board. As David wrote in his memoirs: “In my judgement, it not only helped save SAM, but equally important, it helped save NSAA from itself.”

On Numbers — Excerpted from a letter dated August, 1977
[Ed. Note] David, it is fair to say, was obsessed with numbers. The barrels of ink he devoted to questioning, figuring and rebutting were mind-boggling. And not just skier counts. He was constantly perplexed by trail counts. How, he would ask, can one area add 45 trails from one day to the next without lifting a shovel?

Nonetheless, as he tackled the numbers game with the determination of a pitbull, he was able to produce some interesting results and demonstrate many trends—purely unscientifically, but he did make us think.

Find a piece of his writing that dealt with numbers was easy. Boiling it down without losing the sense of it, or the context, was nearly impossible. In order to give you a glimpse into David’s take on statistics we present the following: an excerpt of a letter he wrote to some poor soul who produced a study on the industry that was woefully off the mark:

The more we [Ski] looked, the more we became convinced that we were serving a tiny universe- about 500,000 skiers tops in 1956, for instance. But it is one thing to do the research and it is another to get people to believe it when they don’t want to! After all, USSA had said way back in 1939 that there 1.5 million skiers in the East alone.

The advertising community certainly didn’t want to hear such figures. Everything was booming. Mt. Snow and Killington came on line. The first glimmerings of those magical words “leisure market” and “disposable dollars” were being seen. The research departments of brokerage houses hounded us for figures. I was quoted by American Express in their house organ as saying there might be 28 million skiers. When I phoned them about it they said, “Oh I guess we forgot the decimal point; it should have been 2.8 million.” They never ran a correction. About then Merrill Lynch quoted American Express as saying there were 28 million skiers. And so, it went.

The national press jumped on it. Time ran a piece in about 1958 which said that 1.5 million people had skied in New England alone over an Easter weekend. I went to the trouble of pointing out to them the physical impossibility of that having happened. It made no difference.

Our competitor took up the ski boom theme and started getting some major national advertisers based on their highly imaginative research of size of the market.

Well, what the hell, we couldn’t stem the tide, and the market was growing fast. It was the growth dynamic that was important, not the small starting point. So, we prudently stopped publicizing that aspect of our research. When asked the size of the market we took to quoting what others said it was. And that’s how it all began. (Actually, that’s wrong. It all began when two Vermont farmers in 1936 saw a ski tram arrive, and one said to the other, “Christamighty, there must be a million of the damn fools.” And that was the first census of skiers.)

Now, if you go back to that figure of 500,000 in 1956 and project it forward, you see some interesting things. Apply a 15 percent growth up through 1960—which is about what it probably was—and you get up to 875,000. Then, for the next decade, plug in an arbitrary annual increase of 12 percent—again, which probably averages out to a realistic figure—and you are up to 2.7 million by 1970. If you factor an 8 percent growth for the next five years, you get to just under 4 million by 1975.

Memo to Management — Summer 1978
[Ed. Note] David never shied away from hard work and he expected everyone around him not to either.

By now you should have received your annual economic survey questionnaire. Let’s not pussyfoot: there are really only three possible reasons for not cooperating with NSAA in this program 1) you’re dumb 2) you’re lazy; 3) you don’t have the information.

Now, as to reason No. 2, we sympathize. It’s a pain in the butt to fill out any questionnaire, especially one that sends you poring back over long columns of figures on a bright July day better suited to relaxation.

But, come on, now. First of all, re-reading the 1977-78 figures should be a great joy for most of you. And this really is an important study. It results in a marvelous yardstick for you—a way to measure your operation against industry norms. But norms won’t be norms without the broadest possible participation by ski areas right across the country, large and small.

Some Rude Thoughts on Ski Movies — Winter 1979
[Ed. Note] The next Speak Out is a great example of David’s self-effacing humor, which was abundantly evident throughout his career.

I have often marveled at the stamina of film reviewers and none is more worthy of marvel than those whose special beat is the pornographic movie. I mean, can you imagine watching these things endlessly? The name of Al Goldstein comes to mind—the reviewer for Screw, whose favorable comments on hardness of the porn are obviously important to management since he is widely quoted in the ads for these movies.

Well, I think maybe I can sympathize because, as a judge in the “Ski Resort and Travel” classification of the International Ski Film Festival, I recently sat through four hours, 50 ½ minutes of ski movies at one sitting. Unless you, too, have survived something like this you cannot imagine the numbness that overcomes the mind, the torpor that overwhelms the spirit. Yes, Al Goldstein, my hat is off to you.

First, I am tired—and I suspect others are, too—of the stereotypes you use. There must be a factory that turns out those blond, blue-eyed young men who do their up, down, up, down thing through deep powder and show up at the bottom with snow clinging to their regulation-length slightly down turned blond mustaches.

Second, your musical scores are either cornball or pretentious; they are rarely apt.

Third, beware too many clichés, except in completely hardcore films. Most have been done many times before, and probably done better. In this category, we have the backlighted daffy in slow motion… introducing the screen credits with an inverted aerial or framed in a spread eagle... ending the film with a freeze frame.

As I finish these random comments on ski movies, I have just turned in another flash—another insight: the reason I wrote those rude remarks about the endless short-linked turns in deep powder, the backlighted daffies and the athletic, mustachioed ski film heroes is that 1) the only time I ever grew a moustache it looked ridiculous, my kids convulsed and I shaved it off; 2) I never could do those neat, short-linked turns in deep powder; and 3) the only maneuver I ever did that approximated a backlighted daffy occurred many years ago while bushwacking at Vail, when I inadvertently skied off a small cliff and was observed making some strange clawing movements while still airborne.

Kicking Against the Pricks — January 1989
[Ed. Note} As the legal scene changed drastically during the ‘70s and ‘80s, David constantly fought to preserve the spirit of winter sports and not allow legal minds to define skiing.

One of my phrases that always intrigued me in my childhood bible studies was the advice not to “kick against the pricks.” All I understood was that it didn’t mean what it sounded like.

According to my Random House dictionary, it means: “To resist incontestable facts or authority; protest uselessly.” And that is, perhaps, what this editorial will do, inspired by an editorial in the December issue of Ski Business entitled, “No Risk Thinking,” and also by an important feature by I. William Berry in the January issue of Ski entitled, “The Great Insurance Fallout.” Each comes to the very sensible conclusion that the disease of litigiousness has become so much a part of society’s way of functioning that we in the ski world must maturely recognize and accept the inevitable fallout on our sport—and business.

My head agrees, but my sense of outrage makes me rebel and kick against the pricks. All of them.

The problem is stated well in the Ski Business editorial: “The clock, unfortunately, can’t be turned back. A litigious society is a harsh reality, and we need to realign the selling images of skiing with its legal responsibilities.”

Then it goes on to rationalize, through the words of Dave Cleary, NSAA’s special counsel, that we should remember “that as skiing matures, the thrill seekers are becoming a smaller part of the market spectrum.”

Ski Business would have us draw comfort from the demographics that show fewer teenagers, and thus fewer thrill seekers; but that ignores tomorrow. It is not for nothing that resorts are racing to build day care facilities to accommodate parents with scads of small children. Are they the kids we’re supposedly prepared to turn off?

As an industry we have done all of the right things: immersion in risk management, introduction of skier responsibility legislation and so forth. We’re winning some cases; we’re preventing others. But we should be developing a lively offense to complement our defense. We should be doing this to save the very essence of our sport from the pallor of our defensive posturing is imposing.

Let’s kick against the pricks!

Memo From the Publisher—May 1991
[Ed. Note] When NSAA and SIA merged in the early 1990s, David firmly opposed the union. While the story, for those who did not live it, is long and laden with details, the following Memo is an example of how David felt about his and SAM’s role in the industry.

I do, however want to react to one comment directed at me, not in an exercise of self-defense, but in the hope of explaining SAM’s role in this little industry of ours. The comment went like this: “… Appalling negativism and divisive editorializing by David Rowan and SAM. Much soul-searching on Mr. Rowan’s responsibility in what has come down.”

I am intrigued by contemplating my “responsibility in what has come down,” and I want to answer him, “No, my friend (and he is still that, I hope), you’ve got our roles reversed. Things don’t ‘come down’ from me, but from you and the other industry leaders. I just react to what ‘comes down’ from you guys.” I suppose, though I should be flattered he thinks SAM is that persuasive.

I happen to think this magazine has been very supportive of USIA and of NSAA before it. This has sometimes even involved supporting things I disagreed with. For instance, from the start I made no secret of my skepticism of the cost-effectiveness of general national advertising for the ski sport, and I opposed merger. But each received SAM’s support when the membership respectively supported and voted for them. My position was simple: we must get behind what the membership wants and help make them as good as we possibly can.

I think, perhaps what my critic may be confusing is industry support and the obligation of the press to be straight with its readers. For instance, I feel the industry has the right to know if facts are being misrepresented. That is why I went to such pains a year ago to detail how “research” was being misused and misrepresented in order to hype the first year’s marketing results. Is that being negative? I happen to think not. The reputation of an otherwise well-executed program was being damaged by well-intentioned nitwits.

I think I believe in this industry more than some of its leaders who sometimes apparently feel the industry is incapable of dealing with the truth, so they withhold information or blow smokescreens. That’s where a responsible press can help. Is that negative? Again, I don’t think so.

Environmental Affairs, January 1990 and July 1990
[Ed. Note] From its inception, David steered SAM toward every issue facing the industry, and the environment was no exception. Early on, he called for better stewardship of our mountains. In the mid- ‘80s, he heeded the warning of global warming and gave it plenty of coverage. But few were listening.

While our industry has, so far, performed superbly in it marketing program, we are dead on our feet in the vital arena of environmental issues.

It is so abundantly clear that these issues will play a dominant role in our industry’s affairs in the decade ahead, yet we sit, twiddling our thumbs, collectively crying over our role as environmental bad guys, but not doing anything about it.

Until our industry gets a sense of purpose and direction, and develops the professional tools to cope with the problems ahead, we are going to get slapped around, and pretty badly at that, by opposition forces that do have a sense of purpose and direction, and who have developed powerful tools, which they use with considerable skill.

This magazine has long been urging our industry to play a more mature and effective role in managing its environmental affairs. What does that mean? Briefly:

• Each member of the industry should recommit to being a creative and good environmental citizen—individually and corporately.
• We should come to grips, as an industry, with the problems we face— we should truly understand the nature of our opposition; we should understand our rights.
• We must develop skills and tools—research, public relations, political action, negotiation—to manage our problems and develop our opportunities.

On Words

[Ed. Note] David’s passion for this industry was matched only by his passion for the written language. For more than 50 years, David’s pen graced us with his style, his eloquence and a command of words that usually sent us running for the dictionary.

September 1984
C’mon ski area industry: are you going to let these new marketing gurus foist a whole new vocabulary on you?

All you read about now are “aficionados” and “dilettantes.” It’s downright un-American, and probably effete. Besides, every time you have to come to write ‘em you have to look up how to spell ‘em.

Let’s start with the Spanish one. It’s got problems. First off, like many things with a Latin flavor, it is inherently sexist. Don’t you know for every aficionado and his fellow aficionados there is an aficionada and other aficionadas? What’s wrong with those nice, genderless words “devotee” or “enthusiast?”

Let’s leave aficionados with Hemingway at the bullfights.

Then for that Frenchy word, dilettante. Our Random House dictionary defines it as, “A person who takes up an art, activity or subject merely for amusement, especially in a desultory or superficial way.” We don’t think this is really what our marketing experts mean to convey when they dredge up this word. We used to call them “infrequent skiers.”

We like dabbler. This writer dabbles at golf—infrequently, and without much commitment or determination. He is not however, a golf dilettante. The word just doesn’t fit a hacker who puts a 1 ¼ inch smile in a golf ball. Dabbler does.

So, while warmly applauding the Brand study for its insights, let’s kick these two words of theirs off our slopes, where they constitute a hazard to clear marketing thoughts. Let’s politely return them to the lexicographic obscurity they deserve, whence they can occasionally be plucked by the crossword puzzle aficionado or flaunted by the literally dilettante.

July 1997
Is everyone as tired as we all are at SAM with the clichés—the marketing jargon—used routinely by so many speakers. Starting with “thinking outside the box” and “paradigm shift,” let’s exorcise them and drive a stake through them whenever they raise their heads. NSAA might derive some marketing funds by collecting a $250 fine for any use of either in a presentation.

Other candidates for exorcism? You probably have your own favorites. Some of ours: “Put the customer into the equation,” “managing perceptions” and “meaningful dialogue.”

Mercifully “empowering” seems to be fading of its own accord, perhaps because everyone is now empowered.

The Industry Remembers

Bill Jensen
I always looked forward with anticipation to catching my first glimpse of David Rowan wandering the hallway of an industry conference actively reaching out to his innumerable friends and business acquaintances. I relished that handshake, the twinkle in his eyes, the warmth of his dry wit and always his insights and perspective on our industry. I listened intently, savoring every word and thought. Only certain people can hold up a mirror to reflect who we are and who we aren’t. David Rowan was that person for me. We connected. I won’t stop looking for David Rowan in those conference hallways because I know that he will be there, in the spirits of all who knew him.

Michael Berry
When I think of David, I am reminded of how much of a role the National Ski Areas Association played in his personal and professional life. For almost 45 years, the organization was integral to David in a variety of forms and fashions. He was, of course, in attendance at the meeting in Colorado Springs in May of 1962 that created NSAA. It was at that meeting that he was also appointed NSAA’s first executive director. David was responsible for the establishment of the organization’s first office in New York and led the association through its formative first two years.

Yet it was his role as publisher of Ski Area Management magazine that David had the most influence on NSAA and the industry. He was, of course, the industry’s conscience and the association’s gentle (sometimes) prodder. He always wanted the best for both—he was sometimes a booster in the classic sense and sometimes a critic—but whatever his positon he always had the interests of area owners and operators in mind.

David was his best during that very interesting and complicated time when two major associations serving the industry merged to form USIA. I think David understood as well as anyone that the two constituencies had little in common other than a love of the sport. He was cynical about the merger, and with good reason, but nonetheless stressed the importance of making it work. However, when it did not, he could barely contain his excitement.

In looking back at November 1992 issue of SAM we were not surprised to see it as vintage David Rowan—the cover, the stories, the editorial—all in sync. The content recognized the challenges, saw the opportunity, warned of possible pitfalls, but fundamental to it all was an almost palpable enthusiasm for the days to come. He ended his Speak-Out in that November issue with this sentence: “The best thing is that it is our future and our commitment that will make it work. Let’s get going!” I think David thought about life in much the same way... and I’m sure he is thinking the same even now.

John Rice
Your dad was a great man who always told it like it was. I admired that quality in him and he was a silent mentor in my career. His work and spirit will live on in your work with the magazine. How many managers in our industry have saved so many magazines? I’ll bet you can find every past issue on the shelf of some industry’s biggest leaders. That says something for the quality of the periodical and his work.

Wife Ann Rowan Remembers
David Rowan loved words and all the things he could do with them. The written word was where he spent most of his energy, but he also loved acting and speaking out the words others had written. He had a prodigious memory either from a natural inclination or honed during his English schoolboy years when he was made to memorize lines of poetry as a punishment for schoolboy infractions. He jumped on new expressions and delighted in using new idioms for his editorials. “Not my bag” and being “uptight” are early examples that come to mind. But as soon as the new expressions became tired and overworked he was off and running to find some new ones.

He had a good education to be a wordsmith. At the age of 12, in his English school, he was required to translate the lead editorial of the London Times, every day, into Latin. He also studied Greek and later in Princeton he took up Russian and modern languages. This knowledge and background led him into a few funny situations and a lifelong amusement with words.

One summer during his Princeton years, he served as a purser aboard a freighter sailing out of New Orleans. One night in port, he heard a group of young Russian sailors having a good time in a bar. He sat close to them listening hard and trying to improve his Russian pronunciation and maybe pick up a little Russian street talk, too. He followed them around- inconspicuously, he thought- until he was pulled aside by a couple of men flashing badges at him. They said they knew who the Russian sailors were, who the Russian operative keeping eye on them were, and who the CIA people keeping an eye on everybody were, but who was he and what was he doing listening in on conversations???? It amused David that the CIA came knocking on his door again, probably due to his Russian studies, after he graduated from Princeton.

In his year editing Ski magazine up in Hanover, N.H., he and Wolfgang Lert (then an importer of skiwear and frequent contributor to Ski) exchanged complete critiques of each other’s writing every issue. Their comments were acerbic and witty. I can remember only one of them when David, being a big of Tom Swifties, wrote to Wolfgang, “that’s not Wolfie’s writing, said Tom aLERTly.”

SAM benefitted too from his wry take on things. Word went out when Hugh Killebrew was turning more and more of the operation of Heavenly Valley over to his son Bill, that the time had come to drop his childhood name and address him in a more grown-up fashion. David took note and came up with a little rhyme that ended, “May I be boiled in oil, fried in chili, if ever again I call Bill Killebrew, Billy.”
A real estate contest heated up in Aspen between a big developer named Haddad and another one named Trump. When Haddad prevailed in the fight, David’s headline for the report was, “How Did Haddad, Trump, Trump?”

An editor up to the end, he recently chided John Fry and Mort Lund about a report in the skiing history news telling them he was surprised that two old editors such as they would use the phrase “passed away.” He told them, “I have in my life, passed out, I have been passed over, and I have even written some passing good editorials, but when I go, say I died.”