Susan Anderson was born on January 31, 1870, in Nevada Mills, Indiana. Her parents, William and Mary Anderson, were divorced in 1875. Four-year old Susan never forgot her parents arguing and her mother crying before her father literally grabbed Susan and her brother John, who was three years old, from their mother at a railroad depot. He jumped on the train as it was leaving the station and took them to Wichita, Kansas, where he homesteaded with Susan’s grandparents.

Susan’s father, Pa Anderson, had always wanted to be a doctor, and he vowed that one of his children would fulfill that role, which he had been unable to accomplish. John, however, was more interested in roping cattle and playing than becoming a doctor. Contrary to John, Susie watched her father, a self-taught veterinarian, as he worked on animals. She absorbed important knowledge for her future as a physician. Susie was less interested in the lessons that her grandmother taught her: manners, housework, crocheting and cooking. 

Shortly after Susan and John graduated from High School in 1891, Pa Anderson remarried and became very domineering, insisting that everything be exactly as he demanded. At about the same time, the gold strike in Cripple Creek, Colorado, caught William Anderson’s attention, causing him to sell his homestead in Wichita and move the entire family to Anaconda, CO, which was about one mile south of Cripple Creek. Very rare for the time, Susan pursued an education in medicine and graduated from the University of Michigan and started practicing in the mining towns of the area. 

In her 30's Susan contracted tubuculosis and came to the Fraser Valley in hopes of a cure in the clear mountain air.  Not only did she regain her health, but she he practiced medicine from 1909 to 1956 in Grand County, a total of forty-seven years.  

People in the area were very poor and seldom paid in cash. They usually gave her meals for payment. This suited her fine because she did not like to cook or keep house, which was always messy. Because the railroad ran beside her shack, she often would be called to various parts of the county, even at night. Doc. Susie would flag down a train and ride wher ever she needed to go, free of charge. She also treated the men working on the railroad and their families in Fraser and Tabernash, which was about three miles northwest of Fraser. Around 1926 Susan became the Coroner for Grand County. 

One time she hiked eight miles on snowshoes to a ranch because she was con cerned about a woman who was due to deliver her baby soon. That night the mother gave birth to a baby girl. While there, the four-year-old son had an appendicitis at- tack. Neither of the parents could take the boy to Denver for surgery. Doc Susie took him by train. A blizzard hit, blocking Corona Pass. The men passengers were called out to help clear the track It wasn't until the next morning the train arrived in Denver Doc Susie had no money for a taxi fare. The passengers gave her the taxi fare to get from the depot to Colorado General Hospital. Doc Susie stayed with the boy during the surgery from which he fully recovered. 

Another time Doc Susie rented a horse drawn sleigh to go as far as she could, then snow shoed into a ranch in a storm to treat a child with pneumonia. She had the rancher heat his home as warm as he could, heat water and then put the child in a tub of steaming hot water and open the door to make more steam. By morning the child had recovered.   SDoc Susie lived to be ninety years old. The last two years of her life she was cared for in a rest home by the doctors for the Colorado General Hospital out of respect and love. 

Susie wanted to be buried beside her brother in Cripple Creek, but because of bad record keeping, no one could find his grave until later. She was buried in a new section of the cemetery. When the residents of Grand County learned there was no head stone, they took up a collection and erected a headstone. 

Susan Anderson never married, but she said she had delivered more children than any one and claimed them as her children. Her family was everyone in Grand County. Her home still stands in Fraser and the Cozens Ranch Museum has a display of her life and medical tools. 

November 2007

Betty Cranmer, a longtime Granby resident, says she doesn't like to be in the spotlight. Her modest home with brown siding and roof, tucked into a hill behind a stately spruce tree, reflects nothing of her and her family's past.  Betty's story - full of heartache and triumph - deserves recognition.

She is a World War II veteran, a cancer-survivor, and the mother of five children (her sixth son, Forrest, died when he was 33.) She is the wife of the late Chappell Cranmer, whose father, George Cranmer, is the Cranmer the ski run at Winter Park Resort is named after.  At 86 years old, Betty has lived a fuller life than many - and she shows no signs of slowing down.

She was born in England on Aug. 29, 1921. When she was 18, she joined the Women's Royal Air Force and was stationed at a burn and plastic surgery hospital, later named Queen Victoria Cottage Hospital. Deep down, she had wanted to be stationed at a fighter station instead - closer to "where the action was" - because she had just lost her first love, an Australian man, who was shot down by enemy fire.  "My job was to clean up burns, which were very bad," Betty said. "A lot of them didn't have eyelids, or their noses were burned off."

Betty was fascinated by the way the doctors would build up the soldier's faces by skin grafting, she said.  "It was very interesting, once you get over the smell of burns, and get into the feeling you're doing a service for those people," she said. Betty served at the hospital for four-and-a-half years. Her home was in a small town in Sussex, 30 miles from the south coast of England. The town was sometimes known as "bomb alley" during the war. Because of the town's proximity to London, German planes would often drop their bombs on her town on their way to London, she said.

She recalled pilotless planes - "big bombs with wings, nothing else" - and running for cover, although there wasn't any. She recalled the Battle of Britain, and how the sky was "almost black" with hundreds of German planes. One night, as she was working at the hospital, a young pilot from Denver was brought in. He was a member of the Canadian Air Force who had crashed in the North Sea, and spent 14 days on a dingey with no food or water. When he was finally found, semi-conscious, he was brought to a nearby hospital. "When they took his boots off, his toes came off, because they'd been immersed in water and cold for so long," Betty said. "So they sent him down to our hospital to see if we could do some grafting on his feet."

After a year of treatment, however, there was nothing the hospital could do for the young pilot; to save his life, they amputated his legs, and he was forced to use a wheelchair.  He and Betty struck up a friendship, and she would often take him to town where they'd visit the cinema or local pub. Eventually, they fell in love.

One day after leaving the cinema early because Betty had to return to work, they were heading down a hill toward the hospital when a German plane flew over them. Both of them were in uniform.  "I said, "My goodnesss!? There were no sirens, nothing ."  The plane circled and opened fire.    "I was so frightened, I let go of his (wheel)chair. Thankfully he grabbed the front wheels and was able to stop himself."

Betty and the young man returned to the hospital safely, but the attack had brought in many casualties. Eighty people were killed and 250 were wounded. The cinema they attended was destroyed by a single bomb. Betty's eyes glaze over as she remembers how lucky they had been to survive that day.  "I wasn't a believer ... I didn't know there was a God in those days, because when you're in a war, well ... But I think then, by the grace of God, we got out of that."   Betty and the pilot were married in the mid-1940s, and had a daughter named Susan after the war ended. Although the war was over, life wasn't any easier, Betty said.  "It's hard for people who were in the war in England to describe rationing to people in this country. ... We had two ounces of meat per week, per person. You could not buy anything in the shops at all without giving up coupons. Two ounces of butter, four ounces of sugar."

Betty was pregnant with her second child when her husband died suddenly due to complications. Before his death, he told her to move to Denver where his father lived. It was 1946, and America offered a better life. Betty took Susan and all that they had and moved to Denver; she first set foot on American soil in May 1946, where she eventually had her second child, Holbrook.
Two years later, she met Chappell Cranmer, who was an investor at the time. They were married and had four children: Allen, Bruce, Genie and Forrest, and lived in Denver for 25 years. In 1969, her husband decided to move to Granby.  "He attended seminary school and was ordained as a priest," Betty explained. "The Bishop said, I want you to move to Granby.' "Betty joined her husband one year later, and they bought a home she would continue to live in the next 37 years.

Chappell, or "Chap," started a church in 1981 called St. Columba Chapel - later named Cranmer Chapel - that is located behind the Silver Screen Cinema in downtown Winter Park. It is there to this day and is a vital part of the local community. Betty and her husband continued to visit England every two years to see her parents, but in 1994 she was diagnosed with cancer in her abdomen. Betty beat the cancer - despite a doctor's prognosis that she had three weeks to live - and would go on to fight and survive two more major bouts of cancer.

Chap died in 2000, two years after Betty fought off colon cancer. She continues to travel, and has just returned from a trip to England and Spain with her son.  As she sits in her couch chair, her white and gray hair framed by the sun peeking through her window, one can't help but be in awe of Betty Cramner. Her home is immaculate but cozy and inviting, and the rooms are filled with photographs of children and grandchildren. She loves living in Granby, she said, where everything is close by.
"I'm very independent. I don't like driving in big blizzards and stuff like that, so I can walk to the library, the post office, the church every Sunday. ... So I like living here. I couldn't live in a big city anymore."

Betty knows she has led an amazing life, but her humbleness is what makes her unique. As she rattles off her daily routine - snowshoeing, walking, swimming, attending four different Bible studies - she mentions she is a volunteer at Cold Springs, a local greenhouse just up the road. "I love flowers," she said, as she turns and faces her bay window full of geraniums and different types of plants. "Would you like one? I have plenty."

May 8, 2010 Sky-Hi News

In January 1970, Gerald Groswold, then chairman of the board of Winter Park Ski Area, received a call from the Children's Hospital of Denver about program they'd been running at Arapahoe Basin for amputee children. A-Basin wasn't going to continue the program, and the hospital wanted to bring it to Winter Park.

In his morning meeting a few days later, George Engel, who ran Winter Park Ski School at the time, announced that this group was coming up in a week's time and asked for volunteers. Of the 40 or so ski instructors standing there that day, only one raised his hand to volunteer. Later, at lunch, Engel walked by the lone volunteer and threw a note in front of him. "Call this number. You're in charge," Engel said.

The 32-year-old Montreal-born ski instructor stared at the note while he finished eating his lunch. He had no way of knowing that by raising his hand he had just shifted the entire course his life as well as the lives of tens of thousands of others. That ski patroller was Hal O'Leary.

O'Leary went on to found the National Sports Center for the Disabled. Today, the NSCD is one of the largest outdoor therapeutic recreation agencies in the world. Each year, thousands of children and adults with disabilities take to the ski slopes, mountain trails and golf courses to learn more about sports, and themselves.

From the get-go, O'Leary had obstacles to overcome, starting with the fact that he'd never even known an amputee, not to mention seeing one ski. The day after he raised his hand, O'Leary got himself a set of outriggers and went about teaching himself to ski on one leg. Being schooled in the Professional Ski Instructions of America technique, he used all the same concepts as he would use for a conventional skier, sliding between turns.

On Jan. 22, 1970, 23 amputee children arrived at Winter Park with equipment borrowed from Children's Hospital. It was a cold day, as O'Leary recalls, and he pushed the kids hard, making them climb up the bunny slope to turn around and practice making runs back down. Some of the kids who had participated in the program at A-Basin had been taught to jump turn the ski rather than sliding it. So they were hopping around like kangaroos, hopping three times to make each turn, O'Leary said. By 11 a.m., kids were collapsed on slope, crying. One screamed: "I hate your guts," O'Leary recalled.

Feeling that he had failed them, he took them over to the lift on Practice Slope after lunch and put them on the chairlift. A few bailed out, and O'Leary thought: ?Oh my God, I'm going to kill them,' he said: "I worried they'd end up in the tunnel." By the end of the day, however, the kids were flying down the hill, coats flapping in the wind and smiles on their faces. O'Leary was hooked.

For eight weeks the program continued. Before long, the television stations caught wind of what was going on at Winter Park. One day O'Leary got a call from the Today Show, which wanted to feature his program. No sooner had he hung up the phone then it rang again, and Good Morning America was on the line wanting an interview. "It really put Winter Park on the map in those days," he said.  As word got out, people with different disabilities started calling O'Leary to set up lessons, from the visually impaired to the paraplegic.

For each new challenge a skier presented, O'Leary needed a new adaptation to the traditional ski equipment. He spent nights at the ski shop working on modifications and pouring over medical books. Improving the design of the outrigger was O'Leary's first challenge. O'Leary made a lot of phone calls back and forth with George Engel (who also owned Winter Park Ski Shop) and other product manufactures, explaining the design he needed, then they would build it.

Another early invention was the "ski bra." Originally made of metal, the contraption slid over the tip of the skis, holding them in place and preventing them from crossing. "The ski still had freedom, but it helped people that lack lateral control of their bodies," O'Leary said. Sit skis hadn't been invented either. So when a paraplegic wanted to ski, O'Leary modified a cross-country ski item out of Norway. "It reminded me of a little bathtub," he said. "It didn't have any runners. It made me nervous. But, people could use it in a seated position, and it got people who couldn't stand out on the hill."

One of the more peculiar adaptive designs that O'Leary saw over the years was a space suit worn by a paraplegic man. The man filled the suit with enough air that he could stand upright, which worked well, O'Leary said, until he sprang a leak and had to be rushed back down the hill. "In 40 years, it's amazing what has happened to the gear," O'Leary said.

If equipment is the backbone of the program, volunteers are its heart. "We couldn't do this without our volunteers," O'Leary said. More than 800 people volunteer every year with the NSCD. It's a dedicated group of people - the average volunteer has been involved with the program for more than eight years, O'Leary said. Just about anyone who can ski can volunteer. NSCD provides the training and, soon, the volunteers are teaching the lessons. Thanks to the volunteer program, a NSCD participant in 2010 can get a full day lesson with a private instructor, plus a lift ticket and adaptive equipment for $100. Scholarships help people who can't afford the price tag. Raising money to help offset costs and provide these scholarships is key for the program's success. The NSCD holds more than a dozen fund raisers each year, although the Wells Fargo Cup and the Hal O'Leary Golf Classic are two of the biggest and most well-known.

O'Leary built the adaptive skiing program for 10 years before it began to develop into something permanent. In the early years, he was challenged a lot by the ski area, he said. Lift ops had concern about people riding the chairs with different apparatus. The ski patrol was concerned about people with various abilities getting on slope. "There was opposition from different parts of the mountain," O'Leary said. But the program's champion - Gerry Groswold, who served as the ski area's president for 22 years, from 1974 to 1996 - held strong to his conviction that the mountain should make room for skiers of all abilities, O'Leary said.

While the majority of those other ski instructors - the ones that didn't raise their hands that day - moved on to other pursuits, O'Leary had found his life's purpose. "It was seeing smiles on people's faces," he said. "I never realized what it would mean, giving these people movement they did not have in a wheelchair or walking. It changed their life. It helped them in many ways with their challenges. They did better in school. They started focusing more. After several years, wanting to give back what they took, many of them became instructors themselves."

For the first four years, O'Leary still had to wait tables in the summer to survive. Finally, in 1974, O'Leary parted ways from Winter Park Ski School, and Winter Park Ski Area brought the disabled skier program under its wings with O'Leary at its helm. That year, O'Leary introduced summer activities to the program, including whitewater rafting and horseback riding. "That first summer went extremely well," he said. "The turnout was huge."

Today, the summer program has expanded to include almost any recreational activity imaginable, including rock climbing, biking, hiking, canoeing, kayaking, camping and fishing. Programs are designed for individuals, families and groups and are available for all levels of ability, from beginner to advanced. "What we offer now parallels what any tourist would want to do on a vacation in Colorado," O'Leary said.

O'Leary has spent the past 14 years traveling to other countries, lecturing, writing books and working with ski areas to set up programs and introduce adaptive equipment. "It's not easy to create a program at a ski area," he said. "Space is limited. You have to raise money to finance it. But the point is to create choices for people who have disabilities, choices like everyone else has."

In the United States, the sporting opportunities for disabled people have exploded in the past few decades, thanks, in large part to the early efforts of folks like O'Leary. Disabled Sports USA now recognizes 13 disabled sports programs in Colorado, far more than any other state. Although O'Leary, now 72, handed over the day-to-day operations of NSCD more than eight years ago, he still works daily. He's traveled to 13 different countries helping to create NSCD-style program. He's written the book, literally, on adaptive skiing techniques (Bold Tracks: Skiing for the Disabled).

Looking back on that January day 40 years ago when he innocently raised his hand, O'Leary said he'd do it all again: "I've gotten more out of it than I put into it," he said. "I've worked with fabulous people. I've had great opportunities. It's been a good life. It really has."

Grand County was one of the first areas in Colorado to enjoy sport skiing.  While mail carriers, loggers and other workers used the "Norwegian Snowshoes" as necessary winter transportation, it was a natural progression to begin racing down the slopes for fun.

An 1883 newspaper noted that in Grand Lake "Coasting on snowshoes has taken the place of dancing parties.   Quite a number of ladies are becoming adept at the art.  First class snowshoers, B.W. Tower and Max James are the best; or at least they can fall more gracefully then the rest".

According to famous Hot Sulphur Springs champion Barney McLean, that town had three jumping hills in the 1920s and held the first Winter Carnival in the West there in 1911.  By 1925, Denver sent special "snow trains" there for the recreating tourists.  Skiers such as Bob McQueary and Jim Harsh competed in statewide events along with skiing "veterans" Horace Button and McLean.  Grand Lake's Jim Harsh became the first Coloradoan to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Team.

In 1932, the Grand Lake Ski Club held its first winter sports week on Denver 25-January 1^st.  Featured was a motor sled with an airplane engine which pulled skiers over the frozen lake are speeds of 90 miles per hour.

Colorado's first ski tow was opened at the summit of Berthoud Pass in 1936.  Berthoud Pass operated on and off throughout the next 60+ years but was finally closed and the lifts dismantled in 2002.  

What became the resort of Winter Park featured skiing at the West Portal of the Moffatt Tunnel and the Winter Park Ski Area opened as a result of efforts by Denver Parks & Recreation Director George Cranmer. Early lodging resorts in the area, then known as Hideaway Park (now Winter Park), included Sportland Valley, Timberhaus Lodge, and Millers Idlewild Inn.  Eventually trains made daily runs to Winter Park, loaded with intrepid skiers.  Steve Bradley invented the first effective snow packer on the slopes of Winter Park.

With a strong record of winning high school ski teams, Grand County accounted for a remarkable number of skiers who later took park in FIS (International Federation of Skiers) meets and U.S. Olympic teams.

A later ski area, now know as Sol Vista Ski Basin (formerly Silver Creek Resort) opened in Granby in the 1980's.  World class cross country ski areas in Grand County include Snow Mountain Ranch and Devil's Thumb Ranch.