Peter W. Seibert
Marriages
Betty Seibert
Joy Seibert
Obituaries
Eagle Valley Enterprise page 13 - July 18, 2002
VAIL Co-Founder SEIBERT DIES AT 77
Peter W. Seibert, whose lifelong dream of creating a ski world class resort resulting in Vail, died Monday. He was 77.
Earl Eaton, a long-time friend who Seibert credited for finding the ski resort, said Vail and the surrounding area was forever changed by the man who launched it.
"He's done a lot. He got Vail put together," Eaton said Monday. "He did a good job."
Seibert was born Aug. 7, 1924, in Sharon, Mass. It was in Sharon, at 7 years old, he strapped on his first pair of skis.
In 1943, Seibert, then an 18-year-old ski racer, joined the U.S. Army and volunteered for the 10th Mountain Division, hearquartered at Camp Hale, where he trained for high-altitude winter combat. The division's first major combat missions took place in the Northern Italian Alps, including the famous battle at Riva Ridge, for which one of Vail's most famous ski runs would later be named. It was there, on March 3, 1945, as a platoon sergeant he was nearly killed by mortar shells, shattering both arms and severely injuring his face and his right leg.
Army doctors told Seibert he might never walk again - let alone ski again - and after 17 months rehabilitation in various hospitals in the United States, he was released from the army at 22 years old determined to prove the doctors wrong.
After the war, Seibert settled in Aspen, where he worked for the ski patrol and began to ski race again, with some success. He later attended L'Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne, an international school of hotel management in Switzerland, for three years, learning the fine art of running hotels with dreams of starting his own ski resort. He returned to the United States, taking jobs in Silverton and Aspen, ultimately managing the Loveland Ski Resort. It was while working at Loveland in 1957, that Eaton and Seibert took a seven-hour climb to the top of Vail Mountain, then turned around for what most certainly was the mountain's first descent on Skis. Seibert and Eaton became determined to build "the most beautiful ski resort in the world."
Throughout the ski world, Seibert was famous, rating as one of the 25 most influential people in the history of the sport in America by SKIING Magazine.
Vail Daily - January 14, 2002
Vail Visionary Pete Seibert Dies
David O. Williams
January 14, 2002
“Visionary” is the “V” word that comes up nearly as often as “Vail” when you ask people about Pete Seibert, who died of cancer at his Edwards home July 15. Widely credited with being Vail’s founding father, Seibert, 77, is remembered as a man who relentlessly chased his dream of building the greatest ski area in the country, brushing aside naysayers and triumphing in the face of daunting financial and logistical odds. He saw ski runs where others saw wilderness and a bustling village where sheep grazed in an isolated alpine valley and in Vail’s legendary Back Bowls, he saw endless face shots on a powder day. All of those visions came to pass, and now, sadly, so has Seibert. Memories of the man, though, on the eve of Vail’s 40th season, seem to float in the air like the first fat flakes of a Rocky Mountain blizzard. And most of those memories have to do with Seibert’s vision. Rod Slifer, a former Vail mayor and current council member who Seibert lured over from Aspen for Vail’s first season, recounts a hike with Seibert through dense forest on the front side of Vail Mountain near what would later become Pickeroon trail. It was the summer of Vail’s first season, and Seibert carried ribbon that he used to mark trees and a level that told him the steepness of the slope.”He would just stop and say, ‘Jesus Christ, isn’t this going to be a great ski run?'” says Slifer. “And I’m standing there in the middle of the trees and I’d say, ‘Well, I guess so.'” Very few people have that creative eye, says Slifer, that ability to see something great emerging from something so raw.”Pete was a visionary,” Slifer says. “He just had a knack, particularly as it relates to skiing and the village as it ties into the ski mountain. He really visualized all of that, and that was his great strength. ”Morrie Shepard, who grew up with Seibert in Sharon, Mass., and skied with him for 70 years, followed Seibert to Aspen in 1947. When Vail opened in December of 1962, Shepard became Vail’s first ski school director. Shepard, who brought Slifer over from Aspen, also recalls Seibert’s great vision and ingrained sense of building a ski mountain from the ground up.” In the summer of ’62, when we were starting to build Vail, (Seibert) said, ‘You’ll have to imagine this great ski area; it’s going to grow,’ and I always used to say, ‘Oh yeah, oh sure,’ and now it’s a hundred times what even he imagined,” says Shepard, who still lives in Eagle most of the year. He describes helping Seibert lay out trails like Riva Ridge, named for a famous 10th Mountain Division battle in Italy in World War II. "Pete had a wonderful sense of how the fall line went and how it ought to be, as evidenced by Riva Ridge and the way it is now," says Shepard. "You had to have skiing sense in order to figure out how it was going to be done, and this was with tall trees all around, and he could do it." Shepard lived in a cabin in Aspen with Seibert in the late 1940s and marvels at his lifelong friend’s strength and will as he exercised endlessly to recuperate from war wounds. A German mortar shell cost Seibert a knee cap during another 10th Mountain Division battle in Italy. Doctors doubted his ability to walk again, let alone ski, but Seibert proved them wrong by landing a spot on the U.S. Ski Team and falling just short of competing in the 1950 World Alpine Ski Championships in Aspen. Shepard says Seibert was the best skier he ever knew. "Pete’s been the best skier around ever since I could remember," says Shepard. "There were 20 or 30 of us who would ski around Sharon, and Pete was the one we all watched to see what was new and how to do it." Shepard also recalls the time Seibert built his first ski "mountain." "In 1940 on our country doctor's farm, we cut down trees and actually built a place to ski about 50 feet wide and 100 feet long," Shepard says, adding that the new area did not have a lift. "We used to ski days and night and all over the woods, and we never had lifts." The decision to follow Seibert from Aspen to Vail "was easy," Shepard says. "On the night of April 17 of 1962, Pete, Earl (Eaton), Bob Parker, Pepi (Gramshammer) and I camped on top of the mountain and skied down the Back Bowls the next day, and that was it (his decision was made). We skied all the way down to the aspen trees and had to walk all the way out. There were no lifts then." That’s when Gramshammer, the Austrian ski racing star whom Seibert lured away from Sun Valley to help promote his new mountain, famously uttered that it took forever to hike out. And so the run "Forever" was born. But while Seibert sowed the seeds of his dream, legions of others would reap the bounty of its harvest. The Filo T. Farnsworth of the ski industry, Seibert invented the mega-resort but never really capitalized on it financially. But like Farnsworth, who invented television but saw RCA commercialize and profit from it, Seibert seemed be driven more by the dream than by the rewards. "The details of running a business and being an executive were not his strength, and he readily admitted that and tried to have good people around him to run the business, and he did a good job with that," says Slifer, who was Seibert's de facto office manager that first season, then went on to be assistant ski school director for three seasons before launching a wildly successful real estate career. "When you look at people like Pete, who are visionary and have this incredible knack for creating something, very often they don’t end up with a lot of money and don’t end up with the company, because they’re more interested in the vision," says Slifer. Seibert, at least publicly, never seemed to mind that he didn't cash in fully on the unprecedented success of Vail. In a 2000 interview with The Vail Trail to announce the release of his book, "Vail: Triumph of a Dream," Seibert recounted how his dream literally came crashing back to earth on March 26, 1976. Two cars from the Lionshead Gondola plummeted 125 feet, killing four of 12 passengers and bringing down the Seibert era in Vail with them. "The fear of lawsuits led directly to the decision later in 1976 by Vail Associates board members myself included to sell the resort for $13 million to a fund controlled by board member Harry Bass, a Texas oil man," Seibert wrote. "From the start Harry and I clashed, and I was eventually forced to leave the company. (I spent the next 12 up-and-down years elsewhere …)" Elsewhere included partnering with Slifer to buy Snowbasin in Utah, a venture that also fell on hard times financially. But Slifer says Seibert was always infectiously upbeat about business ventures.”He was a guy who would never give up when the times got tough, and in the early days they were plenty tough, particularly financially,” Slifer says. “Vail was very under-capitalized and just struggled in those early years, and Pete just never gave up and always kept grinding. When we were partners in Utah in Snowbasin and times got tough over there, he was the same way, and we worked our way out of it.”Seibert was brought back into the Vail fold in the late 1980s by former Vail owner George Gillett, who bought the company from Bass in the mid ’80s. Seibert was then instrumental in developing Beaver Creek, an area he launched in the early 1970s with a dream of landing the Winter Olympics, and Arrowhead, as the march of ski resorts continued west down the Eagle River Valley. And while Seibert loved Beaver Creek's secluded valley, removed from Interstate 70 (a highway he hated for running down the heart of his valley), he always felt Bass built the wrong kind of village at the base. Modeled on the enormity of St. Moritz, Seibert had always pictured a small Bavarian village like Vail. 'I saw Bridge Street and the same scale of buildings down there at Beaver Creek because it fit down there," Seibert said in a previous interview. "I always liked Beaver Creek because it was in its own isolated valley. The ski area that Harry Bass saw that he liked and tried to copy was St. Mortiz (Switzerland), which is so far removed from a typical ski village that it’s just a joke it’s humongous, big, big buildings." Seibert’s heart always stayed in Vail, no matter how many other projects he was involved in. "I knew that we had the best mountain that I had seen here in the States regardless of the location, and we were just fortunate that we were halfway between Aspen and Denver," Seibert told The Vail Trail in a 2000 interview at Pepi's Gasthof Gramshammer. "We had what we wanted: a mountain that was below timberline, 11,500 feet and down, and we had a base elevation that was above 8,000 feet, so we’d have pretty good snow. And, of course, there’s nothing like the Back Bowls – they’ll blow your socks off." Gramshammer, who sat in on that interview, said he was wowed by Vail Mountain from the very start. "I liked it because the valley was at the bottom and you could go from here and ski back and it was high altitude with very good snow early snow that lasts until May, easy and we are close to a big city in the middle of America," said Gramshammer, who opened Pepi's, a Vail Village landmark, in 1964. "It was a very smart move." On that famous April 17, 1962, excursion that Shepard recalls so well, Seibert and several others picked Gramshammer up at Loveland, drove him to Vail and took him to the top of the mountain in the ski area’s first snowcat a sort of inverted bathtub on treads. Gramshammer then experienced what countless others have delighted in since: a spring plunge into the incomparable terrain of the Back Bowls. "I went right down; I never stopped," Gramshammer said, recalling that crystal clear day. "Seibert was a smart cookie. I just wish he owned half of this place that’s what I’d like to see. But he was too good all the time …" "We didn’t have the money; we got as much as we could," Seibert responded, deflecting praise back to Gramshammer. "Pepi and (his wife) Sheika were the ones who really made Vail Village, and the village is just as important as the mountain." "It all works together, but finding the mountain was really the thing…," Gramshammer said. Technically, it was Earl Eaton, a friend and coworker of Seibert's in Aspen and Loveland whose family had homesteaded in the Squaw Creek drainage near Edwards, who showed Seibert the mountain. But it was Seibert who recognized and unlocked its potential. Eaton, who still lives in Eagle, had been tramping all over the then-nameless mountain for years, first as a kid on family outings, then as a uranium prospector. In 1956, he and Seibert took seven hours to skin to the top of the front side of what would become Vail Mountain and then made the first known ski tracks down. The two had shared the dream of the perfect mountain for years, but Seibert knew their search was over when he saw the Back Bowls. In an earlier interview, Eaton, too, praised Seibert's vision in being able to recognize the attributes of a great mountain one that now draws more skier visits than any other in the United States. "A lot of the areas over in Europe have a lot of runs up to timberline then they have a lot of stuff above timber line," Eaton said. "The back side of Vail, you get to the top and you've got the same thing you've got above timber line in Europe, but you're out of the wind. "In 1999, Seibert and Eaton cut the ribbon during opening ceremonies for Vail's 885-acre Blue Sky Basin bowl expansion. The two new bowls bear the names Pete's and Earl's and are part of what the two ski industry pioneers first envisioned, and got permits for, when they skinned their way to the top of Vail Mountain in 1956. Seibert had been battling esophageal cancer for the past six months. He is survived by two former wives, Betty and Joy, three sons, Brant, Calvin and Pete Jr., and four grandchildren, Peter, Anna, Tony and Lizzie. A memorial service will be held on Monday, July 29, at noon at the Ford Amphitheater Vilar Pavilion in Vail. A reception at the amphitheater will follow the service. For more information on the service contact the Vail Valley Foundation at (970) 949-1999. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Shaw Regional Cancer Center in Edwards. Checks should be made out to Vail Valley Medical Center Foundation and should include "Peter Seibert Memorial" in the reference line. Donations should be mailed to the Vail Valley Medical Center Foundation, P.O. Box 40,000, Vail, CO 81658. For more information about making a Peter Seibert Memorial donation, call (970) 569-7484.
Vail Daily - July 19, 2002
Seibert Family Says Farewell
“Everything that was expected from other people, he expected from us,” says Pete Seibert Jr., Peter Seibert’s oldest son. “The second year I skied in Vail, a friend and I cut underneath a closure rope on a trail. It was icy. I made three turns and broke my leg. I sat there waiting and I watched him hike up all the way up from his office knowing that I was in real trouble for cutting the rope.”
Pete Jr., 46, of Edwards, was on vacation with his family in Michigan Monday when he learned of his father’s death. Founder of Vail, a World War II veteran, 10th Mountain Division trooper and a former U.S. Ski Team racer, Peter Seibert died Monday after a nine-month battle with esophageal cancer. He was 77.
“We had a lot of fun with Pete,” says Pete Jr., who likes to refer to his father by his first name. “He was always up to something. He always had somebody to carry the details; his mind was set on the big project. He was more interested in laying out trails and the golf course than getting down to the brass tacks of it.”
For a long time, every six months, Pete Jr. recalls, somebody would come to his father and say, “You got to see this (other) mountain.”
“We went to Alaska and British Columbia to look at mountains, but there was always something that didn’t work,” Pete Jr. says. “But the trips were always fun because the people at the other end were dreamers, too.”
The old Vail
Pete Jr. was 7 years old in 1962 when he moved to Vail from Denver with his family for the opening of “the Mountain.”
“In the beginning, everybody knew each other, everybody watched for other people’s kids,” Pete Jr. says. “Kids ran around town and there was always somebody keeping an eye on us.”
In the early days, Pete Jr. skied China Bowl with his father before hiking to chair 5.
“I can remember skiing with great skiers with Pete: Jimmie Heuga, Billy Kid, Jean-Claude Killy,” Pete Jr. says. “The U.S. Ski Team would come to Vail to train and we would jump on their slalom course. It was a way of life. And that was something Pete taught me – that the best part of ski racing is all the people involved.”
The Seiberts always had international ski racers coming to stay with them, says Pete Jr., who is the head trustee of Ski Club Vail. He has four children in the program.
As he remembers his father, Pete Jr. keeps going back to Vail’s early days.
“This place was very isolated at that time. We were so lucky to be able to be here then,” he says.
Despite Vail’s rapid growth – Vail Mountain now hosts 1.6 million skiers annually – his father was happy with the way the valley was growing, Pete Jr. says.
“Pete was always excited about people who came in and brought things to the party, something new,” Pete Jr. says. “He liked the way Vail developed. After all, his original vision, the village itself, was still the same.”
When Pete Jr. was 16, his parents got divorced – his mother, Elizabeth, now lives in Edwards.
“It was a pretty amicable situation,” Pete Jr. says. “They (parents) were able to work things out with the kids. In fact, my mom spent the last month helping me take care of Pete.”
His brother, Brant, lives in Boulder with a wife, Suzanne. His other brother, Calvin, lives in New York.
Going home
Every day, when he goes to work as a real estate broker in Vail, Pete Jr. says he is amazed by the place his father envisioned.
“I feel so much pride,” he says.
Seibert’s discovery, made with Earl Eaton, has made many millionaires in the past 40 years. And Vail Resorts has prospered. Net income for the last quarter, for example, was $46.9 million.
Pete Seibert, however, wasn’t a wealthy man, Pete Jr. says.
“He was more invested in the overall picture,” he explains. “Pete just loved to find somebody a spot where he knew they would enjoy it. He didn’t spend the time trying to mind his own pocket, and as a result he wasn’t wealthy when he died.”
Pete Jr. says he never sensed any bitterness in his father about that, either.
“In the end, what is more important is what you’ve accomplished and not so much what you’ve accumulated.”
Late in life, Pete Seibert’s passion was his five grandchildren: Petey, Anna, Tony and Lizzie, the children of Pete Jr. and Teri Seibert; and Maya, Brant and Suzanne Seibert’s daughter.
“Pete skied and golfed with the kids,” Pete Jr. says. “He attended their soccer games. When we gave him new shots of the kids, he would carry them around all the time, very proud of them.”
The last couple years, Pete Seibert didn’t ski because of his knee, injured in World War II. He kept himself for golf, which he loved, Pete Jr. says.
In the last month of life, as his health deteriorated, however, Pete Seibert didn’t give up his plans and goals. In the spring, following radiation therapy for cancer in his throat, he made it to Palm Springs, Calif., to play golf.
He also dreamed of finishing his second book, “For the Love of the Mountains,” and was planning a trip with his sons to Italy in September to retrace the steps he made in the 10th Mountain Division during the war, Pete Jr. says.
“All my children have Pete’s determination,” Pete Jr. says. “On the soccer field or on the mountain, skiing.
“The kids were very lucky to have Pete around. The skiing … the love of it,” he says. “Last summer we went with Pete to Camp Hale. We picked up mushrooms and we cooked them there. He was able to show them all that stuff.”
As Pete Jr. spoke on Thursday, flags in Beaver Creek and Vail flew at half-staff as the community mourned the loss of its creator.
“Celebration’ service July 29
Vail Daily page A10 - July 29, 2002
Celebration services for Pete Seibert Sr. will be held today at noon at the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater in Vail.
The Seibert family invites friends and the community to this service celebrating his life as a true mountain pioneer. Local speakers, musicians, fellow 10th Mountain Division soldiers and President Ford will be among those on hand.
The amphitheater gates will be open to the public beginning at 11 a.m.
Seating will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. A reception at the amphitheater will follow the service.
There will be free parking at the upper east and west lots at Ford Park and the athletic field on Vail Valley Drive. Attendants will be on hand to help facilitate the parking. These lots also offer limited handicapped parking. Golf-cart service will be available throughout Ford Park beginning at 10 a.m. for those needing assistance. Pick-up locations for the golf-cart service will be the Manor Vail Bridge and the top of the Ford Park parking lot. Free parking is also available in the Vail Village parking structure.
For those who require ADA assistance, call the town of Vail at least 24 hours in advance at 376-6211.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Shaw Regional Cancer Center in Edwards. Checks should be made out to the Vail Valley Medical Center Foundation and should include "Peter Seibert Memorial" in the reference line. Donations should be mailed to the Vail Valley Medical Center Foundation, P.O. Box 40,000, Vail, CO, 81658. For more information, call (970) 569-7484.
Vail Daily page A3 - July 17, 2002
VAIL FOUNDER PASSES AWAY PEACEFULLY
Pete Seibert, 77, succumbs to cancer at home, surrounded by friends and family
The death of the man who made the mountain was as peaceful as an evening snowfall, friends say.
The nine-month battle with esophageal cancer that ended in Edwards Monday evening was at times brutal. But Vail founder Pete Seibert fought the disease with the same zest and vision that 40 years ago drove him--with the help of a few friends--to sculpt one of the world's most famous ski resorts out of an obscure mountain valley.
"He lived a full life and as he once said, 'I sure had a good time," longtime friend Sheika Gramshammer said. "He said that just about a week ago. We were laughing about some of the silly things we've done."
Seibert, 77, was surrounded by friends and family when he died at his home in Edwards around 6 p.m. Monday. The World War II veteran, 10th Mountain Division trooper and former U.S. Ski Team racer was given six months to live when he was diagnosed with cancer in October.
"It's a pain in the ass," Seibert said in reference to his disease in a February interview. "But what are you going to do about it? You have to go after it. I've always done everything I've wanted to do with gusto."
Family members declined to comment Tuesday, but Eagle County Deputy Coroner Bruce Campbell spoke on their behalf.
"He died very peacefully," Campbell said. "Pete was very very healthy otherwise, up until time of death. He looked great, but he had deteriorated over the last few days."
Though he'd been bedridden for the last couple of weeks, Seibert continued working as a consultant for Vail Resorts, Campbell said. He was also trying to finish his second book, "A Love of the Mountains," which he said was going to be about the other soldiers in Camp Hale's 10th Mountain Division who went on to build ski mountains after returning from the war--a war that Seibert came home with such bad injuries from that doctors told him he'd never walk again, let alone ski.
By the early 50's, he was a ski patroller in Aspen. And he was racing again.
He dealt with cancer with the same determination he overcame his war wounds, said Dr. Robert Rifkin, the oncologist who treated Seibert at the Shaw Cancer Center in Edwards.
"This was a challenge he thought he could accomplish, like everything else he had done. His goal was always to try to beat the cancer, although we told him it would be hard," Rifkin said.
"When he started treatment he told me, 'you have to help me finish my second book,'" Rifkin said.
Though the book isn't finished, others will try to complete and publish it. Seibert published his first book, Vail: Triumph of a Dream," in 2000.
Test revealed in October that the cancer had also spread to Seibert's lungs. Chemotherapy treatments cured those lesions. But in May--when Seibert began having trouble driving--doctors found the disease had spread to his brain, Rifkin said.
But even then, he didn't give in, said Bill "Sarge" Brown, a longtime friend, 10th Mountain Division trooper and former manager and director of mountain operation for Vail and Beaver Creek mountains.
"You've got to cross the line of departure and go forward like you always have," Brown said.
Throughout, the gregarious and friendly Seibert was a source of support for other cancer patients in Edwards, Rifkin said.
"Even on weeks he didn't get treatment, he came in to give support to other patients," Rifkin said.
Backing up others was nothing new to Seibert, said Gramshammer, who along with husband Pepi owns Pepi's Gasthof Gramshammer and Pepi's restaurant a, among other Vail Village businesses.
"he has been a friend of ours since the beginning. It's a long haul from then," she said. "In the early stages of Vail, he was not just a founder. He was a promoter, he was a friend, he was fair and he helped people to get started. He was a great backbone to all of us."
Longtime Vail resident Tom Korchowsky", who'd been friends with Seibert since the late 60's, had visited his old pal Thursday.
"I brought him ice cream and noticed that he seemed to enjoy it, so I asked him what he would like and he said, "lobster", Korchowsky said.
Frinds described Seibert as a man who "always enjoyed a good meal." So Gramshammer said that Monday afternoon she brought a gourmet lunch to Seibert's house that consisted of salmon, mash potatoes and spinach.
A few hours after the meal and after she left Seibert's house, Gramshammer said she was called back because her old friend had passed away.
"There was no struggle. It was very calm and very peaceful," she said. "It was just like he fell asleep. They didn't even realize it. They just looked over and realized he was gone."
As of Tuesday evening no memorial arrangements had been made.
As much he'd accomplished, Seibert wasn't quite ready to stop making his mark on the world, Rifkin said.
A man of his determination may never have been ready.
"I think it's fair to say he died in peace," Rifkin said. "Although he always wanted to do more."
