Sanford Morris "Sandy" Treat Jr.
Marriages
Marion Knudson
Barbara (Danuke) Treat - 1982
Obituaries
Vail Daily page A17 - October 31, 2019
An effort proposed by U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse to name an overlook point by Camp Hale after 10th Mountain Division Army veteran Sanford Morris "Sandy" Treat Jr. has passed the House Rules Committee and will be incorporated into the Colorado Outdoor Recreation and Economy Act, slated to receive a vote on the House floor today.
"Sandy was one of the first soldiers at Camp Hale, where as part of the Army's 10th Mountain Division he trained for mountain warfare conditions in World War II," said Neguse. "I was honored to be able to meet with him during our trips to Camp Hale this summer, and witness his passion for preserving Camp Hale for future generations. I'm proud to fight for the completion of his vision by bringing the Colorado Outdoor Recreation and Economy Act to the House floor this week which would preserve Camp Hale as the first-ever National Historic Landscape."
If passed, the CORE Act will be the first statewide Colorado wilderness legislation to pass the U.S. House of Representatives in over a decade. Neguse was able to usher the bill through committee earlier this year, where the legislation earned a vote of approval from the Natural Resources Committee. The bill designates 28,728 acres surrounding Camp Hale as the first-ever National Historic Landscape, an unprecedented designation that speaks to the storied legacy of the Army's 10th Mountain Division in Colorado and around the world.
In addition to the designation of Camp Hale, in the 2nd Congressional District the legislation would provide permanent protections for nearly 100,000 acres of wilderness, recreation and conservation areas in the White River National Forest. Three new wilderness areas would be created in the Tenmile Range, Hoosier Ridge, and Williams Fork Mountains, totaling 21,033 acres and three existing wilderness areas — Eagles Nest, Ptarmigan Peak and Holy Cross wilderness — would be expanded adding 20,196 acres. Input and support from community leaders in Eagle and Summit Counties led to these designations.
The bill also creates a recreation management area in the Tenmile Range totaling 16,966 acres, which will protect access to world-class outdoor recreation, such as mountain biking, hiking and hunting and would adjust the boundaries around the Trail River Ranch in Rocky Mountain National Park to ensure ongoing access to the property for youth and community education programs. The bill also creates two new wildlife conservation areas totaling 11,668 acres. The Porcupine Gulch Wildlife Conservation Area would protect Colorado's only migration corridor over Interstate 70 for elk, bear, mule deer and other wildlife and the Williams Fork Wildlife Conservation Area would enhance wildlife habitat for the greater sage-grouse and other species.
Across the state, the CORE Act would preserve approximately 400,000 acres of public lands.
Vail Daily page A2: A14 - September 4, 2019
Editor's note: The Vail Daily has been privileged to write about Sandy Treat many times. His quotes in this tribute are pulled from some of those stories.
VAIL — After training in Camp Hale and fighting through northern Italy during World War II with the famed 10th Mountain Division, Vail icon Sandy Treat spent the rest of his life smiling.
Treat's run ended at 96 on Sunday, but his smile lives on.
Among his many contributions to the Vail community, Treat hosted the Colorado Snowsports Museum's Tales of the 10th Mountain Division, a weekly series of talks by members of the famed division. The standing-room-only crowds almost always greeted Treat with a hero's welcome. He deserved it, as do thousands of others.
For every Colorado Snowsports Museum presentation, Treat worked his way through the crowd of well-wishers and fans. He took a seat at the front of the room, cleared his throat and began to tell stories.
He loved to entertain questions. His presentations sometimes shifted, depending on what he was asked.
Someone always asked, "Were you scared when you went to war?"
"Sure!" came Treat's reply. "When someone next to me was shot, I was damned scared!"
Then that smile returned to his eyes.
"Let's make this a happy thing. I've seen a lot of unhappy things, lots of terrible things," Treat told the crowd.
Sandy the second
Treat was raised on a farm outside New York City by his mother, Jane, and father, the original Sandy Treat. His father graduated from New York Military Academy and fought in World War I. He taught his son to shoot and ski.
Sandy Sr. skied behind his thrill-seeking son controlling Sandy Jr.'s speed with a rope, keeping him from obeying the laws of gravity and inertia with missionary zeal. About halfway down, young Sandy shouted, "OK, Dad, let me go!"
It's what you do with children — you let them go. And, oh, the places Treat went.
The Depression hammered Treat's family, as it did so many. His father's businesses cratered and the family lost almost everything except each other. Young Sandy worked delivering The New York Times and New York Tribune to help the family.
Eventually, the family rebuilt the businesses and sent a young Sandy Treat Jr. to the prestigious Deerfield Academy, where he excelled in both academics and athletics — he was captain of the ski team and earned a Major League Baseball tryout.
He headed for Dartmouth College and was a member of the ski team that won a national championship. But he wasn't there long. He enlisted in the United States Army in 1942. His mother wrote to him every day he was in the service.
The legendary Minnie Dole, who founded the 10th Mountain Division, the National Ski Patrol and so much more, asked Treat about his qualifications for the 10th. Treat told him, "I can ski fast and for a long way."
Camp Hale tales
Treat boarded a train in New York with 15 other guys and headed west to Camp Hale. Hundreds were already there. Thousands would follow. Between 1942 and 1945, 15,000 men trained in Camp Hale, located between Leadville and Red Cliff.
Calisthenics included push-ups in the snow without gloves, "to toughen them up," Treat said. The Germans were well trained and battle-hardened.
"You gotta learn to deal with tough stuff," Treat said. "We were a bunch of college guys with no experience."
It wasn't all misery. One day an officer walked up to him and barked, "Are you Sandy Treat?"
"Yes sir," Treat replied.
"We want you to climb up in that clump of trees so the photographer can take a picture," the officer ordered.
So he did, except the photographer told him to take off his clothes for the picture.
Treat may or may not remember the picture, but he remembered it was so cold that the photographer fumbled around and dropped his camera. Sandy also remembered it took a long time.
"I thought, 'I'm gonna die before I even get started,'" Treat said.
He didn’t die. He survived Camp Hale, the Battle of Riva Ridge and much more.
Mostly, though, the soldiers training at Camp Hale understood they were preparing to kill or be killed.
"Fun? There was no fun. We were angry! I mean really angry! Pearl Harbor had happened. We couldn't wait to go out and fight the enemy!" Treat told Karolina Blodgett.
Ironically, the skiing soldiers did not ski during combat in Europe, Treat said. It was spring when they arrived in Italy and a few guys skied on a patrol. Their skis made such a clatter on the rocks that it gave away their position.
"We didn't ski in combat. We didn't even have our skis in Europe," Treat said.
'You must come to Wail!'
Another Vail icon, Pepi Gramshammer, recruited Treat to Vail with a simple admonition: "You must come to Wail! That's the place!" Gramshammer said in his distinctive Austrian accent. Vail founder Pete Seibert told Treat about launching the Country Club of the Rockies, knowing he was an avid golfer. So, in 1986 after a successful business career, Treat did.
Even before returning to Colorado, Treat wrote to then-Vail Mayor Paul Johnston asking how he could help the community. Johnston was an absolute fountain of suggestions.
Treat had a big effect on the small town.
He served on several nonprofit boards, bringing his business acumen with him and pulling a couple of local operations back from financial ruin.
In 1989, the World Alpine Ski Championships returned to the United States for the first time since 1952. Treat strapped on his volunteer coat and, along with hundreds of others, stepped up. He worked with Sarge Brown, mountain operations department manager. It also helped assuage some European sensibilities that Treat was a World Cup expert.
Treat first started Masters ski racing near his home in Toronto. After moving to Vail, he dominated the men's Masters division of the Rocky Mountain region well into his 80s. His racing days ended with a horrific crash in 2009 that cost him the sight in one eye.
He was skiing again in less than a year, this time with Foresight Ski Guides, a service for visually impaired and blind skiers, and the Vail Veterans Program that brings military personnel injured in Iraq and Afghanistan and their families to Vail for ski and golf vacations.
He won the Inaugural Heart of the Community Award, and in 2010 was inducted into the Colorado Snowsports Hall of Fame, a class that included local legends Dr. Jack Eck and Dr. Richard Steadman.
Sandy outlived three wives and one of his children. He lived to see Sandy Treat V born nine months ago.
During one of last summer's Tales of the 10th presentations, he smiled at a standing-room-only crowd.
"I've had a lovely life," he told them.
Vail Daily page A11; A13 - September 5, 2019
Sanford Morris "Sandy" Treat Jr. died of natural causes at Vail Health Medical Center September 1, 2019. He lived over 96 years.
Sandy was born January 22, 1923, in Flushing, New York to Sandy Treat Sr. and Jane Woodruff Treat. He was their only child. He was raised in New York City but always relished his summer escapes to Orange, Connecticut, where he played both baseball and tennis and his winter escapes to Lake Placid where he started a lifetime on skis.
He left New York public schools for Deerfield Academy where he was the soccer goalie, baseball first baseman and star of Deerfield's first ski team. He graduated in June 1941 and headed up north to Dartmouth College where he joined the ski team his freshman year.
Sandy was in Hanover, New Hampshire, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Like most of his generation, he was anxious to serve. In 1942, he learned that the United States Army was forming a division of ski troopers. Private Sandy Treat was among the first arrivals in the 10th Mountain Division and stepped off the train in Camp Hale, Colorado, among construction workers and building material.
Then he trained … and trained … and trained. He trained so much he became a trainer himself. The Army calls it a Drill Sergeant. Sandy finished the war in Army Intelligence in the north of Spain. From Deerfield, he had become fluent in Spanish, and his mission was to find and capture fleeing Nazis.
He mustered out in late 1945 and returned to Dartmouth where he captained the ski team and graduated in June of 1949. While in summer language school at Middlebury, he met Marion Knudson from Eastchester, New York, the only child of Norwegian immigrants. Marion became his bride shortly after graduation.
Given his fluency in Spanish and French, Sandy enlisted with Alcan Aluminum. He moved to Montreal where daughter Cindy was born and then was relocated to New York City and then to Geneva, Switzerland, where he attended Centre d’Etudes Industrielle and worked in aluminum operations all over Europe. Then back to New York where daughter Leslie was born. Not much for sitting still, Sandy was appointed Head of Sales for all of Central and South America, and the family moved to Caracas, Venezuela. Son Sandy III was born in Caracas.
Shortly thereafter, the family moved back to New York City, and settled in Greenwich, Connecticut. While there, the family acquired a farm in West Dover, Vermont that … surprise, surprise … was nearly walking distance to Mount Snow. The snow-loving Treats skied at Mount Snow and nearby Haystack Mountain and summered at the farm.
Then Alcan relocated to flat Cleveland, Ohio. Undaunted, Sandy formed a Cleveland USSA junior racing team that used some local hills and nearby New York state so that his mountain-addicted clan was able to continue schussing. Daughters Cindy and Leslie became Midwest champs. Son Sandy was shipped off to Holderness School where he pursued top-level Alpine competition. Unfortunately, the family lost their beloved Marion to cancer at only 50 years of age.
At the same time, Sandy’s career flourished, and he was promoted to President of Alcan Canada Products in Toronto, Ontario. He moved north by his lonesome having lost his bride and all the kids out of the house.
Thereafter followed a flurry of business activities as Sandy dealt with the early '80s recession and then boom in the North American economy. In 1982, he met and married a Canadian lass in Barbara Danuke to continue on his life journey. By 1984, he was able to retire from Alcan, and he and Barbara remained in Toronto where they worked together in their own consulting firm.
But the call of the mountains soon overcame Sandy, and he headed west to join his son and new bride Kathy in the Vail Valley. Son Sandy III had left Holderness and became a racer for first the Wyoming Cowboys and then the University of Denver. He was beginning a development business in the Vail Valley. Also, Sandy Jr. already knew Pete Seibert from the 10th Mountain days and was friends with Pepi Gramshammer from his days at a summer racing camp the ski-crazy Treat family attended four years in Red Lodge, Montana.
Sandy's return to Vail became the longest chapter in his life. His affection for the place and vice versa was remarkable.
From the very first winter that Treat arrived in 1985, up until his serious racing accident in 2009, Sandy was one of the most dominant Masters ski racers in his age class in the Rocky Mountain region. Along with his accomplishments on the slopes, he has been a major part of the ski community through his work to help others in the sport and promote skiing in the Vail Valley and Colorado.
While still in Toronto, Sandy wrote to then Vail Mayor Paul Johnston, asking how he could help the community with the 1989 FIS World Alpine Ski Championships on the horizon. He immediately volunteered in several capacities, including with Mountain Operations Manager Bill "Sarge" Brown. In addition, Treat used his deep knowledge of ski racing and the World Cup circuit to help the Championships run smoothly.
Sandy has held numerous board of directors positions for local volunteer organizations including the Jimmie Heuga Center, the Eagle County Library, Country Club of the Rockies, Vail USSA Racing and others.
He has also worked tirelessly to keep the story and legacy of the 10th Mountain Division alive through his weekly "Tales on the 10th" talks and annual presentations to visiting students and others. These first-hand recollections of Sandy's training at Camp Hale and the 10th Mountain's heroic exploits in helping to end World War II in Europe have educated and inspired thousands of museum guests over the course of the past eight years. An integral member of the Colorado Snowsports Museum family, Treat was inducted into the Colorado Snowsports Hall of Fame in 2010.
Despite all his activity, Sandy has dealt with great personal adversity while in the Valley. He lost second wife, Barbara, to cancer, in 2006. Barb was very involved with the Vail Valley Foundation and has a separate foundation in her honor as part of the Vail Valley Foundation. Most devastating was the loss of son Sandy III to cancer in early 2015. His wife Kathy, her two sons Sandy IV and Andrew plus her grandson Sandy V, known as Quinn for obvious reasons, and mother Hope Nickeson all remain in the valley. Lastly, cancer also took caregiver and best friend Dale "Cowboy" Foster.
Sandy leaves behind:
1. daughter Cindy Hollister, husband John, their four children Will, Ben, Allison Carr (Alex) and Andrew, and Allison's daughter Logan;
2. daughter Leslie's husband Steve Bouchard and their two children Arianna and Kristen, and Arianna's daughter Tula; and
3. son Sandy III's wife Kathy and her two sons Sandy IV and Andrew, and, with mother Hope Nickeson, Sandy V.
A memorial service is planned for October 1 at 4 Eagle Ranch. In lieu of flowers, please contribute to the Vail-based Colorado Snowsports Museum and Hall of Fame.
