VAIL — Vail's old guard turned out Thursday for a chance to swap stories with Bob Parker, the resort's first marketing director, and a man many people credit with bringing the resort to prominence.

Parker, now 86, is in town at the invitation of the Vail Leadership Institute, which is holding a big event for Parker and other Vail pioneers Friday. But before the big shindig, the Colorado Ski Museum hosted an event for Parker and some of the people he calls the “unsung heroes” of Vail's early years.

Parker's mobility is limited somewhat by the portable oxygen machine he has to use at higher elevations, so he mostly held court on a red stool in the museum, greeting old friends and swapping stories about the early days.

Just having Parker in the room brought out the stories from old friends.

Richard Peterson — “Dickie Pete” to most Vailites — recalled coming to work for Vail Associates back in the 1960s. At the time, Vail Associates banned its employees from sporting facial hair, and Peterson had a sharply groomed Van Dyke beard he was loath to shave.

After a long talk with Parker, Peterson agreed to shave, but the two made an event of it. Setting up shop at the Copper Bar, Peterson, Parker and the Vail Ski Patrol raffled off three chances to shave Peterson's beard — left, right and chin — with the proceeds going to a ski patrol fund that sponsored an Eagle-based ski racer.

“Bob handled that so well,” Peterson said. “It really made sense.”

Ironically, Parker had either a mustache or beard the entire 25 years he worked for Vail Associates. How did he do it?

“I told them my doctor said I needed to have facial hair because of cancer,” Parker said. “I got a note for it.”

‘Worth his weight in gold'

Pepi Gramshammer's hotel opened in the fall of 1964, and he's the longest-tenured lodge owner in town. But before building the hotel, Parker and Vail founder Pete Seibert showed him the new ski area, and he skied down one of the bowls.

There were no lifts in the bowls then, just snow cats to take skiers back to the top. But on Gramshammer's first trip down, he learned the snow cat was broken down, and he had to hike back up.

“He called me ‘forever' because I had to walk back up,” Gramshammer said.

While everybody did a little bit of everything back then, Gramshammer said Parker did even more. While Gramshammer was out on the professional skiing circuit, Parker made sure Vail's new ski-racing ambassador had a media contact at just about every stop.

“Every race, he had somebody pick me up,” Gramshammer said. “He's worth his weight in gold.”

Doris Bailey worked in the information and reservations center in the early days.

“There wasn't anything that happened that Bob didn't see to it that it happened,” she said.

Morrie Shepard, Vail's first ski school director — and who was getting ready to head up to the hill to get in a few runs Thursday — agreed, but recalled one promotion that didn't quite work as planned.

Parker was also a founder of Colorado Ski Country USA, and worked with that group to promote the state's ski areas to both the state and the world. One fall, a crew set up an exhibit at the May D&F department store in Denver. The simulated ski slope was supposed to be a 45 percent grade — a good, steep run. Instead, the slope was built at about a 45-degree angle to the sidewalk — roughly twice as steep as planned.

“I'm the only one who made it down,” Shepard said.

Starting an industry

Filmmaker Roger Brown said Parker gave him his start in the business.

“Bob had seen a film I'd done and said ‘We need a film,'” Brown said. “He told me, ‘We don't have any money but we can give you some land.'”

The promotional films Brown made for Vail turned into later work for airlines and equipment manufacturers, and Brown made sure Vail was a prominent location in those pieces, too.

“The publicity went a long way,” Brown said.

Parker and others involved in the resort also made some judgment calls early on that turned out to be the right ones.”

“There were major decisions to be made back then,” Tivoli Lodge owner Bob Lazier said. “The biggest one was whether to build buildings or build lifts. Because of Bob and others, Vail Associates built lifts and other people built buildings, and that worked well for everybody.”

Just about everyone at the reception had a story and was quick to laugh, as the old ski patrollers did when it was suggested that they showed up because they thought there would be beer at the event.

Elaine Kelton was one of the happiest people in the room. Parker and Seibert hired Kelton to be the social director at the Lodge at Vail starting in 1963.

“We didn't have TV then, so we'd rent movies,” she said. “We had a lot of fun.”

Business Editor Scott N. Miller can be reached at 970-748-2930 or smiller@vaildaily.com.