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History on skis: Edwards students enjoy two-day lesson from Chris Anthony

One of the stories the kids found most interesting was that of Cruz Rios, a Mexican American who was recruited into the 10th Mountain Division

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Colorado Snowsports Hall of Famer Chris Anthony discusses the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division with students from Edwards Elementary School Friday at the Colorado Snowsports Museum in Vail. The kids were learning about local history.
Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily

Chris Anthony has visited hundreds of schools, delivering history lessons to thousands of kids, and said he is rarely as impressed as he was last week in Eagle County.

Anthony said his trip to Edwards Elementary’s third-grade class was one of the best school visits he’s had in his 29 years of using skiing to bring teaching tools into the classroom and educate kids.

A former Warren Miller ski film star and a member of the Colorado Snowsports Hall of Fame, Anthony teaches American and world history through the story of the 10th Mountain Division, the United States’ first ski troop. Some members of the famed unit went on to become the founders of the modern-day American ski industry.



In Edwards, Anthony said he found a group of attentive kids who were ready to take in that history from the moment he arrived when they greeted him with a welcome banner.

Colorado Snowsports Hall of Famer Chris Anthony with Edwards Elementary third graders at the Colorado Snowsports Museum in Vail.
Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily

He began his lesson using stories from Eagle County and Camp Hale, where the 10th Mountain Division trained. That local history was a means to teach kids the larger story of World War II, for which the 10th Mountain Division was created.

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One of the stories he said kids found most interesting was that of Cruz Rios, a Mexican American who was recruited into the 10th Mountain Division and became a photographer within the division, creating some of the best images we have today of the 10th in action.

“I talked about Cruz’s talents and how he was recruited into the division not as a skier, but learned how to ski and learned to love skiing,” Anthony said.

Anthony said he was also able to engage the kids by talking about the women of the 10th Mountain Division, and the little-known facts about the contributions that female Army enlistees made to Camp Hale.

Colorado Snowsports Hall of Famer, Chris Anthony, shows the kids the backpacks used by 10th Mountain Division soldiers Friday at the Colorado Snowsports Museum in Vail.
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The lesson continued at the Colorado Snowsports Museum in Vail, where the third graders got to see artifacts from some of what they had learned about from Anthony in the classroom.

“They got to see the equipment from that time — backpacks, skins, coats, stoves — stuff they could touch and feel,” Anthony said.

The kids then visited the skier statue in Vail and the statue of the WWII veterans who founded Vail, Pete Siebert and Earl Eaton, before going to the Vail Public Library to finish their history lesson.

At the library, the history lesson went back much further than WWII, starting back with the hunter-gatherers who inhabited the area 10,000 years ago and continuing into the 1870s with the first silver strike in Eagle County near Red Cliff.

Students from Edwards Elementary School check out the memorabilia at the Colorado Snowsports Museum in Vail.
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Students learned about the county’s agricultural history as well as its mining history. While the kids displayed a thorough understanding of our area, their most impressive knowledge was showcased when it came time to branch into how the mining and agricultural industries eventually gave way to the recreation industry which 10th Mountain Division troopers helped bring to Colorado after WWII.

As the Edwards Elementary third graders wrapped up their week at the Vail library, not a question was asked about Camp Hale that the students didn’t already know the answer — thanks to Anthony’s lessons earlier that week.

Anthony, during his lessons, had told the children that they could ask any question, and nothing was too difficult or off limits. But he did get one that is, and always will be, one of humanity’s toughest questions to answer.

“One kid asked why we have wars,” Anthony said. “We discussed our freedoms, our way of life, and how we have had to stand up and defend that in other places where people were being held down.”

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