Carnes: Memorialized in stone
Richard Carnes Follow
“I did a lot of things here,” he said during our last interview back in June of 2015 for a local magazine. “I did everything I wanted to do … yes, I love Vail very much! This is the best ski area in America, and better than all of Europe. I could never have done this in Austria. You can’t believe how lucky I am. No one is luckier than I.”
Although fortunate to have a few more casual conversations with the living legend over the next four years, those words said by Pepi Gramshammer directly to me really stuck, my memory of him indelibly imprinted with his absolute and unwavering love of Vail.
Hence my relative disappointment at discovering the permanent monument to such a prominent member of Vail Royalty would be in the form of (drum roll please … ) a rock.
Yes, yes, I know, calm down, it will be in the “form of a sculpted stone column with ‘Forever’ etched into the side, with an additional plaque to be decided on by the Gramshammer family and town,” but it’s still a rock.
I would have preferred a bronze statue of the visionary himself, more along the lines of “Einstein on a bench” just down the street, or the 10th Mountain Division Soldier “Ski Trooper” statue over by the Covered Bridge.
Support Local Journalism
I’m more of a realist than a conceptualist when it comes to appreciating art forms, leaving the deep philosophical analysis to the much more culturally sophisticated.
No surprise there to most of you, I’m sure.
But when guests see the “Ski Trooper” they immediately want to know more. Who is he, what does he represent, why is he here? And then they want to take pictures standing next to the 12-and-a-half-foot tall World War II military stud.
I envisioned something similar for Pepi, with children and adults wanting their picture standing next to the man so instrumental in the early formative years of Vail, and then reading a plaque about his accomplishments and lifelong tributes to the entire valley.
But memorializing the now-approved stone with the word “Forever” is indeed fitting, as the story itself has been repeated thousands of times over the past 60 years. I just selfishly wish it was a bronze of Pepi pointing south to the slopes as if he were telling whoever was listening that it took him forever to climb back to the top, and it would have double meaning with his contributions to Vail lasting “forever.”
As to the location, although Kevin Foley certainly made a valid point for the corner of Gore Creek Drive and Bridge Street, just knowing Sheika and the girls are happy with the Children’s Fountain locale because of Pepi’s love for kids is all the rest of us need to know.
If they are happy with it, so should everyone else, and that certainly includes me.
Even if it is just a rock.
Richard Carnes, of Avon, writes weekly. He can be reached at poor@vail.net.
