Between the months of May and September, the Queche Base Lodge is a hive of activity. Golfers come and go picking up goodies and refreshments for the Highlands back nine. In the front hallway they walk past a shuttered opening on top of a high desk and if they’ve enjoyed a Vermont winter they wouldn’t know that the opening is heart and soul of Quechee Club as soon as the snow falls. Of course, I’m talking about the ski school and once again, returning for the 33rd straight year, Ken Kramberg will be at the helm.

Kramberg’s story is not that of a typical Vermont ski school dynasty and in a way that makes it more special. When I asked him where he grew up skiing he replied, “I didn’t, I grew up in New York City in a part of Queens, surfing.” It wasn’t until junior high school that he had his first skiing experience. As part of a Boy Scout troop, Kramberg headed north of the city to a small ski area called Ski Minne. Throughout high school he made frequent trips with his Boy Scout troop as well as with family friends. These trips fostered a love for the great outdoors that has continued his entire life. At 13 he became involved with the Appalachian Mountain Club Climbing Group where he developed into an experienced hiker, rock climber and even ice climber. But the great outdoors was not his only calling.

Kramberg is a man of uncommon passion and dedication. After graduating from Brooklyn College with a major in both film studies and special education, in 1977 he was hired as a special educator at Hartford High School. He started his 30-year career working with children with cognitive disabilities. Eventually he specialized in helping children with emotional and behavioral disorders have a happy, healthy and successful academic experience. Kramberg started as a special educator and ultimately became a coordinator and then director of the Regional Special Education Collaborative. He designed and created the Wilder School, an alternative school in the Hartford school district, and also the Hartford Autism Regional Program, which helps kids on the autism spectrum. His job at Hartford High School was what also brought him to the Quechee Club.

In 1978, Carol Wheeler, then co-director of the Quechee Ski School with her husband, was working as a counselor at Hartford. She asked Kramberg if he would come on board as a Nordic ski instructor and for two years he did just that. During his down time at the club (in between lessons) Wheeler taught him how to teach alpine ski lessons. With a lifetime of experience in outdoor recreation, he was a fast learner and in his third year he became an alpine as well as Nordic instructor. When the Wheelers decided to leave the ski school in 1983, they picked Kramberg to be their successor.

Today Kramberg is certified by the Professional Ski Instructors of America. As head of the ski school he works with thirty-five instructors that teach lessons in Nordic skiing, alpine skiing, telemarking and snowboarding. There are morning and afternoon group lessons for children ages 4 to 7 and also 8 to 12, as well as daily adult group lessons. For the most enthusiastic skiers there are also both private and semi-private lessons.

Kramberg has also worked for the past few years as a statewide education consultant with a contract with the University of Vermont where he completed his Master’s degree and has been an adjunct faculty member for several years.

Filling Life’s Stage

I love an audience,” Eleonora Stein proclaims. Throughout her life she has found audiences, in her careers as dancer, singer and teacher. Now 89, she has lived a full and active life that’s provided her with many stories and collections of memorabilia—and she continues to accumulate anecdotes and events. “All the world,” even each local village street, is her stage.

“Mme. Stein,” as she is known to her ballet students, speaks with enthusiasm and precision—and presumably with accuracy—of her life and experiences. “I was born in Budapest on August 16, 1926,” she says. “This year I’ll be 90 years old! In 1938, I arrived with my mother on October 10 in New York. My mother’s father got the visa. We went through Berlin, and the train stopped in a huge Bahnhof—train station. They wouldn’t let us get off the train. The glass dome, the roof, was hung with gigantic swastikas from one end to the other.”

“My father and brother left the next year; they were sneaked out,” continues Mme. Stein. The family was Jewish—their name was Reich. She converted to Catholicism in the 1950s. “When we arrived, we lived with my grandfather on 72nd Street. My mother was excellent in needlework. She worked for an outstanding costumer in New York, and went to night school to learn English. I went directly to school—I didn’t like that! I learned English in three months and started writing for the school newspaper. And soon I was a well-known figure in school because of dance.”

All artistic endeavors appealed to the young Erika (Mme. Stein’s birth name). One day in a music class she noticed an empty front row and rushed up to claim it. When the class sang an aria from Faust, she gave it her all. “The teacher was listening,” she recalls, “ and said, ‘Erika, come up and sing it yourself,’ and the class applauded. Of course, all I needed was an audience,” she laughs.

Press photo from The Roxy Theatre.

The pretty child who had taken many dance classes in Budapest, and also performed there in children’s theater and short films, had disappointments as well as successes. In New York she attended the High School of Music and Art (which existed from 1936 to 1984), beginning in 1941, but her dance career ran into problems. Too early work in ballet on pointe in her early childhood had injured her feet, and doctors discovered she had a slight heart murmur, which in those days was treated with complete rest. “They gave me a pass to use the elevator—can you imagine!,” she exclaims. “It was such a heartbreaker.” Making lemonade out of lemons, she began taking voice lessons.

In the 1950s, Mme. Stein performed under the name Erica Bard (an Americanization of her grandmother’s name, Bardos) at The Roxy Theater, and toured with the company. At times she worked with her family: her father designed toys, including an angel Christmas-tree topper, which shows up in movies (including The Bishop’s Wife, and Holiday Inn). “I was the fastest on the assembly line,” she recalls. “I always had to shine. I’m a ham from way back.” In 1958, Stein became her name with her marriage to Hal Stein, who was her supervisor at a graphics company. The couple lived in New Jersey, where their two sons still live­—one a police sergeant and the other a corporate vice president. Mme. Stein is still in touch occasionally with Hal, though they divorced in the 1970s and he has remarried.

Settling in Vermont

Around 1985 she moved to Woodstock. She has been known in this area as a teacher of dance, and she still has an occasional student. “The Russian style is what I teach. Arm movements are very important,” she says. “Like this, graceful!,” she demonstrates by moving her arms through several canonical positions with a smooth, lilting, continuous flow. “Not like this!,” as she moves her arms from down to up then to side and front in a stop-action style.

Press photo from her days as a singer.

Mme. Stein’s cozy apartment displays mementos of her activities over the years. Photos of herself and her family fill the walls, along with children’s drawings, paintings and sketches she has done, and works by friends. A treasured souvenir is a newspaper article telling of her visit to London’s Royal Ballet, signed by some of the company’s greats, including famous ballet dancers Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev.

As she faces the challenges of age, Mme. Stein remains valiant. She can no longer drive, but she cuts a notable figure when she walks, wearing “my fur jacket, my beautiful fur boots, my fur hat, and of course my gold pocketbook.” As a visitor reaches to pick up a fallen item since Madame has difficulty with her knees, she exclaims, “No, no! I don’t want help. I do it myself.”

Hunter Hall, 30, of Quechee, VT, had a few new experiences this past summer that were pretty amazing, culminating in winning the bronze medal in golf at the Special Olympics World Games in L.A. Hunter and his parents, Allen and Sally, and his brother, Camden, are all avid golfers often visible on the Quechee course. Although Sally can’t remember at exactly what age Hunter started golfing, it was somewhere during his middle school years (with two boys close in age, who can remember anything?) Allen had been golfing but, as Sally said, as the boys took an interest, she took up golfing, too, so it could be a family activity.

At first, Hunter lacked the coordination to put the ball on the tee, or to hit on the fairway, so he had some help and practice shots throughout the rounds. He is a very visual learner, his mother noted, (he never had a lesson but, rather, picked up the game by watching and playing.)

He began competing in the Special Olympics during his junior year of high school. He competed in bowling and snowshoeing, as well as golf. Over time, he grew to be a stronger golfer on his own, and outgrew the need to have an able-bodied player as part of his team by the time it was required for him to compete on his own. He then qualified for the World Games by winning the gold medal at the Vermont Special Olympic Games in 2013.

Hunter had to stop bowling along with the rest of us in the Upper Valley when the Upper Valley Lanes and Games in White River Junction shut down. He’s not the only one to be incredibly disappointed. Sally recounted her love of a program that Dartmouth College students used to run on Tuesdays there with the members of the Special Olympics. Sally noted that, while sometimes they would just be bowling, the students would sometimes have the music and lights going, dancing with the kids. And, she said, “they all loved it”.

Hunter still snowshoes, but golf is his main focus as a competitive sport. He collects logo and signed golf balls—as many as he can. He has thousands of them decorating his room at home. He also is lucky enough to have a practice putting green in his basement.

Hunter’s journey to the Special Olympics World Games

Made the putt!

This past summer, Hunter was one of 7,000 athletes from 177 nations participating in the Special Olympics World Games 2015. For the first week, Hunter, and the rest of the participants, were flown to San Diego for qualifying, without parents. He hadn’t spent much time away from his, but with Hunter’s happy, kind personality, he had no trouble fitting in anywhere.

Allen, Hunter’s dad, caddied for him the whole week of the competition, and Sally and his brother Camden flew to L.A. to watch and cheer him on. Perhaps having all his family around brought some luck, because despite four abnormally hot days of competition, Hunter shot rounds of 104, 103, 102, 103—412 total, giving him enough of an advantage to win the bronze medal.

In an August interview with the Valley News, Missy Rodriguez, one of Hunter’s coaches in the Upper Valley Hawks Special Olympics program, said, “He’s the man… He’s a great adult. He has a great personality, very energetic. He smiles all the time and loves to know what’s going on. And he loves to be involved in whatever he can be involved in.”

Missy Rodriguez isn’t the only one who feels that way about Hunter. Craig Sherpa, a retired Marine Corps drill instructor, began coaching Hunter last winter to get his skills up and ready for the big games. Craig commented, in the same Valley News article, that anyone who gets a chance to meet Hunter will be meeting “one of the most beautiful human beings I have ever met.”

Sally also hinted towards Hunter’s love for others and that winning might not even have been the biggest highlight. Meeting people and making new friends is what really makes Hunter happy. He was also thrilled when Michelle Obama was one of the guests at the opening ceremonies.

Hunter, left, and, Dad, Allen.

“Hunter is Mr. Patriotic. Mr. Red, White and Blue,” Sally said.

Now that he’s got his medal, Hunter certainly hasn’t sat back on his laurels. He’s one that never stops moving. He has a job delivering the D (the Dartmouth newspaper) across his campus route, as well as working at Dan & Whits a local store in Norwich, VT. He’s golfing, practicing and playing with his fellow Upper Valley Hawks Special Olympics team and, likely, inspiring many others to dream about making it to the World Games.

Over a healthy lunch at Jake’s Market Café in Quechee, Sharin Luti and I talked about the inevitability of the Quechee Times doing her profile. “I’m not that interesting, really!” Sharin says. “Are you kidding?” I reply. If you live in Quechee, you likely know her or have felt her impact in some way. She is, in fact, a very interesting person! Here is her story.

As Luti puts it, “I’ve never been one to just sit down. When I was a kid, I was always running things. We used to stage circuses and fairs – I was always the director.” Over her life, she honed the skills involved in running those hometown circuses—creative, technical and administrative—resulting in a successful professional career, active community involvement and commitment, many artistic pursuits and loving family and friends.

Let’s start with how she got to Quechee. Luti was raised along the New Jersey Shore and always thought that she would end up retiring near the ocean. She went to graduate school in Boston—where she met husband Paul—wondering why anyone would live that far north! They settled in Andover, MA (yes north of Boston!), brought up their two children and pursued careers.

In 1977, the Lutis decided that they wanted a vacation retreat. And Luti continued to migrate north to Quechee. “We had to be less than two hours from Andover and wanted a multi-season place. We stopped in Quechee when returning from a ski trip. We liked the village and the low-key atmosphere. We bought a lot, built a modest home (doing much of the work ourselves), and enthusiastically started coming up on weekends.”

Luti’s career in Information Technology

Meanwhile, back in Andover, Luti was pursuing a successful career in the Information Technology (IT) field. As she looks back on her professional success, she reflects on the influences and “guardian angels” that helped to direct her, and specifically helped her to see that being female in a primarily male field could be an advantage. As she looked to going to college, her father suggested that, “I major in math because it was not a female field. He said, ‘You will be different.’” Although she thought she would minor in art, her “amazing” college mentor pointed out that she would really stand out in a male field if she minored in physics—and that is what she did, math and physics. She put herself through college at Fairleigh-Dickinson in New Jersey. Her mentor maintained his confidence in her and told her that she “must go to graduate school.” She went to Boston College with a teaching fellowship in math.

Sharin Luti

There were certainly challenges. Early on she was assigned to lead a technical project for a man who felt that a woman did not possess the skills required for the task. Unaware of his feelings (beyond the fact that he was tough), Luti led her team to a successful conclusion. Later that man confided that his opinion of women in the technical work force had changed, in a positive way, as a result of this success. “People who quietly get the job done and demonstrate competence do make a difference,” she says.

Luti says that, “All along the way, someone helped. You run your life and you don’t really think about things. Now I think about these wonderful people who helped me learn how to be strong.” In her 27 years at Dynamics Resource Corp. (DRC) in Massachusetts, she was the first female department manager and the first female vice president. She mentored many men and women, and sees herself as a trailblazer for women in the work force.

And now Quechee and the Upper Valley are reaping the rewards of Luti’s experience and competence. There was a brief period when the Luti family didn’t get to Quechee much, and they put the house up for sale because they used it so rarely. Fortunately, it didn’t sell. Once their kids were grown, they abandoned the idea of retiring in Boston (or more south) and moved permanently to Quechee. They have been full-time residents here since 2001.

The two “kids”—Brian and Stacy—are grown and the Luti’s now have three grandchildren, Taylor Marie (10), Rowan (9) and Henry (6). Stacy, a baker at the Woodstock Farmer’s Market, and Taylor Marie live in Quechee. Brian is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army (with two Iraq and two Afghanistan tours) stationed in Hawaii. When Luti asked him why he wanted to apply for a ROTC Scholarship when he was at the University of Vermont, Brian said, “Because you always told us you have to give back and this is my way.” Luti explains, “And this is a kid who wasn’t allowed to play with guns when he was little.”

Focus on Community

Luti has always been involved in her community and found volunteer opportunities in Quechee when she was close to retirement and had more time. She was a QLLA Trustee from 2004 – 2010 and has served on a number of Quechee Lakes Landowners Association (QLLA) committees. She also volunteered at the Quechee Library.

She has co-chaired the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock (CHaD) Classic/Gala fundraiser with Gail Ferney since 2003. These events have contributed over two million dollars to CHaD over the past 30 years. Overseen by QLLA Charities, Inc. (of which Luti is the secretary), she describes the events as a “tribute to the generosity and caring nature of the Quechee community. There are so many people who contribute their time, money and passion for a good cause.” She has served on the CHaD Board in the past and is now a CHaD “community leader.” Her Upper Valley service also includes active volunteer support of Women’s Information Services (WISE), Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, DISMAS House and The Quechee Elves.

An Artist at Heart

2015 CHaD Gala committee.

And then there is the artistic and creative side of Luti. She tells me that “creativity runs in the family. “My mother made most of our clothes, did beautiful embroidery and taught me to sew.” When in college, Luti especially enjoyed her elective art classes—even more than those exciting math and physics ones! She is now an accomplished quilter (perhaps you have seen her work at the Billings Farm Quilt Show where she has won awards). She has branched out into making jewelry and a line of stylish jackets of specially imported rayon batik. She and several other women have formed the Crafty Ladies of the Upper Valley (CLUV). CLUV organizes and also shows their wares at the annual Quechee Artisan Fair.

So what is Luti doing in Quechee now? She is “enjoying all it has to offer with my family and friends. She enjoys many of the amenities, but says that, “At the top of my list are the people. The people here are involved, energetic, engaging and diverse. They are also very caring and generous. And it is such a beautiful place. When viewing the richness of color that blankets our hillsides in the fall, Brian who was three at the time remarked, ‘God is a really good painter.’ How true.”

Years ago, Conrad Richter (probably now best known for his wrenching short novel A Light in the Forest) wrote a trilogy about European settlers in the Ohio valley. The titles reveal the basic story: The Trees; The Fields; The Town. One character, a young girl in the first book, feels the oppressiveness of the dark, too-large-to deal-with trees in whose place the early settlers try to establish fields to grow food. By the end of the third book (which won the Pulitzer in 1951), she begins to plant trees.

Larry Potwin has also lived through “cycles of connection” with the land both for farming and for recreation in the Ottauquechee Valley, though in his case the cycles may resemble braided strands or a double helix, mixing farming and the insurance business. This past summer he built and ran a farm stand on his property on Quechee-West Hartford Road, not far from the intersection with Quechee Main Street.

In addition to the produce that he grows and buys from local farms, Potwin has filled the farm stand with interest ing details, such as an old-fashioned wood cook stove—connecting to his history and Vermont’s. The wide planks that top the counters in the farm stand are from a 50-year-old tree that he cut with his father. He has a pony and some goats, and hopes to expand the animal collection, because, as he says, “I love to have kids come here to have a chance to be with animals, to be outside.” The day after Thanksgiving he’ll be selling Christmas trees and wreaths.

Potwin’s farming roots

Some of Potwin’s earliest memories revolve around his parents rising early to prepare the morning meal and do chores—milking a small herd “of Jerseys” he says with pride. “My dad and mom used to get up at 5 am every day and milk the cows, have breakfast, and then my dad would go logging all day and get home about 6 pm, eat supper and go milk again.” Even as busy as his father was, Potwin remembers the little black pony he had when he was five. His father found time to build a little red sleigh for the pony to pull around the yard.

Potwin soon accepted that his place in the family carried with it an obligation to pitch in. “Kids on a farm learn about life very fast and at a young age,” he says—he was driving a tractor at age eight. “There is never enough help. Farm kids learn a lot about animal care as preschoolers, and everything from mechanical work to growing food, sewing. And most of all, how to put in a good day’s work, which taught me that you can accomplish anything you want.” Farm families were often very large, to provide more hands for the work. Potwin was the only boy among four siblings, while his father, Roger, was one of fifteen children. His mother, Beverly Blood, was one of ten living on the Highland Homestead Farm on Hillside Road, which is still in the family.

When Potwin’s father gave up the strenuous life of a logger in Randolph, Vermont, Roger became a realtor, and so did Beverly. The family moved to Taftsville, while not a great distance, it was a big change for Potwin and his three sisters. “Today my father couldn’t be a realtor because he had no high school degree,” he says. Roger had also been a realtor, at Woodstock’s Strout Realty, driving prospects to farms in his Model T Ford pickup in the ’40s and ’50s.

Potwin learned about selling from his father. “I was always going with my dad, so I learned, as Vermonters say, ‘the gift of gab.’ I knew every property. One day my parents both had appointments to show property and a couple came in that wanted to see a piece of land. Dad said ‘Larry, go with them and show them the [property] lines.’ Sure enough, they bought it! I was so proud. I was about 10 years old.” Most of the farms, he says, ranged from 50 to 200 acres, and they sold for $10,000 to $20,000.

The Potwin family moves to Quechee

“In 1965,” he recalls, “my dad saw a piece of land in Quechee with big red barns and 80 acres for $10,000. He knew it had great potential so he offered to buy it from the owner, Merle Henderson, if Merle would finance it with $1,500 down. My mom said he was crazy, since they owned almost a thousand acres at the time. Little did they know that John Davidson was thinking about starting a huge development right next door at the Quechee Fells Farm. We fixed up the barns and cut all the lumber in the summer of 1969 to build a five-bedroom farmhouse. My dad always said, ‘Don’t buy lumber if you have the trees.’ I was able to run all the logging equipment, and learned a lot from my uncle Harold, my dad’s brother, who was a top-notch carpenter.”

Potwin was delighted to move back to Quechee. What kid wouldn’t want to live in Quechee, he laughs, when all the kids in town could ski for free? He put some of the earliest tracks on the hill, he claims, before the chairlift was running, when he got a ride up the hill in the snowcat. He went to high school in Hartford and took electrical and building courses.

In the mid-1970s Potwin received his real estate license, but the market was bad at the time and he turned to selling cars, and also worked as a financial advisor for MetLife and a district sales coordinator for Aflac. There he became one of the top annuity salesmen. At 19, he married Lynn, and a year later moved with her into a new house he was building himself. “We moved into it unfinished, but we loved it since we had no mortgage, and were both working other jobs.”

Back to his farming roots

Quechee is a microcosm of what some parts of Vermont have become, observes Potwin. He hopes his farming and farm stand venture will become self-sustaining, a model for the future, but he knows his success depends on the support of the community. He’s delighted to share the beauty and benefits of life in Vermont with those escaping overcrowded places, though he recognizes—especially since his family has been so intimately involved with the changes—the potential for the hills to sprout nothing but houses. “Will it prove to be as in past years that Vermont farm land is more profitable for growing houses than for growing vegetables?” says Potwin. “I do think Quechee Lakes was great for Quechee,” he adds. “It put a lot of people to work and resurrected an old mill town. My dad always said these hills and woods weren’t much good for anything else but home sites.”

What to Do is the title of an essay that Tim Martin wrote in response to the series of programs addressing issues of aging presented by the Quechee Lakes Community Affairs Committee (CAC) to the Quechee Lakes Landowners Association (QLLA) and the Upper Valley community. These programs were designed to help families and individuals make informed decisions and to plan ahead for those “life’s transitions” as we age. Programs addressed such topics as estate and financial planning, health care and advance directives, local resources in support of seniors and their families, and what you need to know if you want to stay at home. Martin, a Quechee resident, hosted a discussion entitled “Senior Living Options: Finding Your Place,” a very informative session about senior housing alternatives.

Martin is knowledgeable and very passionate about “helping to find the right living environment for aging family members.” Martin has devoted his entire 35-year professional career to this topic and wants to share that expertise with the Quechee community. Martin is a member of the sub-committee of the CAC focused on life’s transitions, and the committee looks forward to his energy in moving this group forward in support of our seniors and their families.

Martin and his wife, Peggy, purchased a condominium in Quechee in 1999 in part because he worked at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (then known as Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital) in Lebanon, New Hampshire, in the late seventies and introduced Peggy to the Upper Valley while he was there. The Martins love the area for its natural beauty and the ability to get involved in the many cultural and recreational activities that are made available by Dartmouth College. Their current plans are to make Quechee their retirement home for at least the summer months and travel the country in a motorhome during the winter. Their son, Chris, 35, lives and works in Portland, Oregon, and their daughter, Hannah, 34, lives and works in the Boston area. The Martins have lived in Quechee full-time since 2013, and recently moved from their condo to a house.

A New England native—Martin is originally from Augusta, Maine—most of his career in health care and senior living has been in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. He worked to develop rural health clinics for the indigent population (in Pennsylvania actually), in administration at 75-bed hospital in Caribou, Maine and at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (when he met Peggy, a leader in her field of health care risk management) and for a community-housing program for the elderly in Brighton, Massachusetts. The bulk of his career was spent directing the Milton Residences for the Elderly and the Milton Fuller Housing Corp., non-profit housing and real estate management companies in Milton, Massachusetts. In 2009, he was appointed president/CEO of Taylor Community, a continuing care retirement community (CCRC) in Laconia, New Hampshire. Martin has always worked for non-profit organizations. He tells me that “the thread of helping is at his core,” and is stimulated by the challenges of business decisions and strategic planning, but within the context of helping people. That is what motivates him. He is now the administrator of The Woodlands at Alice Peck Day (APD) an independent living facility which is part of Alice Peck Day Health Systems in Lebanon New Hampshire.

With retirement in 2013, and the decision to live full-time in Quechee, Martin took up another line of work—if briefly. He stopped by Jake’s Quechee Market on Route 4 when the Kerrigan family was working to get going and thought “I can help out here!” He started with just showing up and helping—painting, moving things, whatever needed to be done—and was then hired. His biggest pleasure was working with the customers. Perhaps you saw Martin there last year—he’s the guy who was always smiling! This also gave him a nice break and the time to realize that he wasn’t quite ready to transition out of his career (with help from Peggy who knew he wasn’t).

Back to “what to do” about the decision as to where and how to live as we age. Ironically, even though Martin has spent almost his entire career helping people each and every day address these issues, he and Peggy are now confronting the same. They are asking questions like: Do we stay at home in Quechee and still be able to go south to escape the harsh winters and pay rising property taxes? Move to a senior community or retirement community close to friends, perhaps closer to family—a place like the Woodlands or Kendal? Move in with one of the kids? What services will we need and how will we get them?

Martin says, “I have spent most of my career listening, watching and waiting for the questions that people have; contemplating a change of lifestyle is not easy. Moving is not easy. It is important to do the homework and think about options. The good news is that there is lots of information available from groups like LeadingAge, AARP, the VNAs, the QLLA CAC and private consultants there to help, but it can be overwhelming.” His advice is “not to assume that ‘aging in place’ is the only or the best option, and involve family and important friends in the decision process. They may influence and assist, but ultimately, we will decide the best place for us. Martin also says, “If you are thinking about moving, move when you can, not when you have to. ”

For the Martins, they do believe that after spending 36-years together they are home here in Quechee. Winters in Palm Desert, California, and summers in Quechee seem pretty good. Like the license plate on the motor home, they too are looking ahead toward their NXTCHPT.

I  met Bambi Koeniger with an email exchange about harvesting produce from the Quechee Community Garden. She and husband John were away and their tomatoes were abundant and very ripe. I had taken on the job of assuring that excess produce gets to The Haven—the homeless shelter and food bank in White River Junction. She asked that I go ahead and pick those tomatoes. I learned that she had been the primary Haven deliverer the year before and that her connection was even closer. The Haven is located next to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and the two organizations often work together. Koeniger, a Quechee resident, is an Episcopal priest who attends and enjoys the St. Paul’s community and has celebrated and preached there.

Koeniger was raised an Episcopalian, in Red Hook New York, until she was 13; then in New Haven, Connecticut at Trinity Episcopal Church. After years in all-girls schools, she was ready for a change of environment when she went to college and chose the University of New Mexico where she majored in Art, Art History and Music. The environment in New Mexico has been a big influence in her life. As she describes, “The land is hauntingly spiritual and beautiful with the ethos of the Native Americans in the land and air…this was the beginning of my adult call to live and experience more of the divine. I was very involved in meditation and spiritual education groups in church that kept drawing me to follow the call to seminary and then ordination to the priesthood. This began to reveal itself and was hatched in my experience outside the church, first in the expansive land of enchantment, New Mexico.”

Her path to becoming ordained

Following college, she worked in educational publishing as a freelance photo and project manager. She and husband John were married in 1976 and have three children— Crawford, Cole and Charlotte—all in their 30s. In the mid-1980s, she participated in an interfaith meditation group, which triggered her decision to attend Drew Theological School in Madison, New Jersey, for her Master of Divinity. She was ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1995. The first women were ordained as priests in the Episcopal Church in 1974, only 21 years before her ordination. It’s interesting to note that Koeniger has uncovered that there have been seven male Episcopalian priests in her family history.

After several years as associate rector at St. Paul’s Church in Chatham, New Jersey, with a very collegial rector, she “realized that I was not called to be a rector, and could not be an associate rector again. I spent several years as a hospice chaplain and am a priest through the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, New Jersey. The church is a wonderful place of community but it limits the ministry to which I am called. I kept sensing that the church may not always be able to meet people where they are, and there is a broader, perhaps more flexible and expansive way to reflect the light in each of us. This is the call I have and do follow.”

To reach this call, she studied non-dual Kabbalistic healing—based on a school of thought from the Jewish mystical tradition—over six years, and also attended a three-year psychology certificate program through the Center for Intentional Living (CIL). This program focuses on the study of psychological theory and spiritual growth and transformation.

She now spends time with her healing practice, providing counseling that incorporates her religious, spiritual and psychological background. As a priest, she celebrates weddings and funerals and fills in at church services. When asked to do a wedding, she requires at least five counseling sessions with the couple before they marry. She finds that many young people describe themselves as spiritual but not religious. They “haven’t yet discovered the divine in themselves or the universe.” She makes a major effort to personalize the wedding for the couple using the basic Episcopal service structure. To include the religious, the stole (a wrap that means the Holy Spirit is pouring down over you) is placed around the couple’s joined hands, which represents the blessing or their union in marriage.

A well-lived life

Both Bambi and John are very interested in photography—in fact she considers them both to be photographers at a professional level. John makes photo books and has had two exhibits in New Jersey. Maybe he would be willing to exhibit in Quechee! Koeniger is working on what to do with her large collection of photos from years of taking them.

They began to travel in 2008 with the realization that they could in fact live the dream of “getting to places all around the world.” They have been to Africa, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Bhutan, Myanmar and Iceland. During my visit with them, John showed me a spectacularly beautiful book of his photographic study of people in Ethiopia.

The Koenigers split their time between their home in Quechee and apartment in Summit, New Jersey. They bought their house in Quechee in 2007 after searching for a home near mountains and water with lots of recreational opportunities and the cultural richness of a college. “We wanted a place to relax and be with friends and family in a sacred intimate home space. It has been just that, a welcoming wonderful environment we call home. It is a quiet retreat place for us with the opportunity to be in a community that offers many benefits. We enjoy especially the fitness center, swimming, skiing, hiking, Upper Valley offerings and….John could not live without the golf courses.” There were already some family and friends in the area when we moved, but we are happily expanding our community here in Quechee.”

In German, berg means “mountain.” Does that mean Howard Trachtenberg was fated to love mountains? Those who know this cheerful man may well think so. In his home, at once cozy and sun-filled, that he designed, he leads the way to a comfortable study. The walls are lined with mementos such as a pastel portrait—obviously the gift of a friend—of Howard knee-deep in a brook, with fly-casting paraphernalia and a huge grin.

To celebrate his years of work and enjoyment at Quechee’s ski hill, where he and some of his colleagues founded and developed a ski patrol, family and friends donated a weather station to honor Trachtenberg’s 80th birthday. “They decided to do this since I spent the better part of my time on the ski hill, neglecting my children and grandchildren…,” he laughs. In fact, the hill was where his descendants learned to ski.

The dedication of the station, at the top of the chairlift, happened this past summer. Soon skiers will be adding information to their recreation, even accessing real-time readings online. Ken Lallier, property manager for Quechee Lakes Landowners Association, describes the new equipment. “The station measures temperature, wind speed and direction, and barometric pressure. And rain.” Rain?!? “Well,” he explains, “a machine can’t measure snow, not accurately.” Ski area personnel keep a running total of new snow through the season, and the area now has 100 percent snow-making coverage.

When it started, the area relied on natural snow, but now has fan guns that use a relatively small amount of compressed air, making them cheaper to run. They put out big piles of snow, which are then distributed with snow machines. Machine-made snow is more durable than natural snow. Those who remember the early days of snowmaking, when heaps of ice were an all-too-common occurrence, appreciate today’s sophisticated and effective guns.

Living Quechee’s Ski History

Dedication plaque at the top of the chair lift.

Trachtenberg has been involved with Quechee skiing almost from its beginning. He bought property in Quechee around 1971, when the Quechee Ski Area opened. He had grown up in New York City, so he “hadn’t done a whole lot of skiing.” When he married a Boston girl and realized he was going to be spending a lot of time in New England, he looked around for winter entertainment and took up skiing.

Trachtenberg’s friend Lenny Berliner joins the conversation, noting that he and his wife, Rochelle, bought land in Quechee around the same time, but didn’t build for several years. The two men have become good friends, and have traveled “all over the place—out west, Europe” for skiing. “We’ve probably skied every area in Vermont,” says Berliner. “And of Ski Magazine’s national top 25, we’ve probably skied 20.”

Over the years Trachtenberg has seen evolution on the ski slopes. “The biggest change is snowboards,” he notes, “and also the design of skis has changed dramatically. Even at my tender age of 80, I’m skiing better! Of course, the snowmaking and grooming help.” Berliner adds, “We were taught a lot in beginner-ski classes. Now it’s about skiing parallel as soon as possible, but we learned the snowplow and Stem Christi. When you got in trouble, you had something to fall back on. Patrollers have to snowplow and sideslip to get a toboggan down.”

At Quechee, people realized early on that the lack of a ski patrol was a hazard. “My son and I took the American Red Cross first aid course,” says Trachtenberg. “That was about it for training back then.” Trachtenberg is an anesthesiologist, but his expertise in the operating room did not supply most of the information he needed on the ski hill. The non-profit National Ski Patrol, founded in 1938, is the “go-to” organization for the necessary training and systems. Their Outdoor Emergency Care courses (“a training program… tailored to the non-urban rescuer”) teach emergency management as well as first aid. Their programs and techniques have grown over the years, in sophistication as in number. There are now over 28,000 members serving more than 650 patrols. At Quechee, Russ McClennan was the first Patrol director, followed by Nancy Schwartz, and then Dave Courtney, the current director.

The vests were made with the logo Z80, which stands for what the kids call him “zayde” Yiddish for grandfather.

“We’ve both been patrollers for 30 plus years, and I’ve been the medical director,” says Trachtenberg. “I’m officially retired now,” interjects Berliner, and Trachtenberg adds, “I’m hanging on by a thread.” Both men laugh. Nowadays most of the volunteer patrollers are EMTs recruited among local fire and police, and medical personnel from the hospitals. One lure to the job is the season’s passes for the patroller’s family, but recruiting volunteers can still be a challenge.

Most accidents on the hill are minor. Trachtenberg recalls being summoned from the hill to the Clubhouse where a wedding was in progress and the mother of the bride had fainted. On occasion the patrol has had to evacuate the chairlift. “We have a procedure we practice every year,” he says. One Martin Luther King weekend they had to evacuate the quad chair, which they managed to do in an hour.

“The ski patrol is great because it not only gets you out and about, but it’s a really nice group of people,” says Trachtenberg. “Wherever you go, patrollers are a great group. Here you can know everybody, and we’ve had that privilege for over 35 years.” With another big smile he adds, “There’s no place like Quechee and Vermont for skiing.”

Although we all might wish otherwise, the Nuestra Senora de Atocha is not a fine Spanish restaurant found in White River Junction. No, it is the name of a very old sailing ship, which was part of a treasure fleet that sailed from Havana in September of 1622. September, by the way, is the height of hurricane season in the Caribbean. In retrospect perhaps the captains should have known better but the conditions were perfect on September 4 and there was no weather channel to consult. What could go wrong? They all thought. The decision was made to set sail for Spain.

The Atocha was part of a twenty-eight-ship fleet, which was heavily laden with gold, silver, emeralds and precious jewelry. Together the vessels weighed anchor and set off in a northerly direction toward the Florida Keys and the strong current of the ever-present Gulf Stream. It was a bad group decision and Captain Jim Cantore was not at the helm. It wasn’t long before the wind began to howl from the Northeast building the sea into mountainous waves. Those who were not seasick prayed desperately. While most of the fleet was driven into the relatively safe haven of the Gulf of Mexico, the vessels named Santa Margarita, Nuestra Senora del Rosario and Atocha plus two smaller vessels received the full force of the hurricane. With broken rigging, split masts and tattered sails all vessels were driven violently onto the reefs of Dry Tortugas. Two hundred and sixty souls aboard the Atocha alone perished in the sea.

Salvage attempts begun almost immediately by divers who were limited to holding their breath underwater. We can only imagine how well that went. The Spaniards used a large brass diving bell with a glass window on one side. A slave would ride to the bottom, recover an item and return to the surface by being hauled up by the men on deck. This operation was often lethal. Dead slaves were recorded as a business expense by the salvage captains. OSHA had yet to be conceived.

Prior to retrieving the treasure from the Atocha a second hurricane ravaged the area and tore the upper hull structure and masts from the ship. The Atocha had seemingly disappeared with the wind. Ten years of salvage attempts passed with no success and eventually time erased all memory of the treasure ship. Her register and log of events were squirreled away in dusty trunks of the Archives of the Indies in Seville, Spain.

Two key figures later emerged; the first was Jacques-Ives Cousteau who, having grown weary of holding his breath, invented the self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (SCUBA) in 1942. The second was Mel Fisher who knew the value of these wrecks and had a burning interest in Spanish colonial shipwreck salvage. Fisher formed a company called Treasure Salvors and began the search for the Atocha all over again in 1970. Tragically, during the exploration, Fisher lost his eldest son, Dirk, his daughter-in-law, Angel, and a diver named Rick Gage after their dive boat sank in yet another storm in July 1975. Fisher was persistent however and The Atocha’s hull was finally found on July 20, 1985 lying in fifty-five feet of water. An estimated 200 million dollar cache has been recovered to date but this is only a fraction of the treasure that went down. The wealthiest part of the ship, the stern castle, has yet to be discovered!

Flash forward to Quechee, Vermont, which is a very unlikely village to harbor within it a modern day treasure hunter. Gregory Schultz holds a PhD from Georgia Institute of Technology in the rather cerebral field of Marine Geophysics. He and his wife Lori, who is also from Georgia, came to the Green Mountain State in 2002. Lori is an elementary education teacher at the Dothan Brook School in Wilder, Vermont, and their daughter, Adi, is five years old.

The Schultz’s were not looking for buried treasure in 2002, just jobs. In 2012, Schultz teamed up with other brilliant scientists and founded a company called White River Technologies in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Searching for buried treasure is not the main focus of the business while developing deep-water robots and Electromagnetic imaging is. This technology is especially useful in the recovery of bombs from the floor of the ocean, something that occurs more often than you might wish to imagine. The U.S. Navy often conducts weapons practice and, after an exciting week of bombing patterns, Dr. Schultz and his robots go in to clean up. The wreck of the Atocha coincidentally shares the area with an active Naval bombing range and the occurrence of encountering bomb fragments and the occasional live bomb in lieu of a treasure chest is no longer surprising. I imagine it is much like reaching into a hole for a chipmunk and finding a snake instead.

In the case of the Atocha, the original site of the sinking wreck has carved a trench of four to five miles in length while scattering an estimated one billion dollars of treasure in its wake. Wooden boxes filled with gold coins, bars of silver and massive bronze cannons have already been found. The bags of jewels and emeralds have not. Enter Doctor Schultz.

The robot employed by Treasure Salvors is affectionately called “Dolores” after Mel Fisher’s long-suffering wife. Whenever “Dolores” gets to being temperamental and weary of all the treasure hunting, Dr. Schultz is off to the clean blue waters of the Dry Tortugas in order to pacify her and try to understand what she is saying to the men on the surface. He lifts her from the warm water, buys her a margarita and asks, “Where are the jewels?” To date, Dolores remains coy but whenever I see my neighbor flying off to Key West on a frozen February day I say to my wife Kim, “Gee I wish I had a girlfriend in the Keys.” The temperature then continues to drop.

For those interested in the fascinating world of underwater technologies visit www.whiterivertech.com.

See you on the lake!
Cap’n Ron

It’s such a good idea, someone must be doing it,” Hartford’s Sonja Hakala told her brother Mark. He had been skimming an AARP magazine and found an article about people donating small quilts for Alzheimer’s patients. Their own mother lay in bed, too weak from Parkinson’s disease to move under the full-size quilt Sonja had made for her—but what about a lap quilt? “You could do this, Sone,” her brother said. And she did.

Sonja is known as a fountain of ideas, both of projects and of how to accomplish them. She’s written and produced books on publishing, and she works helping authors develop and publish their books. She saves some of her ideas for her own novels—the third in her series about fictional Carding, Vermont, will be out this fall—but is always ready to try something new. When her brother suggested small quilts, she had recently created a quilting book for Wiley’s “Teach Yourself Visually” series, so her quilting interest naturally blended with her concern about Parkinson’s patients.

“We don’t realize how heavy a quilt is,” Sonja explains. “Two layers of fabric, plus seams, plus the batting—it adds up.” Parkinson’s disease can produce a wide range of symptoms, but uncontrollable muscles are a characteristic problem. Muscles may become rigid, or they may succumb to continual tremors—either way, their unreliability causes people to give up trying to do things, causing muscles to atrophy. The cruel disease, whose cause is unknown, is like a slow version of Lou Gehrig’s disease. Parkinson’s is progressive, incurable and widespread.

Spurred by her brother’s comment, Sonja made her mother a smaller quilt, sufficient cover during the hours her mom spent in a recliner chair. With light batting, sparse quilting (so the quilt remained flexible) and jazzy colors, the quilt was a boon to body and spirit. So the Parkinson’s Comfort Project was born.

Project receives state and national recognition

Sonja has always been a leader, perhaps the result of growing up the oldest of six. “I gave away the first quilts in April of 2011,” she recalls, “at a talk in a symposium run by Dartmouth-Hitchcock’s Parkinson’s Center. Then I started telling others in my quilt guild and quilts started being handed to me.” Soon she had set up a 501(c)(3) non-profit to run the project, and the networks of both quilters and Parkinson’s patients and their caregivers were spreading the word. The project has given away about 250 quilts by more than 50 quilters since its inception. When Sonja gets involved with something, she tends to write a book about it, and sure enough, her latest book is Piecing for Parkinson’s, which gives step-by-step directions for six different quilts, copiously illustrated with photographs.

“People find out about us at symposiums, or from our website, or they hear about it from friends,” says Sonja. At the end of last year, Sonja presented the project on national TV, on the show “Sewing with Nancy.” The result was an uptick in quilts arriving, and in requests. Earlier this year, the project was selected as the Non-Profit of the Year, by the Vermont Quilt Festival in Essex Junction, the oldest and longest-running quilt show in New England.

Shortly after her mother’s death, Sonja ran across Wilder resident Lynn Bohi in the Upper Valley Food Coop. They talked about the lap quilt idea. Lynn is on the community service committee of Northern Lights, the local quilting guild. “Quilters I know are very giving,” Lynn says, adding with a laugh. “Many of us enjoy putting fabric together, and you can only have so many quilts in the house.” She recounts the story of one of her gifts to the Parkinson’s Comfort Project: “In a magazine I found a pattern I really wanted to try—I thought it would use up some scraps [this comment causes quilters to laugh]—and I kept sewing because it was interesting and fun, and then I had two quilts! I only had batting for one, so I finished that one, and about a month later Sonja gave me batting for the other one. At one of the support group meetings a man was trying to choose a quilt, and I asked him which one he liked. He said, ‘I like the one on that woman over there,’ and it was my quilt there was a second copy of!”

Such moments are what make Sonja call the project “very rewarding,” but the rewards are emotional, and the project runs purely because of the efforts of Sonja and her family, husband, Jay Davis, and son, Jesse Davis. Donations are few even though they’re tax-deductible, and it costs money to mail quilts, to keep the website up, to travel to support groups or quilting events for publicity. It’s on Sonja’s to-do list to solicit for a sponsor, “perhaps a fabric company or a sewing machine company,” she muses. Meanwhile, she tackles work for the project as she tackles making a quilt. “I never keep track of how long it takes to make a quilt,” she says. “If you knew how long it took you, you wouldn’t do it!”

Anyone is welcome to donate a quilt. Size recommendations are available on the website: http://parkinsonscomfort.org/. The Project hosts two “Piecing for Parkinson’s” community sewing days a year. The next one is in early November.