Chapter 4 – The Sound of Skiing
Maria von Trapp’s best-selling autobiography, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, eventually evolved into a German film, a Broadway musical, and a Hollywood Movie you may have seen – The Sound of Music. Young Maria Kutschera, a convent postulant hoping to become a nun, had been hired by the widower Baron von Trapp to care for and tutor his young daughter who was confined to bed by scarlet fever, and as governess for the other six kids. Before long, Maria married the Baron, and they had three children of their own . The youngest was Johannes, born in Philadelphia in 1939 while the singing family was on a tour of North America.
The family refused to return to Austria under the Nazis, since Georg would have been pressed into the German Navy because of his WWI service as an Austrian submarine captain. Their family estate in Tyrol was confiscated and became a vacation retreat for Nazi Party bigwigs. Johannes grew up in the home the von Trapps purchased, a big old farmhouse outside Stowe, Vermont, near the newly-successful ski area on Mt Mansfield. In addition to their performing tours, the family made a living housing and feeding ski tourists, and were among the first locations to provide cross-country ski touring equipment and trails to resort guests.
Johannes naturally grew up as a skier with both alpine and nordic skills. He attended college at Dartmouth and Yale, achieving a Master’s degree in Forestry Management. After college, he returned to help manage the family business and joined the Vermont National Guard, where he met my father who at the time was an instructor at the Officer Candidate School, and who had become a recreational skier himself. Johannes was instrumental in organizing Vt National Guardsmen in winter and mountain training, including skiing, climbing and descending steep slopes in all weather, and surviving outdoors in the cold. That led to the formation of the National Guard’s 86th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, headquartered at the Vt NG’s Camp Ethan Allen in Underhill and Jericho, Vt. Two battalions of the 86th, composed of NG companies from northern New England, are authorized to wear the “Mountain” tab on their shoulders, and the 86th is an element of the regular Army’s 10th Mountain Division, headquartered at nearby Camp Drum, NY. The Ethan Allen camp includes the Army Mountain Warfare School, firing ranges used by Army contractors developing and testing cold-weather weapons and equipment, and an international-class biathlon course. For Johannes, the camp was conveniently located west over the Mt Mansfield ridge from the Trapp Family Lodge, where Johannes is the managing partner, having bought out the shares of most of his family members.