October 06, 2016 (Anchorage, Alaska) – The second annual Cross Country Alaska Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on Oct. 1 offered an emotional surprise as Anne Donaghy, the daughter of inductees Lowell Jr. and Tay Thomas announced that her father had passed away earlier that day, five days before his 93^rd birthday. Tay passed away in 2014.

Lowell Jr. and Tay, whose most memorable contribution to the Alaska nordic ski community may have been their $1 million dollar endowment to Alaska Pacific University (APU) to start an elite training program that includes the well known Thomas Training Center on top of Eagle Glacier outside of Girdwood, Alaska were among the four legends honored. Since the 1997 endowment, the facility has been used for summer on-snow training by Olympic and World Champions from North America and Europe and is still operated by the Alaska Pacific University. “The Thomas Training Center changed how we train in the summer,” said Lin Hinderman, a 2015 Hall of Fame Inductee and a friend of Lowell Jr. and Tay.

Lowell Jr. was the son of famous radio broadcaster Lowell Thomas, who is best remembered for his popularization of T. E. Lawrence, i.e. “Lawrence of Arabia”, whom he met and traveled with in Palestine during the First World War. Lowell Jr. followed his father’s passion for adventure, traveling and working with his famous father on an expedition to Tibet in 1949, among other projects, just before the Chinese Communist government invaded the country. Their expedition, which consisted of a 30-day trek just to arrive at Lhasa, provided the first ever video and photographs of the Dalai Lama and resulted in a bestselling account of the journey by Lowell Jr. titled Out of this World: Across the Himalayas to Forbidden Tibet.

When Lowell and Tay moved to Alaska in 1960, Lowell Jr. had already had much experience downhill skiing with his father in resort areas such as Sun Valley and Arizona, while Tay had never skied before moving to Alaska, according to Anne Donaghy. Her husband’s enthusiasm, as well as her own passion for outdoors and the social aspects of skiing made her a beloved coach at Whiteout and Eagle Glaciers. According to Donaghy, Lowell Jr. would often fly up a group of young skiers and Tay would put on games such as three-legged ski races and relays five thousand feet above Turnagain Arm.

Lowell Jr., who served as a state legislator and Lieutenant Governor of Alaska, is also remembered for his dedication to the creation of Chugach State Park, a 495,000 acre park just outside of Anchorage which is an essential playground for Anchorage outdoor lovers. He left politics in the eighties when, according to an 1983 Associated Press profile, a friend told him “You’re too honest for politics.” Lowell Jr. bought a small air taxi service near Denali, Talkeetna Air Taxi Inc. He continued to be fly and be active in environmental causes and philanthropy for the rest of his life.

Another of Saturday’s inductees, Nina Kempell, attributed seeing the Thomas family’s name in the log book of the Whiteout Glacier cabin as inspiring her own passion for skiing in the mountains. “I remembered seeing that Lowell Thomas had written that he had taken his daughter Anne up there to train and thinking, ‘Wow, that is so cool!’” said four-time Olympian Kempell during her induction speech.

Kempell, who was considered America’s most successful female skier prior to Kikkan Randall, recalled her first experiences on Eagle Glacier with an older generation of skiers including Jim Galanes and Bill and Lynne Spencer. In contrast to the current facility which is equipped with 24 bunk beds and a commercial kitchen, in Kempell’s day skiers slept in a Sealand shipping container, which now serves as a waxing shed, and grilled their meals outside.

The lives of two other inductees, Jim Galanes and John Miles also intertwined with Thomas and Kempell. Trigg Davis, a Board Member of the APU Trustees, recalled a meeting with himself, Galanes and Lowell Jr. According to Davis, Galanes came into the meeting hoping for a $50,000 grant to get the program on its feet and laid out his case for an Anchorage elite ski program. But Lowell Jr. didn’t think what he could give would be enough. “I won’t be able to give you that much,” he said, “But what if I give you $1 million to get started?” The program, then known in as Gold 2002 qualified Olympians James Southam, Kikkan Randall and Nina Kempell, who had worked with Galanes since she was 11 years old. It eventually turned into the Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center, the most dominating ski club on the US domestic circuit in recent years.

John Miles, 68, a coach little known outside Alaska, brought a final touch of emotion to the night. Miles, who grew up ski racing in New Hampshire, is credited with introducing skiing to the Bering Straits region of Alaska, a predominantly Inupiaq Inuit and Koyukon Athabaskan region without an ancient history of skiing. According to Miles, his idea to become the regional ski coach was somewhat an accident after he nearly lost his job in the village of Koyuk. “After two years living there the school population dropped by half and the district was gonna close down the school,” he recalled in an earlier interview, “I was gonna lose my job, so one of the teachers said, ‘why don’t you start a ski program?’”

Within a few years he knew the names of all 800 kids in the Bering Strait region, about a dozen of whom were in attendance at Saturday’s event. Amaktoolik of Golovin and White Mountain qualified for Junior Nationals several times under the guidance of one of Miles’ protege’s, Eric Morris, a feat that is almost unthinkable for rural off-the-road-system skiers today in Alaska. Kempell, in her induction speech, even credited her high school competitor Amaktoolik with “making me a much better skier.” Spindler now teaches elementary school in Wasilla, 40 miles North of Anchorage and is a running coach for 4^th and 5^th grade students. “He [Miles] taught me how to set goals, and just the way he made me feel – that’s what I want to pass on as a teacher,” she said.

Another of Miles’ athletes, Paul Lincoln, went on to own a statewide construction firm out of Anchorage. “It wasn’t his goal to produce Olympic athletes, but he made us feel if you work hard for something you can do anything,” he said, “When I started my business I kept that idea that I wanted it to be the best.” Lincoln continues the ski program in White Mountain during the spring when Championships are held.

The network of ski teams that Miles created, the Western Interior Ski Association (WISA) has managed to continue for 40 years and is now used as a model for Skiku and NANANordic, the latest iteration of Miles’ dedication to skiing in rural Alaska created by another Alaskan Olympian, Lars Flora.

On Saturday, dressed in a “Girdwood Groomer” t-shirt and canvas work pants, the teary eyed Miles called his former athletes – his “ski kids” – onto the stage. “I tried to have an impact, and I guess I did,” he said in the punctuated rhythm of native rural Alaska, “In the end, skiing is just a tool to bring us all together.”

Saturday’s induction ceremony did just that. Proceeds from a raffle and silent auction went to support Cross Country Alaska’s programs.