Charlie Kellogg skiing in Maine with the AMC alumni group the O H Association. (Photograph: Doug Hotchkiss)
Bob Gray was hiking in the Sierra Nevada mountains, off the grid, when it occurred. Later his telephone started buzzing, and he discovered that his former U.S. Ski Staff teammate and pleasant rival in excess of decades and decades of races, Charles Kellogg, had passed away.
Gray was surprised. Kellogg had not been well, but the finish came quick as soon as months of excruciating pain was finally diagnosed as a malignant and quickly-metastasizing sarcoma.
“It hit me challenging,” the 76-12 months-previous Vermont farmer explained on the telephone, even now from the trail, last Saturday. “It could be me up coming… I miss him terribly.”
Kellogg, 75, had been 1 of the ties that stored Gray and the ski community with each other.
“It’s quite significantly nose to the grindstone,” Gray explained of his life at 4 Corners Farm in Newbury, Vt. “Charlie created a unique hard work to speak he was always calling me up. It was excellent to talk to him. He would drag me out of that centered planet.”
But even though it is tough for Gray, at the minute, to connect to Kellogg’s family or other pals, in a way the mountains are a poetic location for Gray to say goodbye to Kellogg, who was a longtime member of the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) and its alumni Old Hutsman (OH) Association, and who usually made time for a ski or a hike, even if he had just flown back from a perform journey to Asia.
“It’s been on my thoughts, these two days, just thinking about him,” Gray explained. “I had absolutely nothing to do but stroll and contemplate, without having any distractions. It is a quite emotional second for me.”
The Storyline
Kellogg competing at the 1968 Olympics in Grenoble, France. (Photograph: US Biathlon Association)
Kellogg, a 1968 Olympian in cross-nation skiing and a nationwide champion, died a week ago on Sept. 21. Identified as “Chuck” or “Spike” to some close friends, Kellogg was an integral member of the nordic local community, a mentor and friendly encounter to many on the trails.
As mentioned in his U.S. Biathlon Hall of Fame induction description, Kellogg wasn’t obviously bound for skiing glory from day one particular. But the man who grew up largely in Andover and Brookline, Mass., picked up skiing at Holderness Academy a number of hrs north in New Hampshire and by no means looked back.
And so possibly his initial influence on the sport was as the quick racer everybody was chasing: in college races for Williams School, then as he took up biathlon and sooner or later won a nationwide championship in 1965, and then nevertheless as he competed as a cross-nation skier in the Olympics and raced as a member of the U.S. Ski Team (USST).
“He was a single of a group of half a dozen guys who I would describe as the early generation of capable global-caliber nordic skiers in this country,” explained John Morton, an Olympian and coach. “There had been a couple of folks who preceded them, but… I bear in mind when I was on the U.S. ‘B’ group, and those guys set the standard, and the rest of us just desperately experimented with to maintain up.”
Gray remembers a relay race in Reit im Winkl, Germany, in 1968.
“Charlie came in in the lead, and Jack [Lufkin] kept it, and I was able to hold on – we won a relay race in Europe,” Gray marvels. “It was amazing. Everyone was going crazy above there. It was sort of unusual for an American staff to win a relay.”
Kellogg’s race job never ever actually ended. In 1998 he won a World Masters Championship in Lake Placid, N.Y.
There, too, Gray was Kellogg’s teammate.
“Neither he nor I had quite good points,” Gray remembers. “We began in the back. But we both had extraordinary skis so collectively we manufactured up to the front via 80 folks. All of a sudden we had been in the lead. I couldn’t hold it up – Charlie went on to win. He’s a wonderful skater! Speak about challenging competitors, that is the greatest of the very best. I know he was very proud of that.”
Kellogg never boasted about his accomplishment, and not all of his close friends had been familiar with the details of his ski profession. But it’s possible to be humble and proud at the identical time, and Kellogg was.
“He was extremely proud of his achievements,” said Doug Hotchkiss, a good friend from close to Kellogg’s property in Massachussetts who was part of a nonprofit board and also the O H Association with Kellogg. “Of program, he was very modest, so you would never ever know it unless you asked him about it. But then it was clear.”
No matter which year you ask about, his buddies and teammates will tell you that he was a fantastic man to be about. Kellogg was a position model for how to stability a occupation, a family members, and higher-level coaching.
“I often admired and was constantly impressed with how Charlie was able to stability his instruction at a substantial level whilst working full time for IBM and fulfilling his responsibilities and obligations as a husband and a father,” USST teammate Mike Elliott wrote in an e-mail. “In the late 60s, there just were not numerous athletes who could do that effectively.”
“He was disciplined and a quite difficult athlete,” Gray agreed. “But just a actual pleasure to go head to head with.”
Kellogg never stopped skiing – this 12 months he competed in the White Mountain Traditional in Jackson, N.H., and earned an age-group podium in the 10 kilometer at Masters Nationwide Championships in Craftsbury, Vt. – but as he grew older he also bettered the ski neighborhood in other methods.
His skills as a board member was so amazing that a group of biathletes in 2006 lobbied challenging for him to be elected vice chairman of the United States Biathlon Association (USBA).
“While most countries have been escalating workers numbers, sponsors, and athlete help, a lot of of us felt that USBA was headed in the opposite route,” Lowell Bailey, a single of the signatories on an open letter prior to the election, wrote in an email. “Charlie represented one particular of the new faces that we felt could aid facilitate and oversee the tough modifications that USBA would require to undertake in order to remain aggressive internationally.”
Kellogg, who worked in income at IBM and later at Global Partners, had a knack for organization and nonprofit interactions. He was described by colleagues in 3 various organizations as a model board member. Apart from his aid with USBA, he was also the president of the Manchester Essex Conservation Believe in close to his residence in Massachussetts, and a board member of the Jackson Ski Touring Foundation, exactly where he and his wife had recently purchased a condominium.
How did he manage it all – these numerous tasks and passions which extra up to more than most people could handle?
“He was hyperactive is what he was!” Hotchkiss remarked with a laugh. “But he loved it.”
And individuals loved Kellogg.
“We had a routinely-scheduled board meeting this week, and all of us have been considering how considerably we’re going to miss Charlie,” said Ken Kimball, a buddy on the Jackson Ski Touring Basis board.
The Hutsman
Ahead of he grew to become a complete-time skier, Kellogg started doing work in the AMC huts. At just sixteen years old, he spent his 1st season at Lake of the Clouds on Mount Washington in New Hampshire. Quickly he was the hut manager.
His legend preceded him, explained Hotchkiss, who didn’t in fact meet Kellogg until later on.
“Everything I ever saw him do, he led by instance, not by being loud and boisterous and carrying a large stick,” Hotchkiss recalled. “I had heard of Charlie and seen that he had all varieties of records for pace hiking. In individuals days we kept records of the macho factors – it was all boys doing work in the huts then, no women. It was how considerably weight you could pack, how quick you could go, all of that. That was the measuring stick amongst guys. How many dishes you could wash in as quick a time as achievable, how massive a pancake you could make. Component of the entertaining of working in huts was bringing the crew together.”
When U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William O. Douglas visited Lake of the Clouds in 1960 with a National Geographic camera crew in tow, Kellogg was managing the hut. He ended up in images in the magazine. He was twenty years outdated.
Doing work in the huts was fun and gave Kellogg a likelihood to stretch his legs. But functioning on Mount Washington, house to some of the most extreme weather on earth, was also critical. Kellogg wrote in a latest O H Association newsletter of going out in a gale to locate and retrieve the bodies of two younger hikers who had perished, dressed only in cotton.
“Of program the terrible visibility contributed to [a lack of volunteers] and the wind was trying to keep men and women within their respective buildings where they plied their trade, this kind of as Tv broadcasting, checking weather or testing jet engines,” Kellogg wrote.
Weather did not keep him or his friend Greg Prentiss within, of course.
The ties he forged, to other hutsmen, hikers, and the mountains themselves, stayed sturdy. Kellogg also worked as a mountain guidebook in the Grand Tetons at one particular stage, and trekked in Nepal.
Hotchkiss quickly met him again, this time in earnest.
“In 1978 when an additional Old Hutman and I showed up near Jasper in the Canadian Rockies to do a randonée ski trip,” Hotchkiss stated. “We have been flown back into a remote camp by helicopter, and then for a week we invested each day climbing up with skis with skins, and descending. Charlie was there with his wife and his brother-in-law and his wife’s sister. And so there had been six of us who have been linked, but we did not know they would be there!”
Soon after a day of skinning up thousands of feet, taking a number of runs, and then descending to camp, Hotchkiss was usually searching for “an ibuprofen and a beer.”
Not Kellogg or his wife, Gillian.
“Charlie and Gillian would place on their cross-country skis and go out for far more skiing on the frozen lake,” Hotchkiss mentioned. “Every day! And then be prepared to go the next morning.”
Even though Kellogg invested a decade racing at the top levels of nationwide and worldwide competitors, he was also just as pleased going out on the trails with close friends who hadn’t been elite athletes. He and Hotchkiss went on numerous O H Association trips to Maine, exactly where groups of hutsmen and women could ski from the Tiny Lyford Ponds lodges.
“He was constantly miles ahead of everybody,” Hotchkiss stated. “I’m sure you’ve been hiking with a puppy, in which the dog goes bolting ahead and at some point will return. That was Charlie’s method.”
Whilst racing was some thing he loved – Gray and Morton both recalled that Kellogg would in no way, ever, let it go in a sprint finish, even after a marathon distance spent going together – non-competitive pursuits have been also essential.
“A whole lot of athletes, they have their aggressive daily life and then they move on to anything else,” Morton said. “They may be nostalgic about the outdated days, when they have been in shape and could do the Presidential Traverse in a single day. Charlie Kellogg kept at it. He most likely up until relatively just lately could even now do a Presidential Traverse in a single day, and seem forward to it.”
Kellogg was a lifelong steward of ski and hiking trails, as nicely, not just sustaining AMC trails or these at the Manchester Essex Conservation Believe in, but then later on in Jackson.
“As we looked at new trail configurations he’d be out in the discipline skiing all around attempting to find a new route,” stated Ken Kimball of his time with Kellogg in Jackson.
“He was always miles ahead of everyone. I’m positive you have been hiking with a puppy, the place the puppy goes bolting ahead and sooner or later will return. That was Charlie’s method.” — Doug Hotchkiss, pal of Charlie Kellogg
The Racer
Soon after 5 summers of instruction on Mount Washington, in a systematized way or not, Kellogg was beginning to turn heads on the Eastern school circuit. By his senior 12 months at Williams, in 1962, he was the captain of the team.
The up coming year, he headed to Alaska to join the Present day Winter Biathlon Group at Fort Richardson to fulfill his Army service. In the course of the war, men like Peter Hale, Terry Aldrich, Dennis Donahue, Bill Spencer, and John Morton paid their dues at Fort Richardson, despite the fact that not all overlapped with Kellogg.
“He explained it was excellent,” laughed Hotchkiss. “He received to ski every day!”
In 1964 Kellogg went to Fairbanks for the Equinox Marathon, which his biathlon teammate Jerry Varnum won, whilst Kellogg was second. The Fort Richardson system was presently a handful of years previous at that stage, but it was near to Anchorage, not Fairbanks. The pair’s exploits led the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner to create a blurb, “What does biathlon indicate?”
Kellogg represented the U.S. in global competitors including in Östersund, Sweden, exactly where he was the prime American finisher at the 1964 Planet Military Championships.
Following leaving the Fort Richardson plan, Kellogg went back to straight skiing.
“Charlie was quite serious in instruction and when studying the sport of cross-country skiing,” Elliott wrote. “I have nothing at all but fond memories of my expertise of education and racing with Charlie. John Caldwell, as the USST Coach, organized ski group members for running and hiking the length of the Extended Trail in summer season of 1969. Images of that experience demonstrates a bunch of lean match youthful males. On that trip were John Caldwell, Peter Davis, Everett Dunklee, Mike Gallagher, Tom Corbin, Ned Gillette, Bob Gray, Charlie Kellogg, Jack Lufkin, and myself, Mike Elliott.”
Gray, also, remembers that trip properly – and the crew that went with it.
“It raised a lot of awareness for the group,” explained Gray, noting that the guys would come off the trail and have dinner or drinks with communities in the local towns each and every night. “The U.S. Ski Team was gaining ground. A few years later on, it was Bill Koch. We have been sort of the basis.”
Elliott mentioned that Kellogg was 1 of the smartest guys on the crew: right after sooner or later creating the Olympics, he went to the Tuck Organization School at Dartmouth. His LinkedIn profile lists “the Shakespearian authorship question” as a hobby.
And that cerebral nature also came via in sport. Kimball, who would later function and ski with Kellogg in Jackson, remembers meeting him for a single of the 1st instances at an Eastern ski race around 1970.
“I was at a race at the Swedish Ski Club in Vermont, and I was just coaxing my just-married wife to also start off cross-country skiing,” Kimball explained. “That was in the day when race courses were very snowshoed-out, quite different than today. Here’s a man out talking about snow crystals and how they penetrated distinct kinds of waxes. In that day that was all extremely new and scientific and the rest of us had been pondering what this guy was truly speaking about. But certainly his final results showed what he was talking about! That was my introduction to Charlie.”
Kellogg was clearly a leader on the trails.
“The most correct way to sum it up would be to say that I was in some of the very same races that Charlie was in,” explained Kimball, who had raced in school and was continuing whilst he went to graduate college.
But racing was no straightforward task in these days.
“I was on the U.S. Ski Crew for 14 many years,” Gray mentioned. “By the final yr, they started to have some kind of payments, but I feel it was 1500 dollars. To be able to train 12 months round – I didn’t do that right up until 1970, even then it was hard. By the time I left the team in 1974 I was broke. I suggest broke.”
Yet Kellogg held it all together, seemingly.
“When Charlie was racing, you actually had to have a 2nd job to keep alive,” Kimball explained. “It wasn’t like right now the place you are a expert or semi-expert athlete. He was like everybody else: you had something else that was a major element of your daily life to sustain your family members and your cash flow, which meant that you truly had to have a enjoy for the sport to carry on to participate at a large degree. He certainly sustained that for really a even though.”
The Board Member
Even though continuing to ski, run, hike, and bike for fun, Kellogg also transitioned to expert lifestyle. Following going to the Tuck School and functioning for IBM and Global Partners, his personality and expertise came to be in fantastic demand in the nonprofit world.
Hence that letter, which was signed by biathletes Bailey, Tracy and Lanny Barnes, Jeremy Teela, and Tim Burke. Of the four paragraphs dedicated to lobbying for five different nominees, totally half of that text was devoted to Kellogg.
“As Vice President Mr. Kellogg would assistance new fundraising initiatives and support USBA achieve the necessary sources to reach a medal at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics,” they wrote at the time. “As a successful skilled fundraiser, he understands the fine factors of creating fiscal stability within an organization. The new Vice Chairman have to be enterprise savvy, but also possess an satisfactory understanding of our sport. Charlie Kellogg is far more than certified in each respects.”
Kellogg much more than delivered as soon as he was elected, according to the biathlon neighborhood.
“What struck me most about working with Charlie was the thoughtfulness with which he promoted biathlon and cross-nation skiing at the two the elite and recreational amounts,” Walt Shepard, a former biathlete who was an athlete representative, wrote in an email. “His enjoy for the sport — coupled with his serious credentials as a former Olympian — inspired enthusiasm from individuals in each camps. Much more than anything at all, he was just a fantastic guy to have a conversation with. He was quite interested in obtaining to know people, and I genuinely appreciated that about him.”
“More than anything, he was just a wonderful man to have a conversation with. He was quite interested in obtaining to know folks, and I truly appreciated that about him.” — Walt Shepard, former biathlete and athlete representative
Bailey agreed.
“[Kellogg] was at the core of a group of newly elected board members and workers who ushered in a new chapter in USBA’s historical past,” Bailey wrote in an electronic mail. “In several folks’s eyes this is the period exactly where USBA went from an ‘also ran’ to a respectable medal contender on the globe stage… Probably far more remarkable was Charlie’s real adore of our sport and the athletes and workers of USBA. I considered him not only a critical member of our US Biathlon Team, but far more importantly, a friend who cared about my daily life the two as an athlete and a human getting.”
It was following the election of Kellogg and other new board members that Burke and Teela hit the Globe Cup podium for the very first time, and then in 2014 Bailey and Susan Dunklee did as nicely.
“He was on the board for the duration of a time of probably the most dramatic advancement of the sport in America, and the most achievement for our program and our athletes,” Morton said. “He was portion of the leadership which has permitted our crew – we’d had personal athletes, but surely never far more than a single or two – that so constantly have been in a position to be on the podium. He was component of placing that program together, and almost certainly more importantly, securing the funding.”
In the nonprofit planet, moving in the direction of selections and policies can be a painstaking method if a board of directors is fractured. Kellogg proved to be adept at advocating not only for his own concepts, but for forward progress.
“He appeared impatient, but he by some means was capable to present persistence,” Hotchkiss mentioned. “When you’re operating for nonprofits it is more of a consensus-primarily based decision. He had a true talent for moving groups towards that.”
“He was a extremely great board member,” agreed Kimball. “I’ve served on a amount of boards and some individuals are just warming a seat, but others genuinely join in and participate. Charlie was one of the latter.”
Kimball stated that Kellogg was notably great at comprehending the difficulties Jackson faced, provided that numerous of their trails are situated on private land which makes more improvement impossible.
“Charlie was also quite very good at bringing up his tips constructively with the board, and pushing his ideas forward, and also striving to make them take place,” Kimball explained. “A good deal of men and women are willing to just spit out concepts and hope that someone else will choose up and do all the work. That’s not how I would label Charlie. He was also ready, if people disagreed with him, to accept that as nicely. It was a actual pleasure to operate with him.”
So the two at the nationwide and the local level, the ski local community was fortunate to advantage from Kellogg’s devotion.
“Charlie has paid it forward by paving the way for so several other folks that have come soon after him,” Elliott wrote.
The Finish
Hotchkiss was close to this summer season as Kellogg’s ache got worse. It was months ahead of the sarcoma was diagnosed as the underlying difficulty, but Hotchkiss knew Kellogg was in problems when he took the short route residence for the duration of a trail-clearing day for the conservation group.
“That was fully in contrast to him,” stated Hotchkiss, who added that he could never ever picture how Kellogg, who was outdoors at every single achievable second, ever held a desk work.
By August, Kellogg was in the hospital and had to miss Lake of the Clouds’ 100th birthday party, an O H Association event he had been hunting forward to.
“I did get a book of pictures of Mount Washington, and a whole lot of his close friends signed it and place feedback it,” Hotchkiss stated. “That’s the kind of association we have. We all stick collectively. I brought it back, and he appeared to appreciate going via that and reading through the notes from people who had been up there.”
Other people are left looking back at notably fond recollections of their friend.
“When the UNH Carnival was up right here, there was a race for previous codgers like Charlie and myself, and we all went out and did our 1 or two kilometer loop,” Kimball explained. “When you ski with Charlie, he often had a huge grin on his encounter. He’s just a very good man or woman to be around.”
***
To honor Kellogg, donations might be sent to two organizations he devoted so much time to: the Charlie Kellogg Memorial Money at the Manchester Essex Conservation Trust, P.O. Box 1486, Manchester, MA 01944 or at the Jackson Ski Touring Basis, P.O. Box 216, Jackson, NH 03846.
Do you have any recollections of Kellogg to share? Please create them in the remarks under.