Stevek 2

Page Last Updated: Tuesday, 27 November 2001

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Stevek Was An Instructor Of Life --------------------

Steve Jacobson
December 7, 2003

There's a memorial service Wednesday at Carnegie Hall for a ski instructor. A ski instructor at Carnegie Hall? How does a ski instructor get to Carnegie Hall? He skis 10,000 bump runs down the World Cup trail, wipes 10,000 noses every winter and influences as many lives. He wasn't a ski instructor, he was Stevek.

He was Steve Kenney to the accounting department at Stratton Mountain in Vermont, but even his sisters called him Stevek. His mother called him Istvan.

People were glad to see him. He'd hug them and he'd say, "Can't talk; got to run." And he'd be off, baseball cap turned backwards to accommodate his goggles and two-way radio on his chest. If something important had to be said, he'd say, "Walk with me."

A long time ago at Stratton, instructors had names on their knit caps, but there was another Steve on the mountain, so our guy got STEVEK. It sounded right for a man who's family left Budapest in 1957 after Soviet tanks quelled an uprising when Istvan was 11.

Istvan, his mother and two sisters were on a slow train to the border joining Austria. When Russian guards came aboard, their guide fled. They got off and lugged their possessions toward the border, hugging the earth in terror each time a flare lit the sky.

Stevek got a masters degree with honors from Michigan. He was a 120-pound waterboy for the football team. He was getting out of a taxi on Park Avenue in Manhattan the night before Thanksgiving last and was struck by another vehicle. He was 58.

Neila, my daughter, wept as she told me. At Stratton, sentiment poured onto a 200-foot scroll a woman named Paula Pastore likened to a Torah. Stevek told gentle Jewish jokes and he wasn't Jewish.

He was as important as any individual in building freestyle skiing from its origins in the East as renegade "hot-dogging" to Olympic medal sport. He was a technical director on the international level.

More than that, he was a Pied Piper. He taught manners to young skiers. On weekends and holiday weeks he made a difference in the lives of kids who needed difference. Stevek made a living selling insurance in New York but management people at Stratton wonder how he found time for the insurance business.

"We had our conflicts," Stratton general manager Sky Foulkes said. "I'd tell him he couldn't build a jump and he'd go ahead and do it anyway. If he made good skiers, fine. He had a bigger mission: to raise good kids."

He'd find out if one of his skiers was having school in trouble. Stevek would let him ski with the group, but sent him home to do homework later when the others went to swim.

Skiing can be a money pit and Stevek found money from freestyle organizations or his own pocket to help kids ski. Stevek would find people with skis in the garage; he'd cajole ski sales reps or ski manufacturers to make it happen.

He'd take groups on trips to competitions and kids would grumble at Stevek's discipline. He didn't want younger ones mingling with the older. No girls in boys' rooms. Doors open after lights out.

He worked with Bruce Bolesky, who became a national champion and a U.S. Olympian in freestyle. Hayley Wolff Kissel grew up as one of Stevek's freestylers on the bump, turn, bump, turn of World Cup and became national champion and world champion in moguls.

He took outstanding skiers to A-level competition. For the outstanding tryers he created a B-level competition. He made the least good of them special.

Both my kids, Mat and Neila, skied for him. Neila coached six winters for him. Once he even sat still at our dinner table. He came to Neila's bat mitzvah; those things were important.

At first, we thought he skied to make insurance contacts. "You thought he was a con artist," Mat recalled, "but when the transaction was over, you had an extra $5 in your pocket. He got you to do things you didn't think you could do. He never asked you to do something he didn't think you could do." He was a guardian angel.

"Stevek never knew the impact he had on people's lives," Neila wrote to a memorial web site. "We just knew he'd be this whirlwind running through the Stratton base lodge, or running up to line-up, or running to get someone skis or poles out of the many in his locker - always running somewhere.

" ... He never had time to talk, but you always knew he cared. He was my teacher, my coach, my boss, a pain in the ass, but mostly, he was my friend. I will miss him."

When she introduced her boyfriend to Stevek, they shook hands and Stevek, of course, said, "Got to run." Then he turned back and said, "Meet you in the Bear's Den for a drink," he said. It was important.

He coaxed Hayley Kissel, mother of two, to coach more often. "He bragged about my success," she said. "And he wanted those boys in his program to learn to respect women."

Nobody is irreplaceable, but Foulkes, the general manager, said Stevek was close. Stratton plans on renaming a trail for him, probably World Cup. Maybe call it Stevek's World.

Right now, a brand new pair of Rossignols are bolted to a tree at Riverside Cemetery in Norwalk, Conn.

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This article originally appeared at: http://www.newsday.com/sports/ny-jake073573194dec07,0,2270510.column

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