Cross-country skier carried Maine banner to two Olympics Rumford native competed in races, officiated

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RUMFORD – There were hundreds of cheering fans at the start line and more at the finish, but what Wendall “Chummy” Broomhall remembers best was somewhere in the middle.

That’s where the Spruce Street cross-country skiing course for the 1952 U.S. Olympic Trials in Rumford came to a place along a road where spectators could watch the competitors.

“There were always a lot of people there because you could drive right up,” said Broomhall, now 86, on a recent afternoon as he sat in his kitchen in front of a wall decorated with plaques honoring him, including one given to him on his 1981 induction into the National Ski Hall of Fame.

“The course was right next to the road. There were maybe another 100 or 150 people there,” he said. “So we had our own cheering section.”

The fans were out to watch Broomhall and Robert Pidacks, another Rumford native who made the U.S. team that went to the 1952 Winter Games in Oslo, Norway. It was Broomhall’s second Olympics – he was a member of the 1948 squad that went to St. Moritz, Switzerland.

It has been more than 50 years since Maine last was host to an Olympic trials competition, but Broomhall won’t be in Fort Kent next week when the U.S. biathlon team is selected for the 2006 Olympics in Turin, Italy. These days, he keeps close to home with his wife, Lempi.

As a man who has been involved at the highest levels with both cross-country and biathlon, someone who knows what it means to have major events staged in his hometown, he’ll keep an eye on the events at the Maine Winter Sports Center’s 10th Mountain Lodge, the site of the biathlon trials starting Dec. 29.

Skiing trumps basketball

The Spruce Street course where Pidacks and Broomhall, known to most by his childhood nickname, “Chummy,” once competed is no more. Skiing in the Rumford area has moved to Black Mountain of Maine, which has both Alpine and Nordic facilities.

When Broomhall was a child, it didn’t matter where you skied.

Broomhall first saw skiing as a 5- or 6-year-old at his family farm in South Rumford. His father was a logger, and a Finnish man employed by Broomhall’s father would cross-country ski across the fields.

Although he played other sports – he recalled cutting the tops off peaveys to make baseball bats – Broomhall first discovered his skiing talent at the former Stevens High School in Rumford.

“I would go out for basketball, but when the snow came I would quit and go skiing,” he said. “The coaches weren’t too happy. I liked basketball, but I liked skiing better.”

Broomhall later competed and won open races that drew regional and national competition.

Then came World War II. Broomhall skied in a competition in Laconia, N.H., on March 3, 1942. Five days later, he reported to basic training in California. He joined the 10th Mountain Division, which the Army formed to train troops for duty in the mountains.

Broomhall spent the next three years traveling. He met his wife in Wisconsin, worked on Mount Rainier in Washington, did amphibious training in California, went to Michigan, tested snow vehicles for the Studebaker company on the Columbian ice fields of western Canada, and taught skiing to recruits at Camp Hale in Colorado.

Even though he wasn’t skiing competitively, his service kept him in shape and on skis.

“A good three, four years I was in the service I was in the cold and the snow,” he said. “The stretch I was at Mount Rainier and then the Columbian ice fields and upper Michigan I was never off the snow.”

Broomhall went to the Aleutian Islands after the Japanese pulled out in July 1943 and was sent to Italy to train British troops in winter survival and mule packing.

Olympic dreams

Back in the U.S. after the war, Broomhall took time off to get married and settle into family life with a job at the H.P. Hood dairy.

Broomhall’s thoughts soon turned to trying out for the 1948 Olympics. He entered races in 1946 and headed to the trials at Lake Placid, N.Y., in 1947.

“And I happened to win a race there,” he said. “Unbeknownst to me at the time, they only sent one cross-country [skier], and I was it.”

Broomhall finished 54th at St. Moritz. After the Olympics ended, Broomhall trained and raced in Scandinavia. The 1950 world championships for the International Skiing Federation were scheduled for Lake Placid, but Broomhall changed the whole course of the event with a phone call.

“I called up a coach who was in Lake Placid to see where I was supposed to report once I got there,” Broomhall recalled. “This was probably the first or second week in December. And he said, don’t go anywhere, there’s no snow. I said, well, we’ve got snow here. It ended up they never did get any snow, and they moved it to Rumford.”

By 1951, Broomhall wanted to give up international competition to stay home with his family. With the Olympic trials in Rumford, however, he couldn’t say no to at least joining the competition.

“I just wanted to see if I could make the team again,” he said. “I made it. It wasn’t easy, but I made it.”

As he had for the 1950 world championships, Broomhall skied the course in the morning to make sure it was set up for the race. A few hours later he competed in the trials. Robert Pidacks won the 18-kilometer race in a then-record time of 1 hour, 32 minutes, 29 seconds.

“We had some advantage because we knew the snow conditions all the way around [the course], but he was a heck of a competitor,” Broomhall said.

Pidacks, who had just graduated from the University of Maine, went on to record the top U.S. Nordic finish in Oslo, although he didn’t win a medal.

Pidacks, who died in 1999, had yet to marry his wife, Ruth. She recalled that place on the Spruce Street course where spectators could watch the middle of the race.

“Lots of times you don’t get that,” said Ruth Pidacks, a Rangeley native who married Robert Pidacks in 1954 and now lives in St. Pete Beach, Fla. “Cross-country is a lonely sport with everyone at the start and the finish. I always thought that was too bad.”

Broomhall was selected to the 1952 team but wanted to skip the Olympics because he wasn’t sure how he could support his family while he was in Oslo.

The Rumford-based Chisholm Ski Club, founded in 1929, came through for the family, which by then included three children. Broomhall said Phil Marx, Chisholm’s president at the time, told him not to worry about money.

“He said, ‘You’re going,'” Broomhall said. “The ski club supported my wife.”

After placing 47th at Oslo, Broomhall kept racing through the 1954 national championships.

Pidacks served in Korea and competed in the 1954 world championships. He retired from skiing to work for the Boise Cascade paper mill in Rumford.

Ruth Pidacks said her husband had a lot of memories of the fun he had at the Olympics.

“I remember he said a lot of the Russians and Swedish skiers used to lay in the snow,” said Ruth Pidacks, who last returned to Maine in October for her husband’s induction into the Maine Ski Hall of Fame.

“Bob called them the ‘red devils’ because they used to wear red underwear.”

Ski lodge for a basement

Most of the plaques on Broomhall’s kitchen wall commemorate his contributions to skiing, especially since he stopped racing and started officiating and managing competitions for the U.S. Ski Association, FIS and the NCAA.

The rest of his skiing memorabilia is in his basement, which has a ski-lodge feel with its wood paneling, black stove, warm lighting and couches.

Rows and rows of medals, somewhat faded after more than 50 years, rest on shelves in a glass cabinet.

Dozens of framed black-and-white photographs hang on the walls. There are pictures of Broomhall with his Olympic teammates and photos of speed skaters from the 1960 Olympics in Squaw Valley, Calif., where Broomhall served as technical adviser and chief of competition for cross-country events. For his service there, Broomhall was given an Olympic flag flown at the site. That’s tucked away in his basement, too.

As a member of the FIS cross-country committee in 1956, Broomhall was sent to California, where a group had proposed the Squaw Valley region for the 1960 Winter Games.

Broomhall and a colleague were instrumental in convincing the widow of the owner of the former Noonchester gold mine near Lake Tahoe to open her land to Nordic events after another course fell through late in the process.

He was also active early in Olympic biathlon, too, because Squaw Valley was the first Olympics to include biathlon.

“My job was to bring the courses to the ranges,” he said. “I didn’t have anything to do with the shooting or the ranges. My job was to do everything else. The timing, bringing the trails to the ranges, maintaining the trails, control, that all fell under me.”

In one corner of the basement are photos of Broomhall with the young skiers he has coached over the years.

“I’ve been all over the country chasing kids,” he said, standing near the pictures.

Pidacks, too, turned to coaching. Ruth Pidacks said she once accompanied him to a meet in Fort Kent while he was working with the Mexico High School team.

Everyone knows ‘Chummy’

Broomhall has stepped away from most of his skiing and FIS committee positions in recent years, choosing to remain near his wife, who suffered a heart attack in 1995, and spending time with his children and six grandchildren, who will be in Rumford on Sunday for Christmas.

Still, Broomhall served as finish-line referee at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. He was the oldest volunteer there, he said.

“He’s just so knowledgeable, and he has an amazing background,” said current Chisholm Ski Club president Joe Sassi of Rumford. “He’s internationally known. You say the name Chummy Broomhall, and everyone knows who he is.”

Although he hasn’t skied regularly since he was 80, when he discovered he couldn’t keep up with his daughter anymore, it’s still a major part of his life.

When Black Mountain is open for the season, which happens to be Dec. 26 this year, Broomhall is at the facility almost every day. When he and Lempi celebrated their 60th anniversary Nov. 17, the party was at Black Mountain’s lodge.

He estimated 60-70 percent of Black Mountain is on land he owned, which he recently deeded over to a daughter and son-in-law. He also granted a permanent easement to the Maine Winter Sports Center.

Broomhall also is involved with a possible Black Mountain bid for a cross-country World Cup race before the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.

Broomhall has visited the 10th Mountain Ski Center in Fort Kent and said he was proud his old Army division was recognized.

But he’ll have to watch whatever he can of next week’s biathlon trials on television.

“The fact is, when the World Cup [cross-country] races are in Canada, it was on TV,” he said. “I don’t get that channel, so I couldn’t watch. But I won’t miss the next one.”