Video Interview: Dick McCrudden

Roaring Fork Veterans History Project

Pfc. Richard McCrudden

10^th Mtn. Div. WWII; 85^th Regt. Camp Hale CO

At Grass Roots Community TV, Aspen, Colorado

MERRITT Good morning, today is the 16^th of October. We are interviewing in Grass Roots television in Aspen, Colorado.  Today we are interviewing Richard Sargent McCrudden who was born in Boston, Massachusetts on the first day of November, 1922.  I am working with the Library of Congress Veterans History Project in association, and we are sponsored with the Aspen Elks, Grass Roots TV and the Aspen Historical Society.  Good morning Dick, good to have you with us.

MCCRUDDEN: Good morning.

MERRITT: We are talking about the 10^th Mountain Division today, but before we get going, your middle name is Sargent and I was just wondering if there is any historical background to that family name?

MCCRUDDEN: Well, one of my distant ancestors is John Singer Sargent who was probably one of the finest American painters ever.  I didn’t know him at all, but this was one of the ancestors. I know nothing about painting, it’s far away from my life. I know nothing really about painting or art or any of those things. I have been in athletics all my life, and that is what I am still doing.

MERRITT: Still doing that. Hunting and skiing?

MCCRUDDEN: Hunting and fishing, mountain climbing, skiing, and all that sort of thing outdoors.

MERRITT: Did you ever acquire any of his art, of Sargent’s art?

MCCRUDDEN: I’ve got one painting at home that was done, not by him, but by someone that took that painting and redid it and then I ended up with it.

MERRITT: That’s a keeper Dick. Well, you were born and raised in New England in the outdoor life.  You attended prep school where?

MCCRUDDEN: Well, first let me run back a little before then.  I started skiing and climbing mountains when I was four years old. My mother somehow knew something about skiing and she started me skiing. I can remember skiing with her.  My father lived in Germany for a number of years when he finished college here and he went and was doing research in pharmacology at some of the university hospitals in Germany and he spent the summers climbing mountains there, and when we came back he started me climbing mountains here when I was four years old.  We had family friends in North Conway, New Hampshire that owned a hotel there, a summer resort hotel. I spent, even when I was small, I spent most of my weekends and vacations there climbing the mountains in the summer time and started skiing in the wintertime on the logging roads. We had two ski runs at that time, one on Black Mountain, and one on Doublehead. We used to walk up those ski runs and ski down. This is way back in the late 20’s and early 30’s.  This is the way it all started until they put in the first lift in about 1935, 1936 in North Conway.

MERRITT: What kind of skis and bindings did you have on those first skis Dick?

MCCRUDDEN: The skis I remember were pretty decent and the bindings were quite primitive. I can’t remember too much about them. They were wood skis made out of hickory and they eventually had sealed edges. The best skis at the time came from the Scandinavian countries, then the American countries Northland and some of the other companies started making skis in this country.  This is a long time ago, the middle late 20’s and early 30’s.

MERRITT: So you have deep roots up in New England and followed on and started your schooling up there. Can you tell me a little bit about your prep school there?

MCCRUDDEN: I went to a prep school called Kimball Union Academy which is just south of Dartmouth College.  When I got there I had done a little downhill and slalom racing.  The ski coach was a Dartmouth graduate in the same class as Dick Durrance as a matter of fact.  He started me running cross country and jumping and so eventually within a short time I was able to do the jumping and cross country as well as downhill and slalom. I skied for the school while I was there which was 3 or 4 years.  The last year I was captain of the ski team in my senior year. Then from there I went on to Middlebury College. I skied for the Middlebury ski team when I was there, again doing 4 events.

MERRITT: Well, you got out of Middlebury, that would be about 1943 or so?

MCCRUDDEN: I started at Middlebury in 1941 and I stayed there for a year and a half. Then I knew when my draft number was going to come up so I left after my first semester in the second year and went back to North Conway. I told Hannes Schneider, my next door neighbor, that I wanted to learn how to teach skiing. He said fine and he would take care of it, and he did.  Then I went into the mountain troops. After that, when I got out of the mountain troops, I changed my major and went to the University of New Hampshire. I graduated there in 1948.  I skied for the university when I was there too.

MERRITT: You mention Hannes Schneider. There is a film that is out, The Last Ridge: The Uphill Battles of the 10^th Mountain Division.  In it it shows Hannes Schneider and Toni Matt, Friedl Pfeifer and Fred Iselin, familiar names. What was Hannes Schneider’s background? How did he get to the United States and you started teaching skiing for him?

McCRUDDEN: He was called the father of the Arlberg technique and this was in St. Anton, Austria and he ran the ski school there. Then in the late 30’s he sent one of his top instructors to North Conway to run the ski school and his name was Beanno Robitsyka. Beanno ran the school there for a little while.  In the meantime, the war got going and Schneider ended up in jail.  Hitler put him in jail in Germany and there was a man named Havi Gibson who was born and raised in North Conway who eventually ended up in New York City, President of a bank and very, very successful in the banking  business. During the war, Hardy Gibson was head of the American Red Cross and he was able to get Schneider out of jail in Germany and brought him over to this country. When he came over to this country, he settled in North Conway and he stayed there until he died.

As a matter of fact, his son Herbert Schneider, lives in that same house that he lived in when he came to this country. I lived next door to him and so I of course knew him well. In the meantime, right after the war, Schneider brought over a number of the Austrian ski instructors and Toni Matt, Otto Scholl, I can’t remember all of them, but there were about six that he brought over at one time. When I was living there, Otto Schole did a lot of mountain climbing and he taught me a lot about rock climbing which was kind of interesting. Anyway, my father mostly got me started in the rock climbing because he had climbed so much in Europe when he was there. Father was a doctor and ended up practicing at Boston, but when he finished school he spent a number of years in Germany doing research there. So this is how I got started climbing in the mountains. He had me climbing all over the place. My mother got me started as I mentioned, she started me skiing, and so this is a long time ago.

MERRITT: Still at it. You have been associated with some of the legends of skiing, one of them being Toni Matt. I understand he schussed the headwall at Tuckerman’s Ravine.

MCCRUDDEN: Yes, he was the first person to do that.

MERRITT: Still a legend.

MCCRUDDEN: Still a legend yes. He was very nice person and he is of course an excellent skier, and a very good teacher. He stayed there for some time with the Hannes Schneider school, then he was off at a job at Whitefish, Montana running a ski school. He ran ski school there for a short time, I don’t remember how long. Then eventually he got out of skiing and somehow got connected with one of the Rockefellers and ended up in the golf business somehow. As I remember in New York but I’m not sure.

MERRITT: And he did serve in the 10^th Mountain Division?

MCCRUDDEN: Yes and some of the other Austrian ski instructors all ended up in the 10^th Mountain.

MERRITT: So, we are getting to the point where the military is maybe looking at all the young men like yourself that are vital and have some skills and you wound up in WWII, can you tell me your branch of service there? What unit you served with?

MCCRUDDEN: When I went in the 10^th Mountain, it was in the Spring of 1943 and I started basic training. I got partway through basic training and then they knew I could teach rock climbing and skiing because of what I had done before then, so they sent a few of us up from Camp Hale, which was right near Vail, and they sent a few of us from there to Mt. Rainier in Washington to climb on ice, to learn how to climb on the glaciers, and I was sent up there before I even finished basic training.  I spent most of the summer on Mt. Rainier climbing on the ice, then I came back from Rainier and it was getting close to the winter time. I can remember they said, “well, we’ve got to have some ski instructors” so I can remember they told me to round up a bunch of these people that could ski well and teach them how to teach. I did that and in October we used to go from Camp Hale to Ptarmigan Peak. Ptarmigan Peak is about half way, very close to the top of Vail Pass. I can remember there we had a little snow and some of those grassy slopes and I started teaching these guys how to teach skiing up there. We got more snow and then we couldn’t get up there anymore, and then we had a small hill at one end of Camp Hale and we started teaching there.  I had 3 or 4 dozen ski instructors. From there we went to Cooper Hill.

MERRITT: It sounds to me you are teaching basic skiing and not to much military drilling. Were you an officer then?

MCCRUDDEN: They asked me if I wanted to go to Officer’s Training. I wanted no part of that because anyone that went to OCS they went to Fort Benning, Georgia and that was sea level, humidity and heat. That’s far different from 9200 feet and cold weather. Too much change. What they did, they just gave me a special uniform and I lived at the Officer’s Barracks up in Cooper Hill. That’s where I spent most of my time. I ran the ski school for the 85^th regiment up there.  That worked out fine until we got done teaching and then maneuvers started.

MERRITT: Were you drafted or did you enlist in the 10^th Mountain?

MCCRUDDEN: Both.  My draft number came up and as soon as that came up, I had all the credentials to go into the mountain troops, so I went in and went right to Camp Hale.

MERRITT: Where were you living when you entered the service?

MCCRUDDEN: I was living in North Conway, New Hampshire. Actually my home was in the suburbs of Boston because my father practiced in Boston. We had a nice family and a nice home, but I preferred the mountains.

MERRITT: What were your first says like in the service when you first came in from transitioning from civilian life to military life?

MCCRUDDEN:  Well it was all just military and I can’t remember too much about it. It was just a bunch of basic training is what it was.  We were doing all kinds of different things. We did a lot of shooting and quite a lot of hiking. That was fine.

MERRITT: Well, that’s what the military is looking for. Young men that are outdoors and strong and can shoot a rifle. Did you do any hunting when you were younger before you went into the military?

MCCRUDDEN: Yes, I had done some hunting. I had already done some shooting and I was able to shoot very well when I got into the service. My eyes were extremely good. I can remember, as a matter of fact, on the rifle range when they had the combat course, where they would have these targets, these wooden people jumping out from behind the buildings and there were people down below with the pulleys, I had a nice time cutting the ropes

MERRITT: And the butts there on the shooting range. I have experienced that in the Marine corps. A lot of things go on down there with the troops.

MCCRUDDEN: I could shot well enough that I could cut the ropes that were working the targets. I kind of did that, it was sort of fun. They didn’t like it, but they didn’t know who was doing it.

MERRITT: Well, after you got out of the military, did you continue to hunt?

MCCRUDDEN: Yes, I did a lot of hunting and guiding then. As soon as I got out, then I went right back to college. In the Fall, I spent the weekends hunting when I was in college in North Conway, deer and bear.

MERRITT: Did you ever keep track of any of the animals you shot, number?

MCCRUDDEN: Elk yes.

MERRITT: How many elk?

MCCRUDDEN: A few dozen.

MERRITT: Okay. Now, you were an instructor, do you remember any of the instructors that taught you to get you going? Were there any tough sergeants or anything like that that you remember?

MCCRUDDEN: No, all of the sergeants and people like that that I was associated with were not skiers. When we were at Camp Hale, most of the people, the soldiers, all of the new people in there, were mostly either college graduates or in college at the time.  So they had a high number of educated people. Then the noncommissioned officers came in, they brought them in mostly I think from Hawaii, and they knew the military, but they were not very well educated.  So there was quite a difference between the personnel at that time.  The commissioned officers were mostly educated people, so it was kind of a strange mixture actually.

MERRITT: If they had any athletic skills they would probably be able to pick the skiing up with hard work.

MCCRUDDEN: Yes, there was a guy that slept next to me one time. His name was Bob Pastor. Bob Pastor was a heavy weight boxer. As a matter of fact, he beat Joe Lewis at one time in one match.  He was that good a boxer. He ended up there. He was big strong guy, but that physique wasn’t fit for the high altitude climbing.  So, he had to leave. He went into the Air Force.

MERRITT: So did you stay then at Camp Hale and continue training the troops?

MCCRUDDEN: I stayed there and went through maneuvers. I worked doing reconnaissance work and the maneuvers, I was kind of a James Bond person during the maneuvers late Winter. I was working along. All through the maneuvers I worked all by myself climbing around in the mountains between Tennessee Pass and Holy Cross Peak. Again, I was camped there and went up the top of Vail.  I was camped on the top of Vail Pass. I spent every night running around the hills between Vail and Camp Hale actually. I did that all during the maneuvers. There were three of us working along on the enemy detail. That’s what I was doing during the maneuvers. I did that until the maneuvers finished in the spring time. Then, I was a little under weight by that time. I’d lost an awful lot of weight and so then they sent the whole camp to Camp Swift in Texas before they went overseas and they left me there because I could teach skiing, rock climbing and ice climbing. I stayed there for a while not doing too much, then finally I discharged.

MERRITT: It seems strange that they would train the troops for the mountains and then send them down to the desert in Texas. Now that happens in the military. Did you talk to any of them about what Swift was like down there?

MCCRUDDEN: Oh yes, hot.

MERRITT: Not your kind of place.

MCCRUDDEN:  Hot. But then they went to Europe, then they went to Italy, then the mountains in the northern part of Italy after that.

MERRITT: Got deployed there in Appennines, Riva Ridge, Belvedere, so that was good. Did you keep in touch with your family during all this training as far as letters, phone calls?

MCCRUDDEN: Yes, I would correspond with my mother and my father during this training and I think my mother kept some of those letters. I’m not sure. I think I’ve got some of the letters I wrote to her. I know that right now, in the middle of reading a stack of probably a thousand pages that my father wrote about his life, and I am in the middle of that right now. I haven’t got to a lot of the other things that I still have at home.

MERRITT: Do you remember if there was censorship in the letters or was that overseas on the combat areas?

MCCRUDDEN: No censorship.

MERRITT: While you were burning all those calories up there Dick, what was the food like that you had to keep you going?

MCCRUDDEN: The food and meals were actually pretty good. A lot of calories, 5-6,000 a day as I remember. But during the maneuvers that was a different ball game.  That’s why I lost so much weight because it was difficult eating.  Usually when I had a hot meal, which was my dinner at night, from the rest of the people having breakfast I had just come from being out all night long, I’d come back during the maneuvers and they were having breakfast and I could remember it was very, very cold, 30 below zero night after night after night during those maneuvers late in the Winter. I can remember I had a lean-to that I was living in that I had built out of pine bows because the tents were so bad. I can remember looking at that chow line and seeing these people fall over from hypothermia. At that time they called it cold soak, it was actually hypothermia. They would take them and get them into the hospital. This would happen and then I would go have my dinner but it was actually breakfast time. That was a hot meal. Other than that, a lot of the times, I was eating sea rations and they were frozen. I lost quite a bit, but of course I was running around all night long on a pair of skis up on those hills and not eating too well. That’s why I lost so much weight.

MERRITT: Lean and mean. Well, when you got out of the hills, you were probably so tired, and for entertainment, did you just sit around the barracks and play cards, or was there any thing to do?

MCCRUDDEN: On the weekends in the winter time when it worked, I would come to Aspen and ski. Two other guys and I came over together. We would walk up Aspen Mountain and stay at the Hotel Jerome for next to nothing and walk up Aspen Mountain and ski down.

MERRITT: Can you remember what next to nothing would be? How much would it be to stay all night?

MCCRUDDEN: I can’t remember exactly but maybe a $1.00 overnight and maybe $1.50 more or less for dinner at night. We were pretty strong.

MERRITT: Did you meet any locals that were living here in Aspen?

MCCRUDDEN: Yes, a few. I can’t remember them now. I know I met a few locals here. That was a long time ago. 1944.

MERRITT: Did you have any humorous experiences or any pranks played on you or did you play any pranks on the troops?

MCCRUDDEN: I stole the General’s plans one time.

MERRITT: How did that happen?

MCCRUDDEN: When I was doing the reconnaissance work, I ran into the Generals’ tent when I was wandering around. At that particular night, another guy was working with me. We decided to go out together. First thing we tried to do, we wanted to steal the weasel, the primitive snow cats. We found one but we didn’t know how to start it or run it, and then we decided it was time to leave so on the way after we left from where that weasel was, we went by the General’s tent and I got thinking, maybe we could do something here, so we worked it out. I stole the General’s plans and went back and turned them in at the Major I was working for. That’s about the only real prank I guess.

MERRITT: They call them basically war games what you were doing and all is fair in love and war.

MCCRUDDEN: That’s what we thought at the time, but we didn’t know if it really was the right thing to do or not, but we did it.

MERRITT: But you made a point, and probably someone, whoever was in charge of security at the General’s tent, heard about it and had to increase the security on the tent.

MCCRUDDEN: There was a first Lieutenant that was supposed to be the guard. I remember that. He got distracted long enough for me to do what I did.

MERRITT: Well, that’s what happens in war you know. It’s an enemy and that’s part of the training. Do you have any other special memories of your days at Camp Hale and the 10^th Mountain? Any Thanksgiving? Did they have any special meals? New Years? Anything that was really special?

MCCRUDDEN: No, not really.  We were pretty busy all of the time, moving and going. We did an awful lot of hiking and that was fine. That hiking was good. Of course, we were all pretty strong from all of that. On the weekends, we could come to Glenwood off and on, and go to Denver once in a great while. Denver was a small town at that time. Glenwood was a nice town, still is. In the Winter, we really liked to come to Aspen. I did ski Winter Park, we went over there a couple of times to ski. Winter Park was in operation at that time. We stayed at Idaho Springs when we went to Winter Park. Mostly we came here to ski. Afterwards, after the War, I did an awful lot of hunting here, but at that time there was not much game, at the time we were at Camp Hale. Not many deer, not many elk.  It all changed. It’s all changed from those years as far as the game goes.

MERRITT: Well, you will be 85 years old here in a few days and I think that probably all this rugged training has carried you all the way through. I see you up at Buttermilk with your skis and you are out there without a hat on skiing town Tiehack there. Also, I noticed you had longer skis than these modern people have. What is the length of the skis you are still on Dick?

MCCRUDDEN: Well, I am on the shortest ski right now, 203 centimeters.

MERRITT: I used to ski with you at 203. You were at 203’s and I was at 160’s.

MCCRUDDEN: I skied for years in 215, 220, 225 but they got shorter and shorter. The last pair I got was 203 and they just work fine so I haven’t changed.  I am not that fussy about them anymore and as far as the wearing the hat, the cold doesn’t seem to bother me. I just don’t like hats.  I really wouldn’t even bother to wear a pair of gloves if afraid I might fall down or something and hurt my hand so I wear them, but cold doesn’t seem to bother.  When I was at Camp Hale, I was fortunate that I did not have any problem with frost bite or cold.  When I was there, I had my own sweaters, my own socks, and my own mittens and gloves, not the Army issued. This is one way that I survived all of that cold cold weather. It was good wool. The ski parkas were pretty good but they were not that warm.  The sleeping bags were very good. The tents were worthless. That’s why I built a lean-to when I was camped out.  Forget about the tent.  Now, I ski and use a pretty long ski now. When I ski now, I ski for the fresh air and the enjoyment and exercise. No more racing or anything like that.  I have a nice lunch.

MERRITT:  You are an inspiration to my students. I teach kids 6 to 11. We come over and we always visit. They say, “wow” when I tell them about your background. They say maybe we will be able to ski when we are as old as Mr. McCrudden.  You know?

MCCRUDDEN: Who knows.

MERRITT: Can you recall when your time in the service ended from Camp Hale? When you were discharged, what did you do then?

MCCRUDDEN: Went back to college.

MERRITT: Did you have the G.I. Bill?

MCCRUDDEN: Yes, but I worked too, even though I had it I used to work on the weekends and sometimes I worked, a friend of mine lived in the town where the college was and his family owned an apple orchard. I used to go on the weekend, every now and then, and help them pick apples in the Fall. T hen I used to go to North Conway in the fall and we had a farm. The hotel owned a big farm there and I used to work on the farm during the Fall. I did some hunting too when I was up there, deer and bear.

MERRITT: What did you study at college? What college was that you went to?

MCCRUDDEN: When I went to Middlebury my major was Geology. When I got out of the Army, I decided I wanted to study business. They had no business courses at Middlebury really, so then I went to the University of North Hampshire and got a degree in Business Administration there.  I guess that was probably beneficial for the work that I did here in the Ski Company. Most of my work I did had to do with accounting and work with numbers. That is basically what my job was with the Ski School here in Aspen.

MERRITT: What year did you come to Aspen and why did you come to Aspen?

MCCRUDDEN: When I came here the first time in 1948 and went to work as a bartender, I stayed for a little while and then I wasn’t feeling very well. Nobody could figure out what was wrong and finally I went back to Boston and saw my father. He and another doctor decided I may have appendicitis, but such a mild case that I had very few symptoms. Finally they decided to do an exploratory and they found yes I had appendicitis, but it was so mild I was just a little bit sick. They took it out and that was the end of that. But anyway, when I came back again, the first thing I did was call Sigi Engel in Sun Valley who I knew. He was head of the Ski School. I asked him if I could have a job teaching there if I came out and he said,” yes sure”. So I packed up my little station wagon and headed back West.  At that time, as I remember, Aspen opened about Thanksgiving, and Sun Valley for some reason didn’t open until about a week before Christmas. I thought I’d stop in Aspen and ski a little while. I got to Aspen and that year at Thanksgiving, they had an awful lot of snow. I went over to the bottom of Aspen Mountain to get a lift ticket and go ski, and this guy came up to me, his name was Earl Eaton, and he said, “I understand you know the ski business. Can you go to work for us?”  I said, “no, I’ve got to be in Sun Valley in a couple of weeks”.  He said, “ can you work a couple of weeks for us?” I said, “Yeah, sure.”  I got on the lift and was on the payroll, first day. I worked on Ski Patrol with Earl Eaton for two, three years, four years maybe on Aspen Mountain and never did go to Sun Valley. I enjoyed it. We had a lot of snow here. Skiing was good, why not? Just stay. Then eventually, I went back teaching and worked with Friedl Pfiefer and Fred Iselin. I worked with them until they left.

MERRITT: When you got here in that era, in the late 40’s and early 50’s, the other 10^th Mountain people were starting to show up here like Friedl Pfeifer and Fred Iselin and Fritz Benedict.

MCCRUDDEN: Quite a few had come here directly from the Army and there were a few here, Fritz Benedict was one, and Peter Siebert and a few others. I think Friedl went to Sun Valley and he had the Ski School at Sun Valley. He bounced back and forth between Sun Valley and Aspen running both schools as I remember. Fred Iselin was here as a partner with Friedl but he stayed here I think most of the time. I can’t remember exactly, but anyway, when I went back to teaching, Fred and Friedl were both head of the ski school. They stayed until Friedl and Pfister’s started Buttermilk, and then eventually I ended running a supervisor ski school at Buttermilk and Aspen Mountain both at the same time. That’s when the Ski Company had bought it. Eventually I ended up Assistant Director in the ski school which included Aspen Mountain, Buttermilk and Snowmass. In the very final end of it, I was Administrative Director of all three ski schools and spent the last five years doing consulting work for the Ski Company for a total of forty years.

MERRITT: Along the way the 10^th Mountain Division was going to other areas and either starting new ones, like Pete Seibert went over to Vail and started Vail, and all over the United States the 10^th Mountain Division contributed to the growth of the ski industry after the war.

MCCRUDDEN: People from the 10^th Mountain Division were here and Steamboat Springs, Vail, Sun Valley, and most of the ski areas ended up with a few people from the 10^th.  Of course, there are not too many left anymore, there are all getting kind of old. There are a few left here and there, but not very many anymore.

MERRITT: We enjoyed meeting all of them during our interviews.  Do you think that the military discipline helped the founders of these ski areas, and for you in particular, your rugged and independent and made decisions. Do you feel that the military helped you in later years in your profession?

MCCRUDDEN: No, not really too much. I think the military helped as far as the training at Camp Hale we were involved in. I think that did help some. As far as I was concerned, I was teaching and running a ski school there at Cooper Hill as a matter of fact. My philosophy was a little different. My philosophy in running a ski school here was people have got to have a good time and be happy, that’s the name of the game. I can remember telling ski instructors and supervisors here, “keep these people happy, give them a good time. If they have such a good time and they come back tomorrow, then you have done a great job. If you happen to teach them some skiing along with that philosophy, all well and good. Make them happy.”  This is what skiing is all about. Why do so many people ski? I thought of this so many times. I always come up with the same answer. The big majority of people that ski, people that work in business or some such thing in the big city, they come here and they go up and they ski, they are the boss. They are by themselves. They ski and they are independent, 100% independent. How they ski and where they ski. Totally different from what they have been doing. I think that this is one of the main reasons that skiing has grown so rapidly.  As far as the teaching goes, all of them want to ski a little better, so you know, they go to school and learn how to ski.  I think the philosophy is, they are independent and they are happy.  I think this is one of the main reasons this has grown so big. Hard to say.

MERRITT: You certainly presented the spirit of Aspen, the days in the 50’s, and you probably knew some of the town characters around here. Can you remember any of them?

MCCRUDDEN: I remember a few, there aren’t very many of them left anymore. Like a guy named Martin Mishmash, old miner character, and of course the Dolinsek brothers are still here.

MERRITT: They have been interviewed on this program.

MCCRUDDEN: Of course Freddie Fisher was one of the biggest characters, Freddie was a good friend of mine.

MERRITT: I was here in Aspen. I had come back from Vietnam and I met him just before he died. I have a book called Fisher the Fixer.  Did you ever see him or hear about him, how he got his parts and he wrote letters to the editor?

MCCRUDDEN: Freddie was a clarinet player and he was a good clarinet player. He had a big band there for a long time. Basically, I think the reason he quit. I think he got mad at the government because of the income tax and he ended up in Aspen and didn’t want to pay any taxes or anything like that. I can remember when he had a shop downtown here. He hooked on to the town electric system so he didn’t have to pay any electric bills. He had free electricity. He was quite clever mechanically.  He had lots of little things that he did as well as he was a good musician, he was a character, and he was a comic. I spent about six of us went elk hunting one time above Lenado, and we found an old cabin up there and Freddie came along with us. He fixed that place up so we were very comfortable. He did all of the little odds and ends and fixed the windows and the heat and everything. We had two of the best chefs in Aspen along on that little trip, so we ate well and had a great time. Freddie was there and Earl Eaton and another guy named Earl Voss. We called Earl Eaton “Eatin’ Earl” and Earl Voss was “Drinkin’ Earl”. Just a bunch of characters like that. Freddie was along with us.  Freddie didn’t really want to shoot any elk, he liked to go out had shoot squirrels.  We were up there elk hunting but he would go shoot two or three squirrels everyday just for the fun of it.

MERRITT: Who was one of the other chefs you had with you up there?

MCCRUDDEN:  Werner Kuster and Nino Herzeg. Nino Herzeg had the Golden Horn.

MERRITT: Werner had the Red Onion. You know, I’ve been talking to some of the second generation 10^th Mountain, Peter Greene, Charlie Paterson, Werner Kuster, Peatro Denili and they all got drafted. Werner I think, to get his citizenship, went into the Army and did his thing and got back out as a citizen.

MCCRUDDEN: That’s correct.

MERRITT: Fritz Benedict told me that Freddie used to spend a lot of time out at the dump getting parts for his contraption. I saw photos of the band, it was called Schnickelfritz Band, the German band. They were all over the United States touring and everything.

MCCRUDDEN: He played here. He was a good clarinet player. He played with Walt Smith and Bert Dahlander.

MERRITT: Along the way you did get married, what year would that be that you and Connie got married?

MCCRUDDEN: We got married in 1967, forty years ago.

MERRITT: I have been up to your home there. A beautiful home and she is an interior designer? Beautiful.

MCCRUDDEN: Yes. When she was in high school she was a fashion model. That was the work she did first. She was a fashion model for a number of years. I guess she started in high school I think.  Then she ended up when she finished modeling, she did interior design work and she did many, many houses and condominiums in Snowmass and Aspen. Very successful. When we built this last house, and our first house we built in, well as soon as we got married we built a house on the golf course in Aspen, and we kind of designed and built that. Eventually, when we moved to Carbondale, we had a lot of time to draw the plans and design the house in Carbondale. So, we just worked on them every once in a while for a one evening, then forget about it for a few days and do it again. Finally, when we built that house, it was twelve years ago, we had the plans drawn and the house all designed, and we gave them to an architect that we found to do all of the structural. He did all of the structural and the whole everything from that point of view, never changed anything we designed in the house. It came out exactly the way we planned it. We have more land there which we really wanted. We have a few acres there instead of a small lot in Aspen.

MERRITT: I have been up there on Wooden Deer Road, that’s kind of appropriate for your hunting.  You have a beautiful panoramic view of Mount Sopris. You are waiting for the elk to come down and start browsing in your yard.

MCCRUDDEN: They will be there pretty soon. Sometimes we wake up in the morning, and they are looking right at us through the bedroom window.  That close to the house. That happens in the wintertime, it’s almost every other day there are elk there. More than that, sometimes everyday elk are there are there.  It’s good company.

MERRITT: Do you attend or keep in touch with the 10^th Mountain veterans?

MCCRUDDEN: No, I get a publication about once every two or three months that they put out, but I don’t. I have been to a couple of the reunions up at Tennessee Pass. The last one I think was in Denver. The last one I went to I was a little disappointed because they, like I have mentioned before, there are very few of us left, a lot of them are gone now, and they have got a lot of descendents and children and grandchildren from the 10^th mountain veterans and they are going to these reunions now. I guess that is “Okay” but it is just too many people for me.

MERRITT: It’s really important to carry on the traditions of the 10^th Mountain, they are an active duty organization. I just talked to them at Fort Drum last week.  They are in Afghanistan. The descendants are the ones that are carrying into the future the traditions. So, we have one of them here, Karen Woodard, her father was in the 10^th Mountain in the artillery. She and many others are carrying the traditions forward and keeping the spirit going. Along those lines, this PBS movie, The Last Ridge, we are going to show it on the 27^th of November at the Wheeler Opera House. It is a fundraiser for this project to interview the veterans.  We have interviewed a number of 10^th Mountain, Hollander, Ralph Ball, John Tripp, Frank Dolinsek and yourself of course. We are doing the best we can to record these stories and so I’d like to invite you if you can, come to our Roaring Fork Valley Veterans History Project on the 27^th of November at the Opera House. We are looking to get a full house out there.

MCCRUDDEN: I can make it okay as long as the highway is alright. I don’t like to drive in bad weather. It’s like when I ski in the wintertime, when the weather is bad I stay home.

MERRITT: Well, that’s the wise way to do it.

MCCRUDDEN: I don’t get paid to ski in the bad weather anymore.

MERRITT: I still get paid to ski in the bad weather.

MCCRUDDEN: I get paid to ski in the good weather.

MERRITT: I look forward to having lunch with you up there at the Cliffhouse. In closing, is there anything else that you would like to add that we haven’t covered in this interview Dick?

MCCRUDDEN:  Oh, I don’t know.  There are a lot of little things I suppose. Since I have lived here, I have ended up doing a tremendous amount of hunting, camping, backpacking and fishing all over the Wind River range in Wyoming. Quite a bit of salmon fishing in Alaska and the last trip in Alaska I was in a plane crash. The plane was totaled and I am still here, ended up with cuts and bruises. I have been through quite a lot of things like that.  A lot of interesting things that I have run into in the mountains. I can remember one time when I shot a nice elk between the eyes, his eyes were about 12 inches from the end of my rifle barrel. That close.  A lot of those things happen. I can remember one time camped at Avalanche Lake up on the other side of Capital Peak. We were fishing up there in the middle of August. No people because it was a difficult place to get to at that time. I was catching some fish at the lower end of the lake. There were two friends of mine with me.  Three people came back from Outward Bound. They were going through there and they stopped to camp there that night. They sat down about six or eight feet from me and watched me fishing. They started talking back and forth together and I heard one of them mention North Conway. I started listening. Finally, I looked at this one guy who I had never known or anything and I said, “How is your Uncle Jim?”  He looked at me and never said a word, just looked at me with the most surprised look on his face.  He was wondering how does this guy know my Uncle Jim.  Then I looked at him again, “How is your father Bernard?” Then he just shook his head. He couldn’t understand this. I said, “How is your grandmother Lil?” He said, “How do you know my whole family? I’ve never seen you in my life before.” From what he said, I figured out who he was. These strange things will happen like that sometimes.

MERRITT: I think it speaks of this valley. The people it attracts. There is a saying that you don’t have to go the world, the world will come to Aspen. We live in a beautiful place and that’s the way it is. Thank you for being with us Dick. I look forward to making a few runs with you at Buttermilk this year.

MCCRUDDEN: Yes, I plan to ski. As long as my legs and feet hold up. We’ll see. Who knows.

MERRITT: We’ll be there. Thank you very much.