Roland Palmedo (April 5, 1895 – March 15, 1977) was a pioneering developer of recreational skiing in the United States. He founded the Mount Mansfield Lift Company which built Stowe's first chairlift, and created the Mad River Glen ski area. Roland Palmedo was also instrumental in the establishment of the National Ski Patrol and the first women's U.S. Olympic ski team. As founding president of the Amateur Ski Club of New York, Palmedo promoted skiing as an outdoor adventure for families and competitive racers alike.
Parallel to his ventures in skiing, Roland Palmedo worked as an underwriter at Lehman Brothers. He channeled his experience as a naval aviator in World War I to becoming Robert Lehman's point man for investments in the early aviation industry, including corporations that were to become Pan American Airways, American Airways and Trans World Airlines.
Life and career
After graduating from public schools in Montclair, New Jersey, in 1912, Palmedo set off on a "wanderjahr", exploring Europe by bicycle. His visit to relatives in the Bavarian town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen began a lifelong love of hiking, skiing and outdoor adventure. In the fall of 1913 he entered Williams College and that winter joined the ski team. Palmedo was also one of the founders and the first president of the Williams Outing Club, created in 1915 and modeled after the Dartmouth Outing Club.
In the spring of 1917 when Palmedo was to graduate from Williams College, the United States Congress declared war on Germany. He enlisted with the Naval Air Force upon graduation and served as a naval aviator in World War I. In 1920 he returned to civilian life and became an underwriter at Lehman Brothers. In 1927, a month after Charles Lindbergh's solo crossing of the Atlantic, Palmedo worked with Robert Lehman to structure financing for Juan Trippe's precursor to Pan American Airways. In 1929, Palmedo also worked with Averell Harriman to create the Aviation Corporation of America, which conglomerated fledgling airlines and support companies into one entity that would accelerate commercial aviation research and manufacturing. In January 1930, that company spun off Colonial and Universal Air Lines, which later merged to form American Airlines. Through his work as an investment banker, Roland Palmedo would eventually serve as director on the boards of the Lehman Corporation, Pan American Airlines, Trans World Airlines and the Libby-Owens-Ford Glass Company.
After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Palmedo once again enlisted into the Naval Air Force in 1942. He became the aide to Vice-Admiral Patrick N. L. Bellinger, Commander of the Naval Air Force Atlantic Fleet, and then served on the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown (CV-10).
The Amateur Ski Club of New York
During the 1920s when winters in New England had no plowed roads and little accommodation, Palmedo would join friends from New York City on skiing expeditions to snowy trails and logging roads in the Berkshire mountains and Vermont. In 1931, he met with friends to discuss how to organize their trips more effectively, establishing the Amateur Ski Club of New York. Soon the club was publishing a bulletin with practical information about destinations and ski conditions. Club members would go on to support Palmedo's leadership in developing the ski areas at Stowe and Mad River Glen, as well as organizing the National Ski Patrol, and sponsoring the first U.S. Women's Olympic Ski Team.
The club awarded honorary memberships to Palmedo's friends in Europe who were also early promoters of the sport, such as famed ski instructor Hannes Schneider and slalom inventor Arnold Lunn. When Schneider was jailed in 1938 for his outspoken criticism of Nazi Germany, Palmedo organized club members to gather several hundred signatures to petition his release.
Stowe
In search of more skiable terrain, Palmedo wrote a letter in 1931 addressed simply to the "Postmaster, Stowe Vermont", inquiring about winter accommodation and accessibility of the toll road on Mount Mansfield. Secretary of the Stowe Civic Club, C. C. Stafford, offered a welcoming reply. The following February Palmedo and Jose Machado Jr. set off for Mount Mansfield, which they climbed with seal skins strapped to their skis. Upon their return to New York, Palmedo shared his experience with the skiing community in an article in Ski Bulletin, writing "a week or ten days could be spent at Stowe and a different trip or circuit taken each day…" The next year, with Palmedo's encouragement, Craig Burt, Abner Coleman, and Charles Lord organized the Civilian Conservation Corps to cut the first trails on the mountain.