It's hard to forget the Patterson kids of Sun Valley—Ruff, Susie, Pete, Barbie and Matt. What they brought to the sport of ski racing will probably never be equaled at the resort.
They were pioneers.
Two-time national champion Susie was a groundbreaker, the first of a significant number of ski racers from Sun Valley to hit the international ski circuit in the 1970s—and the first developed through the then-new Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation. She joined the ski team in 1968 at the age of 12. Her mother was instrumental in the development of the SVSEF.
Pete, 50, was one year younger than Susie. He was a two-time Olympian and a world combined bronze medalist. Barbie Patterson Kallerud, 46, was an accomplished ski racer and is now the mother of two.
The eldest, Ruff, 53, gravitated to cross-country skiing and coached the U.S. Nordic Ski Team for 10 years before moving to Dartmouth College where he's still the head coach of a strong Nordic program.
And the youngest, Matt, wasn't so much known for his skiing as he was for being an original Atkinson Park "Park Rat," active in every conceivable sport at the Ketchum park.
Jim and Joannie Patterson raised quite a family.
But the Patterson siblings tipped their hats to another family Saturday—the people of Ketchum and Sun Valley who scraped them up after they tumbled out of the family's Willys Jeep and supported them through thick and thin.
"We used to say if we had three out of the five of us in the Jeep after something we did as a family, well, that was pretty good," said Ruff.
"All of you are a special family to us," Ruff said Saturday to 150 friends gathered under a tent on the front lawn of the Patterson house in Sun Valley.
The Patterson siblings, called by many Sun Valley's "First Family" of skiing, reunited last week to remember their mother, Joannie, at a memorial service at the Patterson's Saddle Road home.
Joannie Patterson Jacobs, who lived in the resort for nearly 50 years from 1948-1997, died Feb. 20 at the age of 81 at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
She and her husband, Jim Patterson, an engineer and skier from Colorado, first raised their children in their home at the bottom of Warm Springs ski run. The childhood home of the Patterson kids became North Face Hut, Sun Valley Co.'s cozy precursor to fancy Warm Springs Lodge.
"What an ideal situation, being able to go up the River Run side before the Warm Springs lift was built and ski home!" Susie once recalled.
After her husband Jim's death, Joannie met and married Harry A. Jacobs Jr. in 1997. Jacobs said at Saturday's memorial service, "Joanie used to say that her best friends were her children."
"The idea of growing up in a mountain community like this has meant so much to all of us during our lives," Ruff said.
Glad to be home in Sun Valley to celebrate their mother Joannie?s life Saturday at their home were the Patterson siblings, from left, Matt, Susie, Ruff, Barbie and Pete. They greeted friends at a memorial for their mother. Photo by Willy Cook
