By DENNIS HIGMAN
It was the late Mike Martin who first called Colleen Coyne "The Iron Mistress," and the name stuck because it suits this strong, hard-working physical therapist with a direct manner and ready smile who has been helping people rehabilitate themselves since she arrived in the Wood River Valley 30 years ago.
Martin, who owned The Kneadery restaurant in Ketchum, went to see Coyne because of a knee injury and was so impressed with her determination to help that he not only came up with the name, but made a sign to go with it that hangs over her office door at Zenergy Health Club in Thunder Spring. The inscription underneath reads: "Improvo or Croako."
"Mike claimed it was Greek but I think he made it up," Coyne says with a laugh. "He said it meant 'Improve or get out.'"
Coyne remembers Martin fondly.
"Mike was a wonderful man. He taught me a lot about reading people and drawing them out. He knew when you were having a bad day and always got you to talk about it."
Coyne grew up in Caribou, Maine, where her mother and grandmother owned a small diner.
"We had to work very hard to make ends meet," she recalls. "I had a younger sister and my dad wasn't in the picture, so I put in a lot of long hours at the diner and picked potatoes by hand six days a week in the fall."
A straight A student at the local high school, Coyne was valedictorian in her senior class. Susan Collins, now a U.S. senator from Maine, was the salutatorian. Coyne was also a sports star. She skied and was on the field hockey, basketball, volleyball and softballs teams. Many of her individual records still stand.
She went on to Springfield College in Massachusetts on a scholarship, intending to major in physical education, but decided to become a physical therapist instead and transferred to Temple University. After graduating with honors, she worked at a rehabilitation center in Philadelphia and at the University of Pennsylvania, doing physical therapy for patients after open heart surgery. She also taught part time at Temple and became a trainer for wheelchair sports.
It was during that time that Coyne began hosting bus tours on weekends to New Hampshire and Vermont so she could ski. Her boss at the rehabilitation center, a serious skier who frequently visited Sun Valley, asked her why she didn't move someplace where she could work and ski.
"So I decided to give it a try," she says. "It was really that simple. The woman was an angel—she gave me permission to follow my passion, and I did. I arrived in Sun Valley during the winter of '77-'78. I had a college degree but no money.
"However, I had a lot of experience cooking so I applied for job at The Kitchen in Ketchum. I really didn't intend to stay beyond that first ski season, but during the interview, the woman found out I was a physical therapist and referred me to Wendell Nelson, a chiropractor. He hired me to run his clinic, do therapy and take over exercise classes."
From there, Coyne branched out and eventually opened an exercise studio of her own and then a full-service gym before moving to the Sun Valley Athletic Club as its physical therapist in the early 90s where she stayed until it closed. Her Sun Valley Sports Rehabilitation Clinic has been at Zenergy for the past three years.
After three decades in the business, Coyne has not lost her enthusiasm for her work or the outdoor recreation that originally brought her to Sun Valley.
"I'm very fortunate to be able to treat active, motivated people. Most of my clients are recovering from sports-related surgeries or injuries. They want to get back to their sport as fast as they can, so an important part of my job is to keep them from doing too much too soon.
"And all of them inspire me. One year, about half the people I treated were in their 80s and 90s. Another year, many clients were women my own age, and last year I had a lot of teenagers from the ski teams who reminded me what a passion for the sport is all about."
When she isn't working, Coyne hikes, bikes and skis, and spends long weekends on the East Fork of the Salmon River near Clayton where she and her husband, Ron Vernia, live in a luxury tepee while they build a log house by the river.
"I really love it up there. It's like another world. I feel more connected to things that really matter, a stronger, healing energy that stays with me when I go back to work. It's important for me to feel healing power. Because what I can really do for people who are injured or recovering from surgery or find themselves with physical limitations they simply have to live with—beyond the exercises and treatments I provide—is empower them to heal themselves. In the end, it's not about what I do for them, but what they do for themselves."
