When I remember that FIS year， the beginning，
I think first about the night Leafy and I stopped in Geneva
on our way to Chamonix. I was still in the Army and hadn t
made the FIS team， though I was on the Garmisch ski
patrol and was able to make most of the races on the
European circuit. But Leafy had done the best of the Amer-
ican men in the World Championships of the F~d&ation
Intemationale de Ski， and people were beginning to talk
about him as a coming champion.
Georgiana Brown and Anne Patterson had gone down
to Chamonix on the train with Mrs. May and the rest of
the American girls. Leafy and Brown and Anne and I
weren t a foursome yet. I still didn t know Anne very well.
Most of the top girls had men racers who acted as private
coaches--to keep their equipment in shape， advise them
on waxes， help them train on the courses， and after a race
tell them the mistakes they d made. Leary did this for
Brown， and early in the season Anne had had something
of that relationship with Ernst Hochner， a big country boy
from Lech. He spoke no English except a phrase he d
picked up somewhere--\"Let s go， bay-beel\"Eand Anne
wasn t the kind to learn any more German than she needed
to draw her racing number; so when they were together he
would silently hold her hand， and it was embarrassing to
see a kind of pulse beat in his eyes when he looked at her.
He hit a tree and broke himself all up before the FIS， and
the last I heard was that he would probably never ski again.
It was almost dark when Leary and I came into Geneva，
and we stopped at a clean little hotel on the left bank of the
lake. The manager was offended because we wouldn t take
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