STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
One woman milked ewes and shoveled sawdust before training a local power lifter to compete in Russia.
Another is an Aloha girl who has skied the Boulder Mountain Tour for 41 straight years.
A third is a Master Gardener who has contributed her talents to the Friends of the Hailey Public Library Garden Tour. And the fourth hand delivered packages on Christmas Eve that hadn’t been picked up at the Bellevue post office.
These are the women who will be celebrated during the 15th year of the Heritage Court.
LaVon Olsen, named to the Court by the Carey Senior Citizen Fit and Fall-Proof Class, trained powerlifters in the 1990s at what is now Big Wood Fitness in Hailey. She followed one of those lifters to an international powerlifting meet in Russia and she helped coach Carey students for NASA-supported high school powerlifting tournaments.
JoAnn Levy, named to the Court by the Gold Mine, came to Sun Valley from Hawaii in 1963 to learn to ski and has been skiing ever since, teaching kids on Dollar and Baldy and being among those catching the first few lifts up Bald Mountain every year on Opening Day.
April MacLeod, named to the Court by the Hailey Public Library, has served the library as a trustee and a Friend of the library for more than 30 years.
And Faye Hatch Baker, named to represent Bellevue by the Heritage Court Committee, was one of a class of 11 students to graduate from the Bellevue school in 1962. She served 31 years as postmaster—first in a building that eventually became the Full Moon restaurant, then in Ketchum before returning to Bellevue where she retired in 1999.
The Heritage Court will honor the women with an invitation-only tea hosted by the Community Library and a luncheon at the Senior Connection that’s given for all Heritage Court ladies past and present.
The Gala Coronation open to the public will be held at 3 p.m. Sunday, June 10, at the Liberty Theater in Hailey. Light refreshments will be served.
The women also will ride in the valley’s four summer parades beginning with Hailey’s Fourth of July Parade and ending with Ketchum’s Wagon Days and Bellevue’s Labor Day parades.
The women who are chosen must have lived in the Wood River Valley for at least 30 years and have contributed to the history and heritage of the valley in some way.