STORY BY LESLEY ANDRUS

 PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

As a child, Connie Post had a choice between a new pair of skis and a horse.

She chose the former, and that ended up setting the course for her life—from a career in designing ski wear to the man she married.

Connie’s earliest memories are of being 2 and living with her family outside of Davos, Switzerland, where she learned some German and Romanche, a Latin-based language still spoken.

After a couple of years in the Alps, she and her family, which by then included a younger brother and sister, moved to Washington, D.C., where her father--a brilliant mathematician-- worked for the war department.  When her father became ill, the family moved back to New Hampshire, the place she was born and where her family had roots extending to the 1600s when her mother’s family had received a land grant through the King James Charter.

 Growing up in a small town of 400 people between Manchester and Nashua in a state whose motto is “Live Free or Die,” Connie had a childhood of adventure and independence.  A guiding light in her life was her grandmother, a practical nurse who imparted to Connie a love of nature, horses and community service.

Two cousins lived with her grandmother and she and her cousins spent their days and summers roaming the woods and riding bareback through the fields.

 Connie describes her father as the epitome of the absent-minded professor. He taught at the local junior high school and later worked for a research company in Cambridge, and she remembers a summer they managed a vegetable stand together. Connie’s mother, meanwhile,  taught high school English, Speech and Drama.

One January her parents gave her the option of a horse or skis.  Beings it was the dead of winter, it was the skiing that won.  To pursue it competitively Connie chose to go to the University of Colorado.  And there, in her sophomore year, her life changed.

Intensely competitive, Connie practiced over and over how to go into a turn and come out skiing faster. Today this is called “carving.” One day she realized the enormity of the commitment to competition and to “days and days of turns,” and she decided there should be more to life.  So the question became: What did she want to do?

Her answer? Design ski clothes that were warmer.

 At the time Connie had a boyfriend who lived in Seattle.  On her visit she fell in love with the Northwest, quit school and moved. Enrolling in an apparel design program at Seattle Community College and working full time at Nordstrom, Connie learned everything about clothing design, construction, commercial cutting and pattern layout.

Upon graduation she went to work as the general manager of a cottage industry that produced ski and tennis accessories sold nationwide.  After three years of this amazing experience, which included attending trade shows around the country, Connie went to work for Serac--a Seattle ski wear manufacturer.

Coinciding with the company’s move to Sandpoint, Connie met and married Ned Post and they moved to Vienna, where Ned had obtained a job with a ski binding company.

 In Vienna Connie gave birth to her two children – Christina and Griffin.

“It was the greatest thing I have ever done,” she said.

To this day Connie feels blessed that she was able to spend such quality time with her children sharing her passion for reading and outdoor activities and especially skiing with them.

Eventually, the family moved to London for two years where they remodeled a house and entertained the numerous guests that seemed to perpetually visit.  Then they moved to Lake Forrest, a suburb of Chicago, for four years where Ned worked for Wilson Sporting Goods.

He traveled constantly, spending 242 days on the road one year. But, still, the family took vacations, and it was on one such trip to Sun Valley for spring break that they bought a condo and Ned took a job offer from Scott USA.  With the children in grammar school, it was a wonderful move, Connie said. And she has been here ever since.

 After Ned left Connie and his employment with Scott, Connie raised her children and pursued various jobs in the community from working with Fox Creek to Roots. She even spent 12 years with Sun Valley Company, working in the company’s their retail department.

During this time, Christina attended and graduated from Whitman College, married and gave birth to a son.  She now lives with her family in Portland, Ore.  Griffin went to Bowdoin, then Denver University, where he graduated in five years with a Bachelor of Art degree and an MBA, despite taking every winter trimester off to ski.  Griffin now lives in Jackson Hole and travels the world skiing, writing and promoting his sponsors.

 After her retirement from Sun Valley Company, Connie traveled for six months by herself around the western United States in her vintage Airstream, meeting wonderful people through spontaneous interactions.  During that experience she also realized that “Sun Valley was home” – the place she had roots that “spread out like an aspen grove.”

Connie’s passions continue to be music, movies, reading and skiing, along with spending quality time with friends who have special needs.  It is the beauty of nature that fills her soul, those moments in these mountains with the moon setting in front of her, the sun rising behind her and the alpenglow 360 degrees around her.

Connie daily gives thanks for her health, her life, her friends and her ability to live in this beautiful place.