BY JOHN W. LUNDIN

In August of 1939, two members of the Northwest’s “ski royalty” announced their engagement in Sun Valley.

One was Gretchen Kunigk from Tacoma; the other, Don Fraser from Seattle. Both were prominent and popular skiers in Sun Valley.

Don was an established ski star and Gretchen an up-and coming-racer.  Don won the first Silver Skis Race on Mount Rainier in 1934, going from Camp Muir at 10,000-feet elevation down the glaciers and snow fields to near Paradise Lodge. It was a race of 3 1/4 miles with 4,800 feet of vertical drop.

Also on the 1936 U.S. Olympic Team, he won the Silver Skis race again in 1938, was on the 1938 F.I.S. team that competed in Chile and won many races in the Northwest.  Gretchen would go on to win gold and silver medals in the 1948 Olympic Games.

Don and Gretchen met on the ski racing circuit in the late 1930s and Sun Valley played a role in their marriage, as Sun Valley publicist Dorice Taylor described.

At the competitors’ dinner at Trail Creek Cabin before the 1938 race, Averell Harriman announced Gretchen and Don’s engagement.  The trouble was: Don had not yet proposed.  But the proposal went through, and they were married before they returned to Sun Valley the following fall. Theirs was one of the first of the long series of romances for which the resort is famous.

In reality, Don proposed six months after the banquet. In October 1939, Don and Gretchen moved to Sun Valley where he worked in the publicity department.  In December 1939, Don became Sun Valley’s Sports Director.

Don directed all the sports activities at Sun Valley, including skiing and winter sports, golf, tennis, organized hunting and fishing guides and sleigh parties to Trail Creek.  He helped start trap shooting and was involved in acquiring the property on Silver Creek that became Sun Valley Ranch.

He and Gretchen lived in the Lodge above the dining room. Both Don and Gretchen made the U.S. F.I.S. team that would have competed in the 1940 Olympics. But the Olympics was cancelled that year because of the war in Europe.

Averell Harriman praised the Fraser’s contributions to Sun Valley in his oral history:

“Don Fraser played a very important role.  He came to Sun Valley in 1937, the second year of its operation...He had a great deal to do with the development of everything.  Both the skiing and the summer time.  We owe a great deal to him and his wife, Gretchen...It was the first romance of Sun Valley...

“I would say that Don Fraser and Pat Rogers were the two men that perhaps did the most.  Don Fraser from the standpoint of the outdoors, and Pat Rogers from the standpoint of the operations of the Lodge and Challenger Inn.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: More about the history of Sun Valley and Wood River Valley can be found in John W. Lundin’s books, Skiing Sun Valley: A History From Union Pacific To The Holdings, and Sun Valley, Ketchum and The Wood River Valley, as well as his many history essays at the Center for Regional History at The Community Library.  His website is https://www.johnwlundin.com/.