Adirondack Daily Enterprise, January 2. 1954; excerpted in the March 7, 2020 edition
Adirondack winter vacations, part II
by Howard Riley
Ski association formed in Saranac Lake
by Thomas B. Cantwell
The United States Eastern Amateur Ski Association was born one Winter evening in 1922 at Saranac Lake following the Adirondack Ski championship held at the Blood Hill Jump. . . .
A group of contestants and officials gathered at the Berkeley House discussing skiing in this country. Sparked by the organizing ability and enthusiasm of Fred Harris of Bellows Falls, Vermont, now famed for his Dartmouth Outing Club . . . work, the men present saw the need for a governing body to regulate the increasingly popular sport of skiing.
Among the skiers present that night were Dr. William Soper, who learned the sport in Europe and taught the youth of Saranac Lake each Winter; Ned Stonicker, then head of the telephone company in Saranac Lake and William Distin Sr., whose son later was captain of the Dartmouth ski team and a member of the Olympic Squad in 1946.
Later the great apostle of skiing, Harry Wade Hicks, of the Lake Placid Club, consulted with the group of founders of the association and joined them to become a great booster for organized skiing.
Charter members were the Brattleboro Outing Club, Nansen Ski Club, Norsemen Ski Club, Saranac Lake Ski Club and the Sno Birds of the Lake Placid Club.#
Riley adds the names of the first presidents of the organization: Fred Harris, Harry Wade Hicks, Dr. R. S. Elmer, Douglas M. Burckett, Edwin D. Eaton, Lawrence E. Briggs and George Macomber.
