Charlie Meyers, Dean of Ski Writers, Dead at 72

The Dean is dead.

Charlie Meyers, called the Dean of Ski Writers by ski journalists, and the Denver Post Outdoor Writer by everyone else, died Tuesday evening (Jan. 5) from complications due to lung cancer. He was 72. He wrote extensively about hunting, fishing and skiing for the Denver Post for four decades. His last column was published Dec. 6.

Post Publisher William Dean Singleton said, “He was a wonderful man, a wonderful journalist and a wonderful outdoorsman. I cannot imagine the Denver Post without him.”

Meyers is survived by his wife, Dianna, two sons Kirk and Kevin and two daughters Lisa Lucero and Kara Hardin, three grandaughters, a great granddaughter a stepson and stepdaughter.

Meyers was inducted into the Colorado Ski Hall of Fame in 1993 and won the FIS Journalist Award by the International Ski Federation , the fourth American to win it, in 1999.

“Charlie was the voice of  skiing for many decades,” former racer and Aspen native Andy Mill told Post writer John Meyer (no relation). “He voiced the good, the bad and the ugly. There were a lot of celebrities out there making headlines, but he wrote those headlines. Without Charlie, the sport wouldn’t have grown as fast as it did.”

Bill Marolt, the CEO of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association dealt with Meyers as a racer, a college coach and as director of the national team. He laughs when recalling Meyers once tabbed his CU men’s slalom team as “the Fainting Five,” after the whole team failed to finish an NCAA title slalom, dumping the CU chances at a championship.

Singleton recalled taking an annual pre-Thanksgiving skiing sojourn with Meyers. “We would meet. … at five in the morning. We would start at Winter Park and ski (it) before daylight, then move on to Loveland, Keystone and Arapahoe Basin. Then we would go to Breckenridge, Cooper, Vail and usually end up at Beaver Creek.”

Meyers would then write a column for the Wednesday before Thanksgiving telling readers how good the ski resorts were. … or weren’t.  “It was one of the highlights of my year,” the publisher said.

His importance to the ski industry, and to ski racing in particular is immeasurable. Cindy Nelson, the first American woman to win a World Cup downhill reflected: “He would get frustrated with some of the politics and some of the decisions that were made. That was interesting for me, as a competitor, to see that a press person, outside the sport, cared that much. He marks a great era in our sport, for communicating what happened at a time when we didn’t have the internet, didn’t have cellphones. We had ABC’s Wide World of Sports and we had what Charlie printed in The Post.”