Tom's Heart For The Bush Kids

Tom had a real heart for the children of rural Alaska, and over the past 4 years, he volunteered his time to fly out to villages each winter to help with the AK Bush Ski Program. (AK Bush Ski Program's goal is to teach life skills and foster self-confidence, pride, hope through the vehicle of skiing).

His last trip to the bush was to the villages of Akiachak and Akiak on the Kuskokwim, River. It was extemely cold -40, so cold that they canceled the Kuskokwim 300 (major dog mushing race), but that didn't stop the kids from wanting to ski. The night we arrived in Akiachak we spent the evening walking through the village, making home visits to a lot of our kids, and just spreading the word that we were in town and that we would be meeting at the Rec building to ski in the morning.. By the time we reached the school we had almost every kid in the village following us asking over and over "when are we going to ski?" and wanting us to listen to their skiing stories...many of the kids hadn't done it before but had heard stories from their friends and were saying "I want to ski, can I join?"...At one point Tom looked at me with a big grin and said "This is what it's all about. I don't care if it's -100, we're skiing".
We had told the kids to meet us at 9AM at the rec hall, and bring warm clothes. Do to how late the kids were staying up that night we didn't expect much of a turn out at 9AM but we figured that we would just catch them as they staggered in throughout the day. We ended up spending the night in the school and that morning we decided we should get up early and go over to the rec hall to check the equipment before the kids showed up. We walked out of the school doors at 7:30 AM only to run into about a dozen kids who were so eager to ski that some of them never went to bed. They had been standing outside at -40 below, waiting eagerly for us to start practice (in thin jackets, no hats, no gloves). It blew all of us away. Normally we work with the middle schoolers and high schoolers, due to lack of equipment and time, but this morning we had a lot of elementary kids as well. The numbers were so big and there were only 3 of us, I looked at Tom and said "how are we going to do this" and he said, "I don't know, but this is amazing-we are getting all of them on skis today" (it took all day but it happened).. It was such an increadable day, the kids were so excited that ( even through we were working with frozen fingers and toes) it kept us all going all day with smiles on our faces..Tom, true to his spirit, was as excited as the kids...The kids Loved Tom (he was so great with them)-always positive, encouraging and real.

Just 4 days ago I got an e-mail from one of the Akiachak kiddos (who once was an angry little boy who hated life) that said, "Tell Tom I want to "get big air" with him again this year"....Tom made a huge impact on the children of rural Alaska, from working with them (inspiring-connecting with them) in their villages, to helping with fundraising events, to making their Alyeska experience fun and "life changing"..The Bush Ski Program will not be the same without Tom, he was part of the foundation of the program, to say he will be sorely missed is an extreme understatement. However, Tom believed in what we were doing 100%, he encouraged all of us everyday to keep going, so that's what we are going to do.. the program will continue in his spirit..