![]() “I had to think about it,” DeFrange said. But because DeFrange had directed the big bank that kept Winter Park funded, he understood the resort’s troubled financial condition. The Grand County ski hill was not healthy in the late 1990s. When the late Jerry Groswold retired from running Winter Park ski area and Denver’s volunteer Winter Park Recreational Association began its search for a new leader, they homed in on DeFrange, who had by then moved on to run First National Bank of Greeley. He had climbed to the position of president, chairman and CEO of First Interstate Bank of Denver’s three-state region when he started guiding blind skiers for the National Sports Center for the Disabled. ![]() He was the son of musicians and worked on his extended family’s north-side and Eastern Plains farms throughout high school and college, playing an accordion in a swing band every weekend, just like his dad. He grew up in north Denver and still uses the old-guard pronunciations of street names: such as “PEAK-us” for Pecos, “show-SHOWN” for Shoshone and “TEA-hone” for Tejon. Where most every other ski-resort chief sparked their career at an early age - often beginning as a ski patroller, instructor or lift operator and working their way up to the corner office - DeFrange first skied in his late 20s at the long-lost Geneva Basin, on Guanella Pass. He works at those friendships,” said Melanie Mills, the head of Colorado Ski Country, the trade group that has counted DeFrange as a board member during the ski industry’s most transformative decades. “He’s been really good at what he does because he takes time to develop relationships with people. It’s those connections - with the workers on his team to the business leaders, mayors and governors who have played oversized roles in Winter Park’s evolution - that are DeFrange’s legacy. “He’s always asking questions,” Olson said. Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menu
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