Hermann Goellner and Tom LeRoy do flips on a trampoline: “We can
do the same stunt going downhill on skis”
The two men are
instructors at the Killington Ski Resort in Vermont. They are also members of the Hart Skis
Demonstration Team, a promotional effort for the Hart brand, and appear in a
series of ski films as part of that work.
LeRoy was the first to perform a forward double flip, and Goellner the
first to do a triple. Today they are
considered pioneers in the sport of freestyle aerial skiing. Freestyle skiing has been an Olympic
discipline since 1992, and the routines aerialists perform today are a far cry
from those original, but at the time breathtaking flips.
Kenneth
Dahlberg, a WWII pilot from Minneapolis, Minnesota: “I received the
Distinguished Service Cross 22 years late…they forgot to tell me I won it”
Dahlberg received the honor, the second-highest military
decoration, in 1945. At the time, he was
a prisoner in a German POW camp. A
reporter discovered the mistake decades later, and Vice-president Hubert
Humphrey made the belated presentation last month. Following a distinguished military career,
Dahlberg founded Dahlberg Electronics, which manufactured the original
“Miracle-Ear” hearing aid brand. In the
seventies, Dahlberg (by that time a multi-millionaire) would have a small role
in the Watergate scandal that brought down President Nixon but was never
charged with any wrongdoing.
Special
guest Cliff Robertson drives onstage in a small cart called a Jigger: “You lie
down on the stage…I’m going to drive this car over you”
According to Robertson’s
explanation, the six low-pressure tires absorb the weight of the machine, and
sure enough, Steve survives unscathed.
The Jigger is today considered the first all-terrain vehicle – it was
even amphibious – but units were only mass-produced between 1965 and 1968. Demand for the vehicles remained high, but
the Canadian company could never gain solid financial footing. Robertson will soon be seen in The Honey Pot (1967).
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