Vail Valley Magazine Article Featuring Rod & Beth Slifer

Beth and Rod Slifer live in Vail Village and are passionate about the town’s future.

Vail’s

c i m a n Dy Duo

For the past 50 years, Vail’s trajectory has been inextricably linked to Rod and Beth Slifer

By Brenda Himelfarb

HE CAME. HE SAW. HE SKIED. HE STAYED. They met…then, she came. She saw. She skied. She liked. She stayed.

The rest is history. Their history in Vail, that is.

Rod Slifer was here at the beginning and soon became one of the town’s most notable citizens — eventually serving two stints as mayor, along with his dog, Trash. A total of 16 years. Rod’s story is like many of those who are Vail’s pioneers. They moved west to ski and, on the way, created a ski mountain and a town to go with it.

And it’s always inspiring to learn about the town’s history from one of its pioneers.

“I was living in Denver and got bored.

So, I packed up and moved to Aspen,” begins Rod. “It was the fall of 1960, and someone said that they were interviewing people to be ski instructors for the

B RE NT BI NGH AM PHOTOG RA PHY

coming season. I told them I could ski but that I wasn’t very good. And they said, ‘it doesn’t matter.’ I had never taken a lesson. So, I go to a ski clinic, and they say, ‘here’s how you put your skis on’ and showed us what else to do. By the end of the week, I was pretty good and could do it all. So, they hired me to teach at Buttermilk Mountain. By the end of the season I had graduated up to teach on Aspen Mountain.”

That summer Rod met, as he puts it, “a guy named Morrie Shepherd who had a house-painting business,” and began working for him. “One day, Morrie told me that he was going to work at a new ski area and asked if I wanted to go. ‘It doesn’t have a name,’ he said. ‘All I know is that if you’re going to Denver and go a little further past the road that goes to Minturn, there’s this dirt road and there’s the place.

“So, we get there, and I see there were three trailers. One was the kitchen, one was the dining room, and one was a trailer with three beds. Pete (Seibert, another of Vail’s founders) had his own room and Morrie and I were on Army cots about a foot apart. It was very compact. You could sit on the toilet, brush your teeth and take a shower without even getting up. It was that small!”

Nobody anticipated what Vail would become, recalls Rod. “About three days after Morrie and I arrived, Pete, Morrie and I and an attorney from Denver, who was sort of the legal counsel, met with the county commissioners — three ranchers from around Eagle. And Pete pitches that we want to build a ski area and we want to know what we have to do to get permission from the county. And they said, ‘you don’t really have to do

A happy family: Beth, Rod and Adi Slifer.

anything. Just start building.’

And that was it!”

It was the spring of 1962 that the two men began working: Morrie, who had also been director of the Aspen Ski School, became the first director of the Vail Ski School for the new company, Vail Associates (VA). And Rod became his assistant. In the end, however, Rod was soon hired by Pete, and with no job description, became a jack of all trades with a title of “clerk of the works” and an office in the only building, the Fitzhugh Scott residence, which was located on what is now Willow Drive. In 1968, with the approval of VA, Rod, who had gotten his real estate license, formed his own company, Slifer & Company, which today is Slifer Smith & Frampton.

“The growth of the community wasn’t all that fast,” says Rod. “The original buyers in Vail were a lot of people in the 10th Mountain Division, so they knew about Vail and the mountain and the bowls. If you invested $10,000 you got a lot for $500, but you had to build within 12 months or you wouldn’t get a deed. And you couldn’t speculate. You couldn’t sell your right to build. If you didn’t want to build, it went back to VA. “I was a gopher. I would take people to look at the lots and they started building houses. And then townhouses. Condos didn’t come until ’66. And then people wanted to start renting. And I said, ‘Well, then we’ll rent them.’ So, I hired a very industrious woman, Marvel Barnes, and started Vail Home Rentals. But then, I had people calling me at midnight telling me that they had locked themselves out of their houses. That happened a lot. So, I virtually gave the business over to Marvel.”

166

Vail Valley Magazine

“And a few weeks later, with a lot of trepidation, I moved to Vail. Rodney promised that if I didn’t like it here af ter a year, we would move.”

Of course, you’re thinking “the rest is history.” And you’re right.

It is.

It was in the mid-’70s when Rod was in Washington, D.C., testifying before Congress about a loan program for Pitkin Creek employee housing, that he met his wife-to-be, Beth. “He called a woman he knew who used to be a ski bum and was now married to one of President Carter’s top team members and asked her to ‘set him up’ as he was going to be in D.C. for a week and had nothing to do at night,” recalls Beth. “So, he took a good friend of mine out on

Winter 2024

Saturday night and I got back into town on Sunday night. We went out for the next five nights, until he had to leave.” They courted for five years.

“She was a Democrat, and I was a Republican,” quips Rod. Clearly, he had met his match.

Beth, who had attended the University of North Carolina, had worked as a banker in New York, but had moved to Atlanta.

“I had no experience in politics, but it was a passion of mine. I met Jimmy Carter while working on his campaign, which was headquartered in Atlanta. When

he was elected president, I was asked to set up the transition to the new administration,” shares Beth.

She was then appointed as assistant to the head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

When the Carter administration came to an end, a new job took Beth to Chicago where she did marketing for Velsicol, a chemical company. At the same time, she was studying for her MBA at the University of Chicago. “Rodney and I would meet somewhere a couple of times a month and very often in Vail,” Beth reveals.

“But, at the time, I didn’t ski, so

B R ENT B I NGHA M PHOTOGRA PHY

it wasn’t particularly enticing.

However, we finally decided to get married in ’83 in New York at St. Bartholomew’s. And a few weeks later, with a lot of trepidation, I moved to Vail.

Rodney promised that if I didn’t like it here after a year, we would move.

“But miraculously or, not surprisingly, after about six weeks — even though it was in the winter and there was a lot of snow, and I was supposed to travel outside of the state of Colorado three to four times a month — I quickly realized that it was a great community and I fell in love with it. And in the ’80s it was very different than it is now, but it had already grown a lot and had a lot of people who had an adventurous spirit and a lot of passion for making a community work. And it was a very contagious atmosphere.”

However, if Beth was going to give up her marketing job, she knew that if she was going to live in Vail, she had to find something to do.

“At the time, my mother was one of the leading interior designers in northern Florida,” begins Beth. “I had never aspired to do what she did, but there was such a need in Vail. In the ’60s and ’70s people owned wonderful properties in amazing locations, but Vail was perceived as sort of being like a ski camp and the condos and houses were rarely decorated. I had brought all my furnishings from Chicago and people would come over and tell me how great the place looked.

“And Les Streeter asked me to fix up a penthouse at the Lodge at Vail because he had a Texas client who had had it on the market for a year and was desperate to sell it. I asked how much money the guy wanted to spend, and Les said $13,000. I said, ‘oops, that won’t go very far.’ But I went to Denver, bought a few things to fluff up this really old, not-in-good-shape penthouse and miraculously, it

168

Vail Valley Magazine

“This valley is so extraordinarily sophisticated for the size and population we have.”

Winter 2024

RODR

SLe SIpiFritEof Vail

& th

On the Record The story of Rod Slifer — and that of Vail itself — was recently captured in a new book by local journalist David

tale of arkable The rem ion and llaborat grit, co built on that innovati at the ski town ’s a great e world one of th of e ns bas mountai best ski ms O. Willia

By David Hunt rd by Al Forewo

O. Williams, “Rod Slifer & the Spirit of Vail.” Williams’ book reads as a journalistic memoir, and focuses on the relationships Slifer made along the way with well-known Vail pioneers and notables such as Pete Seibert, President Gerald R. Ford, Mark Smith, Harry Frampton and, of course, his wife, Beth Slifer. It is for sale at the Colorado Snowsports Museum.

C HR ISTOPHER DI LL MANN

sold in a week. Of course, that was just a happy coincidence, but I got a lot of credit for it.

So, I started doing small jobs for people, almost all of the same kind: fixing up things that were on the market to sell. And after I got enough projects, I severed my relationship with Velsicol and concentrated on doing interior design.”

In 1980, Beaver Creek opened. And in 1984, Beth opened Slifer Designs, an interior design firm. “There was so much to be done here in Vail, because everything looked terrible,” recalls Beth. “There was the orange shag carpet, and most places had a lot of bedrooms stuffed with as many beds that could fit in the space. I began talking with people about the value of their property and that they should dress up their interiors and use it as more than just a place to sleep. They should be gathering places for the family. Soon people all over the country were looking at second homes as an investment, not just a place to sleep. So, I was lucky to be at the beginning of that thread. I opened my business, and the valley has flourished since then.”

Over the years, the Slifers have seen this valley grow from a small village with one main street called Bridge to a burgeoning destination resort for all seasons. They have various ideas and concerns regarding its growth in this ever-changing environment. The couple keeps local politicians on their toes.

“I think we live in a unique place where the valley is bordered by national forest, so

we have very strict limitations on how big Vail proper can grow,” says Beth. “So, we must grow westward down valley. It’s tragic that we don’t have enough affordable housing for families, middle managers, entry-level employees or even senior managers. That is the negative of our growth. But that’s the story throughout the country and not just in resorts. No area that is beautiful and desirable to live in has kept up with the necessary housing needed — for a lot of reasons. There are political considerations and construction limitations and all kinds of barriers. It’s a dilemma for the whole country.

And we have to keep up with what’s going on in the world.”

And from Beth’s perspective it’s not just housing that’s needed. She wants the Town of Vail to have more facilities for meetings, for small conferences, and other amenities key to the local and visitor populations.

“Nothing succeeds if it’s static. It’s never been possible.

We must move forward. We don’t have to be crazy about it, but we must be smart about it,” she says passionately. “For instance, the Vail Symposium has more than 50 lectures a year and struggles to find spaces to hold them. They need a space. The hospital needs a space for meetings with, say, visiting doctors. They can’t afford to use hotels. We need a face lift in many ways, and it’s incumbent upon Vail, as the anchor for this valley, to do it. I love it here. And if I didn’t, I wouldn’t get so excited

about this. For many years Vail Resorts was a good partner and made good suggestions.

However, they don’t do that anymore.

“But as for the growth in Vail, I think it’s fabulous,” Beth continues. “Because we’ve had growth and more people wanting to stay, first in winter, then winter and summer, and now extending to fall and even the spring when it’s much quieter. We’ve gotten some fabulous amenities. This valley is so extraordinarily sophisticated for the size and population we have. We have the arts, non-profits — you can hardly count the number.

We have an increasing number of career opportunities. And remote working has brought a lot of interesting personalities to live here. What’s more, our mountains are the most beautiful in the state of Colorado. So, I love it. It’s much more vibrant than it was in ’83.”

But there are things about “the good old days” that she looks back at with longing.

“However, what I so miss is that in ’83, Rodney knew, virtually, everybody in this valley. And I quickly learned to know mostly everybody, as well. But, by the mid-90s we were growing so fast that, sadly, we no longer know everybody. It’s not that small, little, cozy community that it used to be.”

Adds Rod, “Like you can’t keep a good person down, you can’t keep one of the most attractive places in the whole country down.”

“Nothing succeeds if it’s static. It’s never been possible. We must move for ward.

We don’t have to be crazy about it, but we must be smar t about it.”

170

Vail Valley Magazine

Winter 2024

Trash Talk This story would not be complete if Rod’s dog, Trash, was not acknowledged. The dog was a fixture in the Town of Vail for years. If you saw Rod, you saw Trash. That’s just the way it was. And there were times when you saw Trash, and you didn’t see Rod. Although it didn’t happen very often.

“Trash was abandoned at the county dump,” recalls Rod. My friend John Purcell had just broken up with a girlfriend, and I told him that he needed a dog, so I gave it to him. About a week or so later, he called and said, ‘come get the dog. I’m not a dog person.’ So, I picked her up. I named her Betty “Trash” Ford and even created a fake birth certificate.

“Trash was never on a leash and some people came to the council meeting to discuss the issue. They were saying that dogs were terrible and should be on a leash. So, I brought her to a meeting and put her on a stool and said, ‘I think the dog’s speech should be represented.’

And their arguments went down the drain.

“Trash lived for almost 17 years.”