Or: Brothers, skiers, boosters
Or (36) 'Skiing,' 'Utah' and Korologos
They skied at Alta this past Thursday morning, the day of the big storm. Powder snow was everywhere. Light, fluffy and shoulder high. The Greatest Snow on Earth at its greatest.
It was as if the jet stream was paying tribute to two brothers who have done as much as anyone to put Utah, and Utah skiing especially, on the map.
Tom and Mike Korologos were born on the west side of Salt Lake City before there even was an Alta, let alone a Snowbird or a Brighton or a Deer Valley. Tom came first, in 1932, then came Mike not quite five years later in 1937.
Alta emerged as Utah's first ski area a year later in 1938.
Coincidence? Probably not.
In the 1950s the brothers became powder hounds at Alta before the phrase was even a phrase. Those were the days when the Alf Engen Ski School pretty much was Alf Engen, and both brothers took lessons from the man whose name would become synonymous with Utah winter sport.
From there the love affair grew. Tom went to work as a sports writer for the Salt Lake Tribune and was assigned the ski beat — one of the country's first sports writers to so specialize. One night, while working on an advertising pullout section featuring Utah skiing, he came up with this headline: "Greatest Snow on Earth."
A few years after that, while working on the Utah Tourist Council account at Evans Advertising, he suggested using his headline in tourist promotions.
Half-a-century later, "The Greatest Snow on Earth" is on a million Utah license plates.
Mike took over as the Trib's ski editor a few years after Tom left and kept the family tradition alive. Using worldwide contacts, Mike became a skiing free-lance writer of international note. Over the course of the past half-century, as he's moved from journalism to a career in advertising, his articles touting Utah skiing have appeared in hundreds of publications around the globe. It is safe to say no single human being has written the words "Utah" and "skiing" together more times and in more publications than Mike Korologos.
And the Korologos zeal for Utah skiing hasn't been limited to just the printed word. Tom was involved in Utah's bid for the Olympics in 1965, and 30 years later Mike was the Salt Lake Bid Committee's press director when we won the 2002 Games.
Tom now lives in Washington, D.C., where he is one of the most powerful lobbyists in the country — with accounts that range from Major League Baseball to Union Pacific. Mike still makes his home in Salt Lake, where he's public relations director for the firm of Riester Robb Harris & Love — with Olympics-related accounts that range from Qwest to Coca-Cola.
They are busy men with even busier clients.
But as last Thursday's powder day attests, that doesn't stop their periodic pilgrimages to Alta.
Tom was between business meetings as he flew into Salt Lake and picked up Mike and they headed for the hills, both of them armed with the "Honorary Alta Ski Instructor" belt buckles Alf Engen gave them six years ago, just before he died.
That means all the free skiing at Alta the Korologos brothers can handle.
"The only provision is that we're not allowed to teach anybody," smiled Tom.
But they are allowed to keep spreading the news.
Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.