PARK CITY ? Ten years after Penny Pack left, as she puts it, "my beautiful New Hampshire colonial" for a house at the bottom of a Utah ski jump that wasn't even completely built yet, her son, Joe, flew through the Park City air to an Olympic aerial silver medal.
So it was worth it, then?
"Oh yeah," said Penny Pack, standing on the Deer Valley snow Tuesday afternoon as Mitt Romney led the honor guard that dubbed her son a silver medalist, "Oh yeah."
Sometimes the stories turn out just like they're supposed to. Maybe in a perfect script you might substitute "gold" for "silver," but other than that, Joe Pack's rise to Olympic heights is the stuff coaches, development programs, national Olympic committees and families ? especially families ? love to tell and tell again.
It's a story of everything coming together, of all the parts working, a commingling of dreams, goals, finances, sacrifices, loyalty and talent.
This is Joe's story: A dozen years ago, when he was 11, his dad, Jim, took Joe and his older brother Jeremy from their home in New Hampshire to the legendary winter sports town of Lake Placid, N.Y. ? site of the 1932 and 1980 Olympic Winter Games. The boys were there to jump on the big nordic jumps. Jeremy had gotten into jumping on some of the hills in New Hampshire and now Joe was following in his bootsteps.
The day turned fateful as the Packs were passing by the freestyle hill. Joe said he wanted to give that a try, too. The supervising coach at the jump, Bruce Erickson, looked at the shrimpish 11-year-old who could have passed for 9 and said, "Go home and work on gymnastics. When you can do a flip on the ground, come back."
So Joe did a flip on the ground.
"Great," said Erickson, "Now go home and work on the trampoline and come back."
Joe said, "Can I show you?" and he mounted a nearby trampoline, where he proceeded to execute front and back flips.
Like astute coaches throughout history who know raw talent when they see it, Erickson made a snap decision.
"Come back Monday," he said, "you're on the development team."
"And by the way," he added. "We're paying."
If you can see a move in the Pack family's future, well, so could Penny. Joe was good, real good, Erickson told Jim and Penny. He should be closer to the hill. Since Jim's work was flexible, they made a decision to move to Lake Placid.
Then, they heard that the U.S. Ski Team was moving its headquarters to Park City, Utah, and not only that, a jumping facility was being built there because Salt Lake wanted the Olympics.
So the Packs moved to Park City instead of Lake Placid. They arrived in 1992, just in time for Joe's freshman year of high school. He enrolled at Park City High (Class of '96) and was one of the first athletes to inaugurate the aerial jumps at what was then known as the Winter Sports Park and is now Utah Olympic Park.
For the past eight years, those jumps that were bought and paid for by Utah taxpayers with Olympic dreams in mind turned Joe Pack into an Olympic champion.
All that talk by Bob Bills and others that Utah kids would one day wear medals around their necks because of the facilities Utah built wasn't just talk.
It wasn't just the facilities, either. Joe was jumping in front of his hometown crowd Tuesday and he knew he had the home air advantage. "I could feel the energy," he said, "It was great looking out at all those people and knowing I probably know half of them."
Everyone was there. "The whole town," as Penny Pack put it. That included all the Packs: Jim, Penny, Jeremy, Jaime, Tim, Robyn and the littlest sister, 10-year-old Rachael ? who, incidentally, is another Pack getting into aerials at an early age.
"They've all tried it, but Rachael seems to really like it," said Penny. "She's already moved up to the bigger hill."
Sounds familiar; only this time, Penny won't have to move.
Lee Benson's column runs daily during the Olympics. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.