Tim Heffron had been an avid golfer for almost 30 years, but he’d been too busy to play in about a year when his wife brought him a newspaper clipping in 2011, telling him about the new Mulligan Tour, which had come to Fort WayneItFORT WAYNE – Mark Luttik grew up in the Netherlands, earned his skiing chops in the Swiss Alps, and then, when life happened to him, drifted away from it for 17 years.
It took love and moving to one of the flattest places on the planet to rediscover it.
The first happened when Luttik got married; the second happened when, through his bride, he discovered that one of the flattest places on the planet had, surprise, surprise, a ski club. And quite a venerable one.
Now Luttik is president of the Fort Wayne Ski Club, which celebrates its 75th birthday this year. It is, Luttik says, far more than just a ski club; the club throws monthly parties at the Lantern and plays host for a tennis league in the summers and, in the winters, goes tobogganing and ice skating and has wine tastings and an annual Super Bowl party.
“Even if there were no snow, the ski club does a lot more than just going on ski trips,” Luttik says. “There’s a big, big social aspect to it that goes way beyond skiing.”
In that, the Ski Club is only keeping faith with its roots. The club was founded in 1936 as the Kekionga Ski Club by Ed Dodez, a Fort Wayne native and Dartmouth grad who fell in love with the sport out east, and Henry Wahl, who came to Fort Wayne from Bavaria in 1923.
Eventually, Wahl and Dodez found a few other skiing enthusiasts among the largely indifferent flatlanders, and the club was born. And it was as eclectic then as it is now; in addition to skiing, Wahl also started a fencing academy, and many of the ski club members, as alumni of the Kekionga Paddle and Sail Club, were instrumental in founding the Wawasee Yacht Club.
Then as now, dealing with Indiana’s obvious drawbacks – billiard-table topography and unpredictable snowfalls – was just part of the challenge. The difference is now the latter isn’t nearly as problematical as it used to be.
“It really hasn’t been all that different (this winter),” Luttik said of what will surely go down in history as the Winter That Wasn’t. “Most ski areas nowadays have snow-making abilities. Now, do we prefer natural snow and lots of it, absolutely. But we’re still very capable of putting on our trips.”
Those vary, he says, from day trips to southern Michigan resorts such as Timber Ridge to weekend trips to Boyne Highlands up by Petoskey.
And two weeks from now, the club is heading to Steamboat Springs in Colorado (“They just got hit with plenty of snow,” Luttik says approvingly) for its annual weeklong trip.
“So our trips have not been affected at all due to the lack of snowfall,” Luttik says. “In fact, it’s kind of nice. We still get to enjoy skiing, and when we get home we don’t have to worry about shoveling snow. Maybe it’s even better this way.”
And if it’s not, there’s still the social aspect.
“I found it right off the bat to be an interesting group of people,” says Luttik, who estimates the club has 120 individual and family memberships. “This is a great group of people whose paths I never would have crossed if it hadn’t been for the fact they have either an interest in skiing or an interest in being part of a ski club. The club attracts just a very broad spectrum of the population; we have all kinds of groups represented.
“We have lots of members who at one time may have been skiers, but don’t currently ski anymore. And we also have quite a few members that never skied but are just members because of the social aspect.
“And we have all kinds of age groups represented. I think our oldest members are well into their 70s and our youngest members; … actually, my daughter might be the youngest member. She’s 5.”
