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Park City • Spencer Eccles, a pivotal figure in Salt Lake City's hosting of the 2002 Winter Olympics, will be one of four people inducted Thursday into the Intermountain Ski Hall of Fame.
A banker originally from Ogden, Eccles will be joined in the Hall of Fame's 13th class by Harold Seeholzer, the late owner of Beaver Mountain Ski Area above Logan; Jon Aalberg, a renowned cross country skier who oversaw Nordic events at the 2002 Games; and Wilby Durham, the late founder of the Deseret News Ski School.
While the Hall of Fame is based at Utah Olympic Park's Alf Engen Ski Museum, this year's ceremony will take place at the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association's Center of Excellence at Quinn's Junction because a sizable crowd is expected, said museum director Connie Nelson.
Eccles was an All-America skier at the University of Utah, good enough to be first alternate on the U.S. team that went to the world championships in 1958.
He was the longtime leader of First Security Bank (up to its acquisition by Wells Fargo), a position that contributed significantly to his ability to promote Salt Lake City as an Olympic candidate city and, once the Games were secured, to help finance their production.
Eccles was on the executive committee of both the Olympic bid and organizing committees. He survived the bribery scandal that threatened the 2002 Games' financial stability and led to federal charges against bid leaders Tom Welch and Dave Johnson, then made major donations that kept the organizing effort on track and provided critical trial testimony that prompted a federal judge to declare Welch and Johnson innocent.
In 2002, the International Olympic Committee gave Eccles its highest honor, the Pierre de Coubertin Medal, named after the founder of the modern Olympics.
Eccles was acquainted with Aalberg during that run. A native of Norway, he was a Nordic skier and a cross-country runner for the University of Utah, qualifying for the U.S. Olympic Nordic team for the 1992 and 1994 Winter Games.
Aalberg was venue designer/director of the Soldier Hollow Nordic venue in Midway for the 2002 Games and performed a similar function for Vancouver in 2010.
After learning how to ski on homemade skis, Seeholzer established Beaver Mountain in 1952, hooking up a cable to a drive train from a 1936 Buick to create a lift in the upper regions of Logan Canyon. When he died in 1968, the resort was passed on to his son, Ted, who ran it until he died last year.
Durham, who died in 2000, introduced tens of thousands of Utah children to skiing through his ski school. He also helped to establish the Olympic Club, a forerunner of Ski Utah, the marketing arm of the state's ski industry.
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