When 19-year-old U.S. skier Imogene Fish (then Imogene Opton) stood at the top of a mountain near Oslo, Norway, before skiing the final of the slalom event in the 1952 Olympic Games, it was not the most dramatic moment of her young life to date. That had happened nearly a dozen years before, when her family’s home — she was the daughter of prosperous, well-heeled parents in Berlin, Germany — was visited by Nazi federal police (the Gestapo) and Imogene’s father hid in a closet while her mother assured the agents that her husband was very ill and she could get a doctor’s letter to show he was not able to report to their offices.
Now 94 and a Needham resident (at North Hill) since 2009, Fish thinks her family may have been among the last German families to receive legal exit visas from Nazi Germany and successfully emigrate to the United States. Imogene and her twin sister, Roberta, were 8 years old. Her father, a polo-playing private banker who carried a walking stick and occasionally wore a monocle, had Jewish ancestors, though for generations his family had been Christian. While hundreds of thousands of Germans with Jewish ancestry had been tracked down and taken from their homes by the Gestapo, the Optons had felt safe enough until that knock on the door in 1940. Then they reached out to her father’s business connections in the U.S. Fish does not know exactly how the German government came to sign off on the paperwork.
Fish has been closely following the skiing at this year’s Winter Olympics. She called the U.S. skier Lindsey Vonn “gutsy, though not particularly wise” for racing — and crashing — with a torn ACL. Fish knows what it’s like to break a leg competing. After the Olympics in 1952, she and her teammates stayed in Europe to race in other events, and she flew off the course in St. Anton, Austria. She recalled in an article she wrote that a “dashing” Austrian male skier “who had temporarily come into my life” helped take care of her until she could travel back to the U.S.
While she admires Vonn, her heart is clearly with her fellow slalom skier, Mikaela Shriffin. She’s not getting the attention she deserves, Fish said, laughing. “Lindsey has taken up all the air.”
Fish pointed out that, though the current skiers go much faster than the skiers of the early ’50s, she and her teammates were slalom skiing on long, heavy, straight-sided wooden skis — and no helmets. The skis had steel sides, and the skiers would sharpen them with files to create edges to help them turn. Crashes were serious. One of her male teammates was fatally injured before leaving the U.S. Another severely broke a leg on a training run in Oslo.
It’s a lot easier now, she said. “We learned to ski on wooden planks. It took a long time to learn to snow plow and then the stem turn. Now people can take a lesson and really ski. I’m glad that’s available now.”
Fish’s path from refugee to the Olympics was a slalom in and of itself. Her father could not find suitable work in New York and the family briefly tried living in California. Her parents finally took a long shot: They purchased an inn in North Conway, N.H., where skiing was just beginning to become popular, thanks in part to the first generation of ski lifts.
It was not easy on her parents. They had each had previous marriages, and between them, they had sons serving in the U.S., British and German armies during World War II (Imogene’s German stepbrother, the family later learned, died at the Russian Front). Neither parent had been in the hospitality industry; her somewhat aristocratic mother had not even cooked, let alone prepared three meals a day for up to 18 guests. In North Conway, the German immigrants were viewed with suspicion: Was her monocle-wearing father a German spy?
“My father, I mean, his sports were polo and tennis and golf. My parents encouraged me but they never got involved or watched the races. They were too busy doing what they were doing. So I didn’t have that Monday morning quarterbacking from my parents.”
But Imogene began winning ski races and receiving help and coaching from prominent European skiers who had also relocated. After her freshman year of college at the University of New Hampshire, she took a leave of absence and headed to Sun Valley, Idaho, to train with other Olympic prospects.
“We waited on tables in the evening and then had coaching during the day. And they sent us to all the tryout races.”
To her own surprise, she made the team.
The Olympics, she said, were thrilling. She remembers every detail.
“The opening ceremonies were in the afternoon. There were only 30 countries then. And we marched into the stadium and there were tons of people. And we marched in on the ice. We stood there on the ice during the event. They had a chorus from Oslo and they had some music and some speechifying from various people. And then the host country flag goes up, and the Olympic flag …”
Days later, she was at the top of the slalom run, looking down the slope. Shortly after that, she’d finished fifth in the Olympics. She also raced in the giant slalom, though she did not finish as well.
Now, Imogene Fish is succeeding at another kind of life challenge. Talking in her comfortable apartment (composer John Williams’ “Olympic Fanfare and Theme” happened to be quietly playing in the background) it’s easy to see that, at 94, she’s a super-ager, undiminished in nearly every way. Her downhill skis are retired, but she cross-country skied until just a few years ago. “We have these sliding doors at North Hill,” she said, “And I’d just slide them open and off I’d go.”
Some of this current success might be related to the reason she believes she was such a successful athlete: an ability to find joy even in hard challenges.
“I think you have to find some joy in your sport,” she said. “I remember we were training before the Olympics. Our coach had given us an afternoon off, because we’d been training very hard. We were sitting around and reading, and we looked outside. Some nice fluffy snow was coming down and it was accumulating. And we went out and we skied just for the hell of it.”
Editor’s note: Observer writer Seth Bauer was an Olympic rowing cox who won a bronze medal at the 1988 summer Olympics in Seoul.
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