Sandra Shellworth Hildner

1944 - 2019

Diagnosed in September 2018, Sandra (Sandy) Hildner was overcome by a metastasizing cancer of unknown origin on January 10, 2019. She died at home, with her husband of 50 years and her children at her bedside, having lived a full life.

Sandy was born in Annapolis, MD, to Eugene and Martha (nee Buckley) Shellworth, where her father was an instructor at the US Naval Academy. Soon after the war, the family moved to Boise, ID. As a highschooler she was nationally ranked in tennis and ski racing, and she swam competitively. She attended University of Colorado, Boulder (CU) because Bob Beattie, coach of the US Ski Team, was coaching the CU Ski Team.

Sandy won the US National Slalom Championship (Mt. Alyeska) in 1963, aged 18. In 1967 she won the Roch Cup downhill (Aspen), and she was US National Giant Slalom Champion (Missoula). Training later that day, she broke her leg badly. Desperately rehabilitating, she was selected to race the downhill in the 1968 Olympic Games (Grenoble). Sandy was the first woman Olympian from CU. After participating in the Roch Cup race in Aspen, Sandy ended her five years on the US Ski Team in Spring 1968.

Married to Ernie Hildner in June 1968, Sandy worked at Lange Ski Boot Company in Broomfield, CO, until 1974. She became Director of the prototype shop, innovating for future years' production, and where ski team members from various countries came to have their Lange boots custom fitted and modified. Sandy was a boot and ski tester for the company, as well.

While at Lange, Sandy served on the US Olympic Committee's Athletes Advisory Committee, representing the sport of skiing, and on the ski equipment manufacturers' advisory group, set up to govern their sponsorship pool for the US Ski Team.

Sandy and Ernie bought a house on five acres near Boulder Reservoir. There she kept a horse, raised chickens for eggs and meat, and grew vegetables in a large garden; she learned carpentry skills as she and her husband added a room to the house and made modifications. Many weekends, she crewed for Ernie on their Star sailboat, racing on Colorado and Wyoming lakes.

The first woman to hold the position, Sandy was coach of the Winter Park Ski Team 1974 – 1977, coaching on the hill and demonstrating technique to the end of the race calendar in 1975, then giving birth to her daughter, Cynthia, only a week after.

In 1980, Ernie, Sandy, their two children (a son, Andrew, was born in 1978), and her horse moved to Huntsville, AL, for Ernie's job at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Sandy "rode to hounds" with the local fox hunt, was a "soccer mom", and helped start Huntsville's first magnet school.

In Huntsville, Sandy developed a severe and untreatable allergy to the mold omnipresent in the damp leaf litter and grass. Consequently, the family returned to Boulder in early 1985, where Sandy's health was much better.

Purchasing a house on an acre of land east of Boulder offered an opportunity (a necessity, in Sandy's view) to do extensive remodeling. Sandy continued to don her carpenter's overalls over the years for many more do-it-yourself modifications and additions that added considerably to its livability.

Back in Colorado, Sandy again could indulge her passions for skiing and teaching it; for 21 years until 2009, she volunteered, guiding Over the Hill Gang members at Copper Mountain ski area.

Sandy was a warm and lively person, a good mother to her children and a good wife to her husband, active in the kids' schools and after-school activities, and hosting her husband's colleagues at dinners and parties.

Sandy was artistic, painting in several media, and she became an assistant to her dear friend and sculptress, Susan Raymond. Two local examples of their work are the lifesize bronze statues of four skiers flying over a mogul at Lionshead, Vail, and the group of horses on the west side of S. Santa Fe Blvd. at Prince, in Littleton.

Also with Susan Raymond, for several years in the Fall, Sandy was a cowhand, riding all day to gather half-wild cattle ranging through scrub and trees in steep terrain on a ranch across the valley from Steamboat Springs ski area.

Sandy visited all the continents except Antarctica. Usually with her husband, she: climbed Kilimanjaro and 14ers in Colorado, including the East Face of Longs Peak; experienced four total solar eclipses from Hawaii to Turkey; SCUBAed and snorkeled in Thailand, French Polynesia, Bonaire, and Australia; swam with 40 ft whale sharks in Mexico; hiked the Chilkoot Trail (the 1897 Klondike Gold Rush route); accumulated around 80 nights backpacking off-trail in the Grand Canyon, usually with kids; floated western rivers, and the Grand Canyon three times; helped make and slept in snow caves on overnight ski tours; was "first mate" on bareboat sailing charters; solo backpacked along the Continental Divide; showed her horses in jumping competitions; and, more recently, skied roughly fifteen days a season, generally at a very high rate of speed. Sandy characterized herself as a "combat gardener", never hesitating to wield a full-size pick-axe to soften the deep ground for a new plant or to remove an old one; she assiduously cared for and treasured her large garden, her trees, her indoor and outdoor plants.

Sandy is mourned by her family and many circles of friends from her broad variety of activities. She is survived by her husband, Ernie, her daughter, Cynthia, and her son, Andrew, as well as by her brother Rob Shellworth (wife Jackie) of Boise, ID, and by five siblings-in-law and nine nieces and nephews and their spouses spread around the country. She was predeceased by her younger brother Toby.

A Celebration of Life memorial will be held later.