[Deathwatch] Andrea Mead Lawrence, Olympic athlete, 76

[Deathwatch Central]

Andrea Mead Lawrence dies at 76; 
Olympic Alpine skier became environmentalist
She made the U.S. Olympic team at 14, won two gold medals at 19 and
competed in her third Games just four months after having her third
child. Then she became an advocate for the Eastern Sierra.
By Valerie J. Nelson

April 2, 2009

Andrea Mead Lawrence, who was the only American alpine skier to win two
gold medals in a single Olympics and went on to become a leading
conservationist in the Eastern Sierra, has died. She was 76.

Lawrence, who spent four decades working to preserve the mountainous
region and founded several environmental organizations, died Monday at
her Mammoth Lakes home of the cancer she had been diagnosed with in
2000, her son Matthew said.

She was a 19-year-old sensation coming off a dream year -- winning a
dozen international races and appearing on the cover of Time magazine
-- when she arrived at the 1952 Winter Games in Oslo. After taking the
giant slalom, she captured a second gold, in the slalom, after falling
on the first of two runs.

She often recalled that during her final slalom run, she had an amazing
sense of clarity and purpose that allowed her to go "like a bullet down
the course."

The accomplishment "helped lay the groundwork for the rest of my life,"
she told The Times in 2004.

A three-time Olympian, Lawrence had been named to the 1948 Olympic team
at 14 and competed in the 1956 Games after having three children. Yet
she refused to allow her experience as a top Olympic athlete to define
her.

"I've never wanted celebrity status unless it furthers the things I'm
involved in and have a passion for," Lawrence told the Oakland Tribune
in 2002. "It's not about how many medals you've won, but what you do
with them."

She did not display her medals but kept them in a box.

In 1998, Lawrence told Olympic historian David Wallechinsky that she
had asked herself: "What if I could take the same sort of striving for
high-quality perfection that I did with my skiing and apply it to
something good, something relevant to life?"

"That's how she became an environmentalist," Wallechinsky recalled on
Tuesday.

After moving from Malibu to Mammoth Lakes in 1968, the newly divorced
mother of five began transforming herself into an environmental
activist.

Local business leaders soon asked her to spearhead the battle against
construction of eight-story condominiums in Mammoth. Her group, the
Friends of Mammoth, halted the project in a case that reached the state
Supreme Court. That ruling laid the foundation for citizen enforcement
of the California Environmental Quality Act, said Antonio Rossmann, a
lawyer who represented Inyo County in water campaigns.

"Andrea in her lifetime was the most significant and effective citizen
activist in California," Rossmann said.

Among several conservation groups Lawrence helped found was the Sierra
Nevada Alliance, a regional environmental protection coalition. A few
years ago, she established the nonprofit Andrea Lawrence Institute for
Mountains and Rivers to work for a balance between economic growth and
preservation of the region's natural beauty.

Elected in 1982, Lawrence spent 16 years as a member of the Mono County
Board of Supervisors, battling unchecked development and testifying
before Congress for environmental causes. She campaigned for the
passage of several wilderness bills and successfully championed the
Bodie Protection Act of 1993, which saved the California mining town
from development.

Bud Greenspan, an Olympic historian and documentarian, used a formula
that took into account post-Olympic accomplishments when he put
Lawrence atop his 2002 list of greatest winter Olympians of all time.

"Andrea personified the Greek concept of the Ideal Athlete . . .
excellence both in body and mind," Greenspan told The Times in an
e-mail. "It is indeed rare to find someone who throughout her life
pursued two passions in the purest and highest form of the human
spirit."

She was born April 19, 1932, in Rutland, Vt., one of two children of
Bradford and Janet Mead, who founded Vermont's Pico Peak ski resort.

By 6, she was absorbing the lessons that the resort's Swiss ski pro
gave others. At 10, she took a run down a ski course in Lake Placid,
N.Y., and had an epiphany during a hairpin turn.

"It was so natural, it was like a psychic click. . . . I knew
instinctively that's what I was meant to do," Lawrence recalled earlier
this year on Vermont Public Radio.

That same year, her father died in a boating accident, and she later
recalled feeling pressured to grow up.

At the 1948 Olympics in Switzerland, she met David Lawrence, a member
of the U.S. men's ski team. They married in 1951.

Four months before the 1956 Games, she had her third child but again
made the team. Competing in the giant slalom in Cortina d'Ampezzo,
Italy, she tied for fourth place.

Upon settling in Aspen, Colo., Lawrence joined a local planning
commission and realized that she had a passion for politics.

As a recreational skier, she refused to use ski poles, calling them "a
crutch."

"Even in her 60s, she was such a good skier," said Chris Plakos, a
longtime friend. "We used to compare her skiing to watching a sea gull
in flight."

Lawrence is survived by sons Cortlandt and Matthew; daughters Deirdre,
Leslie and Quentin; brother Peter Mead; and four grandchildren.

Plans are being made for a public memorial.


Many thanks to Deathwatch Central for posting this obituary