Skiing ‘Grandmother’ Sees the World While Helping Handicapped

Irvine’s Pat Parker Freeburg, 53 and a homemaker for the past 30 years, has managed to ski some of the finest slopes in the world, including some in Iran, Venezuela and Libya.

All this while the one-time elementary school teacher raised her three children and accompanied her husband--Edward Freeburg, 56, an oil company executive--on extended assignments around the globe.

“I met my husband while skiing,” she said. “I’m simply passionate about skiing,” a sport she did not attempt until age 22.

Freeburg is now one of the 11 members of Skiing Grandmothers International. It is a fun-seeking group that raises money through exhibition downhill skiing, usually in concert with professional ski races. Most of the money goes to the Jimmy Heuga Center in Vail, Colo., a nonprofit research organization that aids multiple sclerosis victims.

“People are amazed that a group of women our age are so passionate about skiing,” she said. “I think that’s one of the reasons we get so many invitations to ski all over the world.”

Freeburg is the only California member of the Skiing Grandmothers. The others are from Texas, Colorado and other countries of the world. She is the youngest member--the oldest is 66--and the only one who is not a grandmother.

“I’m old enough to be a grandmother,” Freeburg explained.

The Skiing Grandmothers are easily recognized on the slopes by their bright-red outfits and blue Stetson hats.

The hats reflect the Texas birthplace of the group’s founder, LaNelle Townley.

“I think they look very smart,” said Freeburg, also born in Texas and a niece of Townley’s.

Besides raising money for the center through individual and corporate sponsors, many of the grandmothers act as ski teachers for visually handicapped and blind youngsters.

“Teaching blind youngsters how to ski is the most exciting thing I have ever done,” said Freeburg, who is thinking of teaching school again. “I’ve always been a teacher, and I kind of miss being with children.”

Skiing has been a risky sport for her, even though she is rated as a level 7 (high intermediate/low expert) skier.

“I’ve broken three bones on the slopes,” she said, holding up a hand to show a broken thumb from a recent ski accident in Switzerland, where her group raised $3,000 for the Heuga Center.

She said keeping herself in shape has helped prevent even harsher injuries.

“I have learned to eat properly and exercise with such things as fast walks through the orange groves,” said the Irvine resident, who still talks with a pronounced Texas accent.

She also does “squat walking” to stretch and strengthen her hamstrings in the isolated groves. “It’s a funny-looking exercise,” she said.

After reading in Tuesday’s People column about a woman whose first name is Frolic, Frayne Bovis of Huntington Beach called to say he has never heard of anyone else who has his first name.

“My mother died before I got curious enough to ask her how I got the name, and before my father died he said he didn’t know,” Bovis said.

“When I got out of high school I got a circular from a school that wanted me to apply,” he said. “It was a women’s college.”

It was sort of a “gotcha” on both sides when the students at Concordia Elementary School in San Clemente slimed principal Jeffrey Bristow with three buckets of green yucky goo.

He had said they could do that while he was dressed in regular clothes if there was 100% participation in the school’s recent jog-a-thon.

Well, all 750 students ran--raising $16,800 for the PTA, which plans to buy physical fitness equipment with the money. So the students got to slime Bristow.

The principal, a physical fitness advocate who ran and finished Sunday’s Los Angeles Marathon, had ulterior motives for his challenge.

“Kids who run and stay fit don’t use drugs,” he said.