Dick Hauserman, a member of the group that started Vail, died Dec. 2 at a New York hospital. He was 93.
A memorial will be held in August in Vail.
Hauserman was in good health until he broke his pelvis a few weeks ago, said his stepson, Billy Paul of Brooklyn, N.Y.
Hauserman and 25 other people each put in $5,000 to start Vail, said Keith Brown of San Antonio and Vail, one of the 26. Each investor later added $10,000 for the development.
Hauserman was living in Cleveland when someone in the group contacted him about starting Vail.
“He just pulled up stakes and moved here,” Brown said.
Hauserman wrote in his book, “The Inventors of Vail,” that he had no idea “how profoundly Vail would affect my life.”
He loved to ski and was still on the slopes in his late 80s.
Hauserman built the first commercial structure, the Hauserman Building, and there he started the town’s first ski-rental shop. It also had motel rooms. He designed the Vail logo as well, according to Stephen Lloyd Wood, former writer and news editor at the Vail Daily.
He later partnered with golfer Arnold Palmer to start a golf school, which was named for Palmer. Hauserman expanded his ski shops to 13 locations at various Colorado ski slopes.
Richard M. Hauserman was born in Cleveland on Jun 3, 1916, and received an architectural degree at the University of Southern California.
He served in the Navy and earned a marine-architecture degree at the University of Michigan.
He was helping to run the family business, E.F. Hauserman Co., which made movable interior walls, when he heard about Vail.
Several decades after arriving, he wrote his book on Vail’s founding, which is “still the most comprehensive history of Vail ever written,” Wood said.
Hauserman and his first wife divorced. On June 4, 2000, he married Bobba Paul, who had five children.
“He was a great father,” Billy Paul said. “He was the most sincere, nicest man I knew.”
“He was an amazing man,” said his stepdaughter Holly McGrath of Ridgefield, Conn. “He made friends everywhere, talked to total strangers in restaurants, elevators, airports,” she said. “And he kept in touch with hundreds of people, over the phone and with e-mails.”
“Dick was a humble guy, and even though other people got credit for building Vail, Dick always said it was a product of many people,” Wood said.
In addition to his wife, son and daughter, Hauserman is survived by two other daughters, Heidi Bolster of Mount Vernon, N.Y., and Haeley Mowery of San Diego; another son, Andrew Paul of Bronxville, N.Y.; and 11 grandchildren.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to a reporting error, this story inaccurately described the school opened in the 1960s by Dick
Hauserman and Arnold Palmer. It was a golf school.
