Walter, who supposedly gave up the sport after only a few tries, is one of skiing's greatest benefactors, participant or not.

It was in 1945 that Walter, board chairman of the Container Corporation of America, first saw the Roaring Fork Valley and met Freidl Pfeifer. Out of those contacts came the fulfillment of Walter's dream of a place where the nation's leaders could be revitalized, intellectually and physically. He established the Aspen Company, which began restoring the historic town and led to the founding of the famed Aspen Skiing Corporation, which would make the community one of the winter sports capitals of the world.

Walter's and Aspen's success were assured by the town's selection in 1949 as host community for the 200th-anniversary celebration of Geothe's birth, largely because the area "stressed the major theme of Goethe's work - man and his relation to nature", an altogether satisfactory achievement as far as Walter was concerned.