Jill Kinmont Boothe was the national women's slalom champion and on the cover of Sports Illustrated when she set out to win a 1955 race that would help put her on the U.S. Olympic ski team. As she sped down a Utah mountain slope, she lost control on an icy bump, struck a spectator, crashed and tumbled into a tree.
When she finally came to a stop, she couldn't feel anything. This must be death, she later recalled thinking. Her neck broken, she was paralyzed below her shoulders, her promising career as a skier over at 18.
But Kinmont Boothe became a role model of a different sort, the subject of a book and two Hollywood films, a teacher and a painter who refused to let her crippling injuries turn her into a different person.
She died Thursday at a hospital in Carson City, Nev., said Ruth Rhines of the local coroner's office. Rhines could not confirm reports that Kinmont Boothe died of complications related to surgery. She was 75. ...
Her life and losses were the subject of a 1966 book, "A Long Way Up: The Story of Jill Kinmont," by E.G. Valens, and two films, "The Other Side of the Mountain" in 1975 and a 1978 sequel...
More (w/photo):
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-me-0211-jill-kinmont-boothe-20120211,0,6377665.story
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back to 2001:
http://DeadCelebrityAlert.com
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