Harold Hirsch awards
Carson White Golden Quill Award
Lifetime Achievement Award
Bob Gillen Memorial Award
Outstanding Competitor Award

Jerry Colburn Nunn

Given annually to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the advancement of North American snowsports. The award isa named in honor of Carson White, first president of the U.S. Ski Writers Association - the founding organization of NASJA.

Jerry Colburn Nunn defied the conventions of male gender discrimination of the ‘40s and ‘50s by becoming a toboggan-toting National Ski Patrol System patroller and a U.S. National Forest Service avalanche-blasting Snow Ranger. While her sphere of influence has been primarily in the U.S. Western States and Canada, where the continent's avalanche slopes are, any skier who skis in the West is far safer because of her pioneering efforts. No doubt her years helping to develop and promote the use of The Avalauncher, a Monty Atwater gas-powered large bore rifle, has saved hundreds if not thousands of skiers lives, not only in North America but in Europe where updated derivatives of the Avalauncher blast away cornices and other potential avalanche sites above ski slopes, highways and railroads.

In 1940, upon graduating from Berkeley High School, Jerry trained as an X-ray technician at Mills Hospital in Oakland. That winter, and for several years following she assisted in what today would be called the ski patrol room of Soda Springs. In those days, the ski patrol was a sometimes-thing at many ski areas, where often untrained personnel helped injured skiers as best they could until they were transported to the nearest medical facility. When the Soda Springs area signed up with the burgeoning National Ski Patrol System, Jerry signed on also.

In 1949 she joined the ski patrol at Sugar bowl. A few years later, after a thorough testing by the "macho" Squaw Valley ski patrol, she was accepted into its ranks as the first women patroller. Already more adept at administering first aid than most of the men, Jerry -- all of five-foot-five and 120 pounds -- also was expected to handle toboggans on the steepest of slopes just as they did. Under the stern, and sometimes overly rigid leadership of Ernest Schickler, she honed her skills as an avalanche dynamiter and cornice buster, a dangerous task heretofore always assigned only to men. She gradually gained the high respect of even her hard male-bitten taskmaster.

Meanwhile, during the World War II, she married Dr. Justin Colburn and bore two children. Subsequently, by 1952, she and the doctor adopted or took legal custody of five more. After she joined the Squaw Valley Ski Patrol and felt secure in her new position, she bought a home at Lake Tahoe so she and her menagerie of seven young ones might all ski nearby.

Jerry soon became concerned about avalanches at Squaw and in the Sierra Nevada. No encompassing plans for their control existed, no agency supervised their control, not even the U.S. Forest Service. Jerry applied for the pioneering Snow Ranger course at Alta, Utah, in 1957. She was accepted, but none of the organizers realized that Jerry was a women. At first, they refused her admittance. She stood her ground, insisting she had been accepted, and unless they wanted a lawsuit on their hands, they had better let her attend. They did. Jerry Colburn became the nation's first accredited women U.S. Forest Service Snow Ranger certified for avalanche control. That was the second time she breached skiing's male-dominated establishment, all the while remaining quite feminine (she also modeled clothes for Joseph Magnin, and others) and paving the way for other similarly motivated women.

Jerry underwent further avalanche control training at Lech, Austria, in preparation for the 1960 Olympic Winter Games in Squaw Valley. She gave numerous courses on avalanche safety to her fellow patrollers, the State Highway Patrol, railroads and mining companies in the Sierra.

In partnership with renowned U.S. avalanche control expert Monty Atwater, she helped develop, promote and install the radical Avalauncher under the rubric of Avalanche Control Systems, an entity still in operation. The device is capable of thrusting a four-pound canister of explosives a mile or more into potential avalanche sites. Prior to the use of the Avalauncher, heavy and cumbersome retired 75/105 mm military cannons were used. These were dangerous weapons, and their charges sometimes overshot the mark creating further hazards. Also, the military announced that it was discontinuing the manufacture of the ordnance for these cannons. Jerry played a pivotal role in the acceptance of this device, not only in the U.S. but in South America and Europe by personally demonstrating the device during sales visits.

After Jerry and Dr. Colburn parted ways in 1961, she became one of five women ski patrollers among 88 men at the 1960 Winter Olympic Games. There she met former pre-war ski champion, NSPS member and prominent Arizona architect Jimmy Nunn. They married in 1975, and Jerry moved to Arizona. Her energies now focused on local ski concerns. She organized “Ladies Day� at the nearby Arizona Snow Bowl. She worked with her husband to develop the Arizona Ski Museum in their capacious backyard western barn. That site had become an annual favorite for dozens of ski-oriented fund-raising events organized and hosted by the couple. In her 80th decade, Jerry still skis and travels widely to numerous skiing gatherings and functions.

David Rowan (posthumous)

Awarded periodically for outstanding lifetime achievement in snowsports competition, innovation, equipment design or other snowsports-related accomplishment or endeavor.

David Rowan was the founder of the industry's trade publication Ski Area Management (SAM Magazine). Rowan started his industry career in 1949 when he joined SKI as editor, interim publisher and ad salesperson. Rowan stayed with SKI until 1961 when the magazine was sold to a New York publisher. By 1962, Rowan, along with Otis Ridge and ski area owner David Judson, organized the first national association of ski area operators, the National Ski Areas Association, and launched Ski Area Management, the industry's first trade publication devoted to the owners and operators of ski areas, both large and small, in North America.

In 1964, Rowan rejoined SKI as publisher, all the while ensuring that SAM continue to grow. In 1973, Rowan rejoined the world of independent publishing and in the last 32 years oversaw the growth of SAM. Rowan stepped outside his role as publisher many times as a tireless advocate of the suppliers. Over the years, Rowan's editorials have shaped the debate over almost every controversial subject in our industry. He never feared championing unpopular causes if he thought they were right. He also organized conferences, and with his daughters, created the SAMMY Awards, Cutters Camp and ensured that the editorial content of the magazine challenge, help and, above all, be true to its original mission statement: "Ski Area Management intends to be a forum for the exchange of constructive ideas between area operators."

Because of his efforts, Rowan was inducted into the National Ski Hall of Fame in 1996 as a Ski Sport Builder. Rowan was also the recipient of the NSAA Lifetime Achievement Award.

"Our father was a pioneer and we are so very proud and honored to continue to pursue the high standards that he set forth in SAM," say Olivia and Jennifer Rowan, publishers of SAM. "His writing, his style, his grace, his wit and his wisdom were rare and we are fortunate as an industry to have benefited from his years of devotion and hard work."

In David's own final words to his family he said, "My one over-riding thought seems so banal as I write it, but perhaps truth is banal. It seems to me "decency" is a human quality that should be pursued above all others. maybe it smacks a little of elitism, but I don't care. If people measured their actions against a standard of "what is the decent thing to do?" the world would be a much better place. Such a standard forces you to reach down into your innermost self and measure your action against your own innermost standard of right and wrong. No expediency allowed. Yes, an unsophisticated concept, but it has been a core one with me ever since I learned it as a little English schoolboy."

David Rowan died on June 8, 2005 from a rare cancer, mesothelioma and daughters Olivia and Jennifer continue to publish Ski Area Management,

Honors an individual corporate member for contributions to the advancement of snowsports by exemplifying the highest standards of professionalism in public relations and communications, and understanding the working relationship between the information specialist and journalist.

Sandy Caligiore

No one in the ski marketing/PR business has as broad a background in snowsports as Sandy Caligiore, public relations chief for the New York Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA), located at the Olympic Center in Lake Placid, New York. Caligiore is knowledgeable out his area and his organization. He keeps the press constantly updated, as one would expect. But, he is also an enthusiast whose informal “Sandygrams� throughout the season give writers and broadcasters first hand information about conditions at his home mountain - Whiteface - based on his time on the hill. If it is good, he'll tell you where. If it is not good, he's say that too. He knows his area.

After graduating from the State University of New York at Potsdam with a degree in English Education, he arrive in Lake Placid in the mid-1970s as a radio broadcaster and as the local stringer for the Associated Press where he covered all of the international and Olympic test events leading up to the 1980 Winter games.

In the mid-1980s he worked for the US Ski Team traveling with the athletes handling on-site press relations and reporting back to the US on competitions. In addition to the 1980 games in Lake Placid, he was a press official at the 1984 Games in Sarajevo, the 1998 games at Nagano, and he was the press chief at the Deer Valley alpine events venue at the 2002 Salt Lake Games.

In his role as PR chief for Lake Placid-Whiteface, he has supervised press operations for more than 30 World Cup events since taking on the ORDA position in 1999. Before taking over as the PR director of ORDA, he was the public relations manager for the US Luge Association from 1995-99. He loves to get out on the hill. He is a former Whiteface Mountain ski instructor and was assistant director of the ski school there in 1994-95. He is as comfortable working with network and international broadcast crews as he is with local newspaper reporters. He understands the needs of the press and he is always available and candid in the conduct of his duties. He is a model public relations pro in the snowsports industry.

Shaun White

Known as "The Flying Tomato" thanks to his flaming red hair, Shaun White was the heavy favorite in the men's halfpipe competition for the Torino Games. After a poor first qualifying run, he came back to post the highest score in qualifying. Then, took gold in finals.

At the 2006 Winter X-Games in Aspen, he won Slopestyle and Halfpipe, and became became the second athlete in X Games history to four-peat for gold when, on Jan. 28, he won his fourth consecutive gold medal in the slopestyle. Also a pro skateboarder, he was the first athlete to compete in both the winter and summer X Games.

Not enough? Try this: Shaun won all five events in the US Snowboarding Grand Prix series, making him the first person to ever win every contest in the series.

Truly this season he's earned NASJA Competitor of the Year Award.