September 9, 2013 at 3:32 p.m.
Loren Anderson reflects on history, impact of snowmobiling
Loren Anderson reflects on history, impact of snowmobiling
Anderson will be around, of course. He was doing a little landscaping work at the museum when this reporter caught up with him.
A cancer survivor, Anderson said getting the SHOF onto its own land in its own building was one of the items on his "bucket list." Another was an addition to the Faith Free Church. Those are checked off the list, and it might be time to take things a little easier.
Anderson took time to review his history and that of the SHOF.
A start for the SHOF
In the early 1980s, Anderson was executive director for the Minocqua Chamber of Commerce.
"I wanted to start a wintering marketing program to promote snowmobiling, because it was kind of languishing," he said.
He invited snowmobile magazine publishers to Minocqua for a trail ride, promising that local racing hero and two-time champ, Mike Trapp, would be the guide. It was the winter of 1981-82.
The first to respond was C.J. Ramstad, a publisher, editor, writer and photographer with several snowmobile magazines. The trail ride was a go.
"While we were on that trail ride, we were north of here by Star Lake Saloon and Eatery ... and we went in there for lunch," Anderson recalls.
Before they were done with that lunch, the men decided that they would try to put together a Hall of Fame.
It was one of those moments, Anderson said. "If not us, who? If not now, when?"
A museum was an interesting idea, too, but would have to wait.
"We knew a museum would be extremely costly, but getting the hall of fame part started, maybe we could do that," Anderson said.
They organized an event to get the word out. Bosacki's Boat House owner Larry Bosacki offered his restaurant. Among those Anderson invited were fellow Lions Club members and snowmobile racers.
"All the guys I'd raced against that were all real good drivers. I mean, they were world champions. I was a nothing compared to the lot of them," Anderson said.
Anderson was an independent racer, getting his start in the southern part of the state before relocating to the north in the late 1970s.
Ramstad agreed to write stories to generate publicity for the Hall of Fame. And, of course, Anderson had been in marketing. They would get the word out. Trapp's celebrity status "was a real plus," Anderson said, and Bosacki was a well-known local businessman.
The four made a likely core for the undertaking.
The first organizational meeting was in 1983, at Mama's Supper Club in Minocqua, Anderson said. Town officials, racers, manufacturers and others attended. The four men who were the catalyst had found their support.
Racers at the event agreed to help with the first "Ride With the Champs." Those racers that took place in the first ride were Steve Ave, Allan Decker, Mike Decker, Jim Dimmerman, Bobby Donahue, Bob Eastman, Bob Elsner and Mike Trapp.
"The 'who's who' of snowmobiling; a very impressive group," Anderson said.
The first Ride With the Champs took place Jan. 27, 1984.
Anderson and Trapp were involved with the Lions Club, organizing snowmobile drag races each year at Winterama. The first Ride With The Champs was sponsored by the Lions Club, and so was the second.
The event was quickly doing quite well and they split ties with the Minocqua Lions Club. In 1986, Ride With the Champs was moved to Eagle River.
Winter becomes fun
"I started out as a builder with real estate office and building back in Chicago and an office in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, back in the late '60s, and happened to build one of the state's first condominiums at age 25," Anderson recalled.
"All of a sudden I was a Midwest-recognized young man on his way up ... We won a lot of awards."
That first building won a design award.
"We won an EPA award for building on a lakefront with sound environmental safeties. In other words, we didn't get dirt in the water, and we left the shore as it was when we found it - stuff like that."
Anderson found himself with more free time in the winter. He had an apartment in Florida, but he tired of Florida, and found a growing fondness for winter.
"I started out by really hating winter, but then a friend came along and took me for a snowmobile ride in 1964 or five," Anderson said.
His friend assured him there was adequate insulated clothing to keep the cold away.
"He said, 'You will not be cold, you will love it.' Well, he took me on a little old sled and I ran around that place in Lake Geneva. I said, 'You're right, I'm hot ... I'm actually sweating.'
"He says, 'Yeah, that's because you're having a good time leaning and turning and going in and out of the woods.' I said, 'This is more fun than a barrel of monkeys.' I couldn't believe it."
About two weeks later, Anderson bought his own snowmobile. A year later, be bought a race sled and started drag racing.
"That was great, but I wanted to go oval racing, so I bought a different kind of sled, and then pretty soon, we were doing very well. That was Rupps. Ski-Doo found out about our success and they wanted us to switch to Ski-Doos."
Anderson soon found himself at a loading dock in Duluth, Minn., picking up six snowmobiles.
"We formed a race team. The rest is history," Anderson said.
Handing over the racing reins
"I raced Ski-Doos for 14 years, and my son [Bob] raced Ski-Doos for 12. Then the son of one of my mechanics raced. I sponsored him and he worked out of my shop here," Anderson said.
That racer is Brad Bettin; his father is Jerry Bettin.
Anderson said his race teams have done "not bad for an independent."
"Bob won eight Formula 1 championship races, qualified for the Eagle River World Championship twice."
Other young racers, including Bettin, won championships at various levels as well. Bob got a bit of an early start on the adult level.
"My son was underage and illegal the first time I put him on the race track," Anderson revealed.
"We put him in my jacket and gave him my machine with my number on it, and he went out there and did laps and he got official time cards and everything and he was as fast as I was.
"I said, 'If this keeps up, you're going to be driving our sled and I'm going to be wrenching for you.'
"Well, sure enough, the next year, he was old enough then to race with the big boys, and two years later, we got to Eagle River and we had one sled."
The Andersons bought two entries anyway. One for Bob's number, one for Loren's.
"He beat me by one one-thousandth of a second in our qualifying. I said, 'That's it, you're the driver,' and that was my last official race for a long, long time.
"I got back on the track once with Mike Trapp in Antigo. Had a good time. It was a legal, legitimate professional race, but our wives weren't supposed to find out about it.
"But Mike hit me in the tail end and flipped over and his picture made the front page of the Antigo daily paper. His wife saw the paper and said, 'Mike, what's this? You're not racing, are you?'"
Heading north and coming back
"I sold all my stuff in the southern part of the state in the late '70s and moved to Minocqua," Anderson said. "And I kind of semi-retired. By then I was very involved in association work."
Anderson was involved with the Wisconsin Builders Association and a director of the National Association of Home Builders in Washington, D.C. He also did a lot of work for state tourism entities. Anderson even ran for the U.S. Senate, winning the primary but losing the election.
During that period of time Anderson became acquainted with then-Assembly Minority Leader Tommy Thompson. He eventually worked for Gov. Thompson as an administrator in the Department of Commerce, during which time he lived in Madison. After four years, Anderson wanted to come back to Minocqua.
"And he said, 'No, State Fair Park's a mess,'" Anderson recalled. "He wanted me to go over and be on the board at State Fair Park and later I was hired as a consultant and director of racing at the park, to try to save the Milwaukee Mile. It was about to be closed down."
Anderson helped keep the track, which he says is the oldest continously running racetrack in the country, from closing.
"We brought NASCAR back and we brought Indy car racing back to the Milwaukee Mile," he said.
In the mid 1990s, Anderson returned to the north.
The SHOF moves one last time
Anderson said the SHOF ended up in its current location "by accident." He was looking for a property for a shop building. He bought the St. Germain property, which already had a couple of buildings on it. When the SHOF lost its lease on a building on the east side of St. Germain, it moved into one of the buildings.
"It was going to be one year, and it ended up being seven," Anderson said. "That's why my wife and I gave them land next door. We said, 'If you can build a building within five years, you can have the land.' And they raised enough money."
The hall of fame, which got its start with the lunch meeting during the winter of 1981-82, was incorporated and received tax-exempt status in 1985. The first 10 racers were inducted into the hall of fame in 1988. Each year, there are four more inductees.
The museum got its start in Minocqua, but there were issues, and it didn't remain there long. In 1989, the hall of fame leased space for a museum in Eagle River, at the corner of highways 45 and 70.
Since 1993, the hall of fame has been located on Highway 70 in St. Germain, moving from the east side to the west side after the first site was lost. Its board of directors approved the gift from the Andersons in 1998.
The new, expanded museum was complete in 2007.
Sport too small?
"Our sport is probably too small to have its own hall fo fame and museum," Anderson said. "We probably are big enough to support the hall, if it were located in a municipal building somewhere."
But the dream, complete with museum and plans for further expansion, has become a reality, despite obstacles.
"It's the museum part that can drive you to drink," Anderson said. "Fundraising is a 24/7, 365-days-a-year job."
For anyone interested in serving on the board he served for so long, Anderson had words of advice.
"The number one job is to fundraise. If you're not willing to write a big check yourself - if you can't do that, help raise money through our projects. If you can't do that, help sell raffle tickets. If you can't do that, go out and find people who can write checks. That's your top job.
"I can get a whole bunch of idiots around the table and figure out whether we should paint the walls blue or yellow. I need people on the board that know how to raise money.
"And I have been so blessed, these 30 years, to have a board of directors, and that at least half of them have always had money or contacts that had money."
"It's nice to sell a few T-shirts and a hat or two. We make a buck or two, but that doesn't do much when it come to paying the big bills," Anderson added.
"For as small as snowmobiling is, we are more than lucky to have succeeded for 30 years."
Favorite sleds
Anderson was thoughtful when asked what snowmobile is his favorite. There are many favorites, including "the one that gets here tomorrow" for museum pieces.
"Of the ones I've owned and raced, it would be my 800 Blizzard. I won the points championship in 1972 with a 1972 Ski-Doo 800 Blizzard," Anderson said.
"My all-time favorite snowmobile - I'm a might torn here. Mike Trapp's championship sled from 1971 was in the most exciting race in racing history."
The 15-lap world championship, between Mike Trapp and Yvon DuHamel, had 13 lead changes.
"Mike ended up, with a little 433 Yamaha, beating Yvon DuHamel's 800 Ski-Doo," Anderson recalled.
"Mike was a little lowly boy from Woodruff; Yvon DuHamel was the big, high-paid factory driver from Ski-Doo, was a world-championship motorcycle racer, had won the world championship the year before, and Mike knocked him off the throne. That sled's in our museum - well it's in my shop right now."
Another favorite is a big speed sled, a Boss Cat III. It almost cost Dale Cormican, 1997 SHOF inductee, his life.
"That thing blew up, the machine catapulted, rolled and rolled and rolled. Way over a hundred miles and hour - 150, 60, 70 miles an hour," Anderson said.
"Dale was seriously hurt. That sled was found and a good friend of the Hall of Fame owns it ... and they spent a small fortune to restore that sled to the way it was the day that it was breaking world speed records. Because of the history of it, it's very significant."
One favorite isn't a racing sled.
"My favorite sled of all sleds is probably a trail riding sled, recreational sled, and we're so lucky to have it in our museum."
That sled, a '60 Ski-Doo with wooden skis, "is insured for a small fortune," Anderson said.
Good place for the SHOF
"The first snowmobile was built right up here in 1924," Anderson pointed out. Just six miles north of the SHOF.
Carl Eliason patented his motor toboggan in 1927.
"The first snowmobile actually made tracks right here in the snow around here, because Eliason used to come down to the grocery store in St. Germain."
Eliason Motor Toboggans were built until the 1963 model year. Anderson said, until recently, that was the longest running production of any snowmobile.
"This was the greatest place in the world to build the museum," Anderson said, pointing out that, beside being the birthplace of the snowmobile, it's also close to the prestigious Eagle River World Championship, boasts the state's largest snowmobile club, Bo-Boen Club, and is the "center of gravity of all registered sleds."
Right arm
"My wife was my right arm during all this ... For about 20 of the years, she was my office girl, secretary," Anderson said. "She's the one that taught me how to use a computer. When I had members' cards on three-by-five indexes, Carola said to me one day, 'Loren we've got to get this on computer.'"
Anderson was resistant at first, but learned.
"Carola retired two years ago, or to put it another way, she said, 'Enough's enough, I'm retiring. That's when we hired our first employee. We'd never had a paid employee ... When my wife quit, there was nobody that would do all this work for nothing."
Passion
"One guy said it was all about passion. I think he was right," Anderson said. "For Mike and I and Larry, this project became our passion."
"A fabulous team did it all, when you think about it," Anderson added, noting many volunteers.
Anderson estimates that 90,000 raffle tickets have been sold over the years. He's in the market for them himself, now.
"This year, now that I'm not on the board, I'm going to buy raffle tickets and put'em in the box, and I'm going to win something," Anderson said.
He has set aside his race numbers, 66 and 699, and his son's number, 65, in raffle tickets. He said, as president, it would have been embarrassing to win anything.
"If they drew my name out, they would've booed," Anderson said with a chuckle.
Raffles have started for a 1978 John Deere Liquifire and a 2014 Arctic Cat.
Anderson admits it wasn't always pretty as the SHOF grew and moved. Tough decisions had to be made, and not everyone was always pleased. He enjoys some comments made by Larry Preston, aka "Boy Wonder," on VintageSleds.com, in the wake of his retirement.
"When I first met Loren way back in 2001, I knew this was a guy who had the best interest of the sport in mind ... Loran [sic] can be controversial at times - but what great leader isn't?" Preston wrote. "The fact is, Loren got it done."
Preston went on to describe Anderson as "a leader, a spokesperson, an evangelist, a fundraiser, a curator, a historian, an announcer, the gift shop attendant, the deal-maker, the president, the head of marketing, the sales manager, racer, a trail rider, a mechanic, a sponsor ... even the janitor" in his piece.
It's succinct summary.
Craig Marchbank, New Lennox, Ill., was elected to serve as new president of the SHOF board. He was the longest serving factory driver for Ski-Doo drag racing, retiring a few years ago with the most wins in history.
Those interested in becoming a member, buying raffle tickets, or donating to the SHOF may visit http://www.snowmobilehallof fame.com/index.html; call (715) 542-4HOF (4463); or mail the Snowmobile Hall of Fame, P.O. Box 720, St. Germain, WI 54558.
The SHOF operates a year-round museum on Hwy. 70 West in St. Germain. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday and Friday; 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday.
Craig Turk may be reached at [email protected].
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