A MOVER OF MOUNTAINS HAL O'LEARY HELPS THE DISABLED CHARGE DOWN SLOPES AND CHANGE THEIR LIVES

It would be hard to create a more appropriate setting for
miracles than the gently sloping Fraser Valley and its surrounding
peaks. These mountains in the central Colorado Rockies, five miles
west of the Continental Divide, have long stood higher than most
places on earth. But for the past quarter of a century they have
also come to represent the place where the land levels out.

The man behind this apparent moving of mountains is Hal O'Leary,
a Canadian-born ski instructor whose dedication and persistence
have made Winter Park the home of the largest program in the
world for disabled skiers. The program was started 25 years ago
as a favor to a group of amputees from The Children's Hospital
in Denver, but under O'Leary's direction it evolved into the
National Sports Center for the Disabled. Each year more than
2,500 people who have any of about 40 kinds of physical and
mental disabilities descend upon the Winter Park Resort -- a
1,358-acre area leased by the U.S. Forest Service to the
not-for-profit Winter Park Recreational Association -- to learn
how to ski.

O'Leary, a 57-year-old ski enthusiast who quit an office job in
New York City in 1962 to move west, stumbled onto his life's work
by chance. He found a job as a ski instructor with the Winter Park
Ski School but was unsatisfied. ``There was no return in teaching
able-bodied skiers,'' he says. During an instructors' meeting in
January 1970, O'Leary's boss asked for volunteers to teach 23 kids
with missing limbs to ski. O'Leary, who had never worked with the
disabled, raised his hand. ``I was scared to death,'' he says.
``No one else volunteered.''

Though people with disabilities had been on skis in Europe at
least as far back as the 1940s, there were no established teaching
methods or programs for disabled skiers, and only makeshift
equipment was available. This didn't deter O'Leary, who began
poring over medical textbooks. He took his newly acquired
knowledge to a ski shop in Winter Park, where he spent hours
experimenting on discarded skis and poles, drilling holes,
fastening pulleys, attaching braces.

``He really seemed to understand our specific disabilities,''
says Ri Armstrong, 34, a below-the-knee single amputee who
attended O'Leary's first class. ``By the end of the day we were
all actually skiing.''

As the program -- which ran for eight consecutive Tuesdays --
began to make local headlines, other disabled people starting
calling. O'Leary, who was expected to continue teaching
able-bodied skiers, was soon filling his schedule with free
classes for disabled students. ``I just couldn't turn them away,''
O'Leary says. ``I could see what a difference it was making in
their lives. People were leaving here saying, `Hal, I used to hate
my body. Now I feel graceful. . . . I'm moving. . . . I can feel
the wind in my face.' ''

In 1974, after neglecting his duties toward the able-bodied for
two years, O'Leary was fired by the ski school. But he persuaded
the board of directors of Winter Park, a nonprofit resort, to take
over the program from the ski school. For the next three years he
operated out of a broom closet on the second floor of Winter
Park's ski lodge. Today 35 full-time employees and more than
1,000 volunteers staff the program.

``Once [disabled] people see they can ski,'' says Mike Rantz, 40,
who has cerebral palsy, ``it allows them to go back to the real
world and say, `Yeah, I can do this, too.' '' Rantz says that
learning to ski gave the him confidence to marry and start a
family. He has been a full-time instructor for the disabled at
Winter Park for 12 years, is married and has two children. ``Even
my speech has improved,'' he says.

O'Leary has helped design much of the equipment that enables even
the most seriously disabled people to ski, including the outrigger
(a crutch with a 12-inch ski on the end) and the trombone (a
metal attachment that holds two skis parallel but slides to allow
each to move independently). Inducted into the U.S. National Ski
Hall of Fame last October, O'Leary has set up programs for
disabled skiers on four continents and coached two Paralympic
teams.

``It's absolutely mesmerizing to watch him,'' says Gwen Allard,
57, who runs the disabled-skiing program at Ski Windham in
Windham, N.Y., which is modeled after O'Leary's program. ``The
knowledge and the kindness just come pouring out. Without him
there would be no disabled skiing in this country.''

COLOR PHOTO:BYRON HETZLERO'Leary (right) and Rantz got Steven Bily, 9, to make good tracks. [Hal O'Leary and Mike Rantz standing with Steven Bily on ski slope]