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04/26/2017 08:30 AMYou fell on the ski slope; you needed help. And then, just when you thought you would shiver for hours on a frozen trail, they came—they ski patrol. They loaded you on a sled and took you down to the bottom of the mountain.
You can thank Mint Dole’s father for that.
Mint, who lives in Essex, knows all about the ski patrol and not because of falling on the slopes. His father, Charles Minot Dole, always known as Minnie, founded the National Ski Patrol in 1938.
That’s not all; Minnie Dole also was one of the founders of the 10th Mountain Division, the soldiers on skis who fought in Italy in World War II. Essex resident Nan Meneely, a poet, and her sister Sarah Meneely Kyder, who lives in Old Lyme, wrote a powerful musical piece, Letter from Italy, based on the experiences of their father—Dr. John K. Meneely—in that mountain division. The piece sets Nan’s poetry to Sarah’s music. The Greater Middletown Chorale will give the oratorio its Hartford premiere on Thursday, May 4 at The Bushnell in a joint performance with the Hartford Chorale and the Hartford Symphony Orchestra.
The oratorio has already been performed in Middletown and has been featured in a CPTV special. The Meneely sisters have produced a musical drama that is both powerful and searing. Their father, Dr. Meneely, never got over his experiences in the 10th Mountain Division. He suffered continuing emotional trauma after World War II ended and some years later took his own life.
Mint Dole, who is formally Charles Minot Dole Jr., remembers the 10th Mountain Division differently. He remembers that he saw very little of his father during World War II because the senior Dole was always in New York City interviewing candidates for the division. Mint recalls they needed not only a personal interview, but also three letters of recommendation to become a part of the unit.
“At the end of the war, my father said that he had not been such a good father to me because he had been in New York all the time,” Mint says.
Still, that hasn’t dimmed Mint’s enthusiasm for the 10th Mountain Division. He still regularly attends their reunions.
Called Minty as a child to distinguish him from his father Minnie, Mint added that when he was at prep school at Lawrenceville, his slight frame earned him the nickname Skinny Minty.
“I think I weighed less than 100 pounds,” he says.
Mint started skiing when he was four or five years old.
“Born into it,” he says—but it was before skiing was a popular sport in this country.
“Nobody skied then,” Mint recalled. “It was wooden skis in those days.”
The elder Dole started the ski patrol, Mint recalls, as the result of what happened to a good friend, Frank Edson, with whom he skied.
“Frank was his best friend. He was racing and he hit a tree; they couldn’t get him to a hospital soon enough and he died,” Mint says.
Minnie Dole was inducted into the United States National Ski Hall of Fame in l958.
Mint grew up in Greenwich, in an era when that town boasted families like the Bushes, with whom his own family was friendly enough that he refers to President George H.W. Bush by his private nickname, Poppy. His father, Mint recalls, sang in a quartet called the Silver Dollars with George H.W. Bush’s father, Prescott, later a senator from Connecticut. The quartet continued to perform together for decades after all four members had left Yale. In fact, as Mint goes through his family history, it’s dotted with the names that have been part of New England history since Colonial times, names like Hotchkiss and Ely.
“That and a nickel will get you on the subway,” he says. (Well, five cents would have gotten you on the New York City subway until l948. Now a single ride costs $3.)
Mint says he was not wedded to family tradition. He chose Middlebury over Yale; served in the military, but not on skis; rejected banking after a short stint in New York; and took a bit of money he had inherited and trained as an industrial designer, ultimately heading his own industrial design firm. Over his 40 years in business, he worked with firms like IBS, Corning Glass, and various medical companies.
As he looks back now at age 83, there are both the good times and the times he would not want to repeat.
“I don’t want to be in my 40s ever again,” he says.
He also admits to what he describes as a “checkered career,” in marriage—three of them. Two marriages ended in divorce.
“I am proud to be alive, but I’m not proud of those divorces and not proud of the hurt I gave my children,” he says.
Mint has a grown son and daughter. He is now married to Burgess, a portrait artist who works from a new studio recently completed for her in their Essex home.
Mint loved to sail, but also has the fondest memories of a motorboat, the 1929 Chris Craft he once owned.
“I loved that boat. I took great care of it and finally I gave it to somebody who is going to take just as good care of it as I did,” he says.
Now he says he may get another boat—”a stinkpot because Burgess can’t sail, but I want to be on the water.”
No more skis, no more sailboats, but Mint’s garage has one of his latest fascinations, a 1981 red Porsche with only 34,000 miles on it. He bought it from a seller in Texas.
“I found it on the net,” he says.
For tickets for the upcoming performance of Letter from Italy at The Bushnell in Hartford on Thursday, May 4 at 7:30 p.m., visit https://bushnell.org.