For 36 years the words of journalist Tom Ross filled the pages of the Steamboat Pilot & Today weekly and daily newspapers, telling the stories of the people and events that shaped the Yampa Valley.

“Such a big part of his identity was the newspaper, and he took so much pride in telling stories about people in our community who had interesting lives, but maybe weren’t in the spotlight,” said Austin Ross, Tom’s son. “I think being able to highlight those stories was his favorite part of work.”

After a serious bicycling accident in Steamboat Springs on June 16, Tom Ross was flown to the Front Range. Judy Ross, Tom’s wife of 41 years, said her husband died eight days later, on June 24, surrounded by family and love. He was 71.

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Ross’ story in Steamboat Springs began in 1975, when he moved to town after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a political science degree. He traveled to Colorado from Wisconsin and spent his first night in Steamboat sleeping in his Opel Kadett.

His family said he came West hoping to find a town with a strong community feel where he could pursue his love of skiing. That winter he found work, and also discovered new friendships and the joy of getting on the slopes whenever possible.

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However, when winter’s snow melted and ski season ended — and the limited number of job opportunities stopped flowing along with the spring run-off — Ross returned to Wisconsin. There he took a job with the Chilton Times-Journal, allowing him to follow his father’s path into journalism.

Tom’s father, John, had worked for a newspaper before taking a position as a professor teaching agricultural journalism at the University of Wisconsin. However, Tom’s oldest sister, Anne Ross, believes many of her brother’s talents as a reporter were passed to him by his mother, Elizabeth. She taught piano in Madison and was also the source of her son’s love of music. Tom loved playing guitar and Anne said he enjoyed strumming to songs on the radio.

“He had started toward a career in chemical biology, and I think he realized he wasn’t going to be happy working in a lab all his life. He was very excited to become a journalist,” Anne Ross said. “You might think that was mostly my father’s influence, because my father taught journalism in the College of Agriculture in Wisconsin, but I think it might have been as much my mother’s influence because she interviewed people wherever she went.”

His talents for interviewing, writing and telling stories found their way into print while Ross was reporting in Wisconsin. His position there allowed him to cover a wide range of stories. He covered a grim murder trial, interviewed future Oakland Raiders Hall of Famer Dave Casper (who spent his senior year of high school in Chilton) and his coach, John Madden, at Lambeau Field, and visited 75 dairy farms over the course of two years.

“(Casper) was a huge hero, of course, for the town of Chilton, and he came to Green Bay to play the Packers with the Oakland Raiders, and Tom got to go work as a sideline reporter,” Anne Ross recalls. “Tom met Casper, he met a bunch of the Packers and went to the Oakland locker room to interview Casper. If he wasn’t already sure he wanted to be a journalist, as well as a sportswriter, I’m sure that cemented it.”

Arriving in Steamboat

While Ross’ career in journalism began in Wisconsin, it flourished when he returned to the mountains of Colorado a few years later. He relived his 1979 hiring interview with the Steamboat Pilot’s longtime managing editor Dee Richards in one of his columns.

The column displays Ross’s quick-witted humor, and his ability to poke fun at himself for showing up for the interview wearing a suit in a town where most people wore jeans. Despite his wardrobe choice, Richards gave Ross an opportunity and he went on to be one of the newspaper’s best-known and iconic journalists.

“Tom was all smiles and enthusiasm from the start. Fresh from covering ‘rolling herd averages’ and other farm news for a Wisconsin paper, to covering sports in Steamboat, which was a dream come true,” said Ross Dolan, who was staff photographer at the weekly Steamboat Pilot when Ross was hired. “He felt like he was the luckiest guy in the world to be living in Steamboat Springs — in truth, Steamboat Springs was lucky to have him.”

In those early years, Ross embraced the community and the skiing lifestyle, earning a reputation as a terrific bumps skier. In his obituary his family said he developed a group of tight-knit roommates and lifelong friends, who referred to him as the Mad City Bomber, a nod to his hometown of Madison and his fearlessness on the mountain.

Ross’ life took a turn in 1982 when he met Judy Gawronski through mutual friends. Judy Ross said the couple was acquainted, but had not had an opportunity to hang out.

“I looked at him across the room and said, ‘That’s a good-looking guy,'” Judy Ross remembers. “Then one night, we were all at the Clocktower Bar, a bunch of us including my friends, and his friends, and he asked me to dance. We did quite a bit of dancing that night.”

She said her future husband asked her to a movie after a night of dancing — and she agreed despite having already seen the film.

“It was one of the ‘Star Wars’ movies, and I had already seen it, but I wanted to go out with him so bad that I told him yes,” Judy Ross said. “We were watching the movie and enjoying it, and I knew there was a scary part coming, so I put my hands over my eyes before it happened. I think he figured out that I had already seen it.”

The two were married in the office of local lawyer Tony Lettunich on June 20, 1984. Tom’s roommate, photographer Ron Dahlquist — who witnessed Tom and Judy’s marriage along with Judy’s friend Beth Bagley — brought Champagne. The four rode to the top of the gondola and toasted the marriage.

Tom and Judy Ross welcomed Austin to the family in 1986. Austin moved to Portland for graduate school in 2017 earning a master’s degree in urban and regional planning at Portland State. Today, Austin Ross lives and works in Gresham, a Portland suburb.

A Pilot legacy

During his career, Ross saw lots of changes including the addition of the daily Steamboat Today in 1989, and the transition from film and darkrooms to digital cameras and Adobe Photoshop. His career spanned generations of reporting staffs with many writers, photographers and editors on those staffs considering him a trusted colleague and mentor.

“When I came to Steamboat as editor, Tom was my guiding light,” said Scott Stanford, who was managing editor of the Steamboat Pilot & Today from 2001-2007 before taking positions as advertising director, director of sales and marketing, and general manager. “He had been editor, so he graciously helped me understand the place, the people, the culture and really guided me through those first few years to ensure I was successful … He was a really good guy, understood how Steamboat worked and was an entertaining and very good columnist.”

During his career Ross covered everything from prep sporting events to World Cup ski races, along with the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. He wrote about City Council meetings, and covered county government as well as the ski resort. He was on hand for many of Steamboat’s major news events including plane crashes and fires — he covered the Good News Building explosion in February 1994.

Ross was also a talented photographer, creating images that told stories of the community he loved, and in striking fashion photographing beautiful landscapes, dramatic sporting events and special moments that reflected our community.

Ross followed the athletes of the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club from the ski jumping hill to the Alpine racecourses. His summers were full of special events and telling the stories of the many notable Steamboat sports icons including Moose Barrows, Billy Kidd, Doak Walker and more than a few rising Olympic stars.

He left the paper briefly in 1990 to pursue his own freelance opportunities, but returned to take a position as the lone reporter for the Steamboat Today in the early days of the free daily newspaper. In that role, he found the most important stories each day and had them ready to go to press each night.

When the Steamboat Pilot and the Steamboat Today newsrooms merged into a single editorial unit in the early 1990s Ross took on the role of managing editor and worked alongside Steamboat Today editor Keith Kramer in guiding the two staffs through the important transition in the ever-changing world of community journalism.

He would eventually leave that position, returning to what he loved — telling the stories of the people, events and history that made Steamboat Springs so special. During his career, Ross held roles as business and real estate reporter, feature writer and columnist, often tapping into his knowledge and understanding of our town to reflect the history and many otherwise untold stories of the Yampa Valley.

“He just was just an eloquent person that used his personality, his wit, his humor and his insight to the community itself in his writing,” said longtime friend Tom Whiddon, a Steamboat radio personality for 20-plus years. “If you talk to anyone that was ever interviewed by him for the Steamboat Pilot, his writing was just spot-on, he never embellished his stories and they were very entertaining — especially his historic articles. You just couldn’t wait to have another Tom Ross article in the paper about the way it was, or the interesting people in our community that he would interview.”

Forever Friendships

Whiddon was the “sports guy” for KBCR radio when Ross arrived in Steamboat Springs, and the two often traveled to cover the Steamboat Springs High School football team that went on to win a state title in 1979 and nearly repeated a year later.

The two men’s friendship went beyond the football fields and basketball courts of high school sports. It included their families, the outdoors and adventure. Whiddon, Ross and another friend, Jim Comeau, shared a passion for skiing, family and fly fishing — which was something Ross had learned from his grandfather.

“Jim Comeau used to joke about how when we finished a hike or hung out with Tom, we would be in the newspaper the next day,” Whiddon said.

It was true that Ross often recorded and wrote about his personal adventures. Ross was able to find that balance between work and his personal life, but like many other journalists never passed up the chance to find a story and a way to report it — whether it was by creating an image or describing a personal experience or adventure in a column or story.

“When we moved into their neighborhood in ’92, Judy saw our boys and initiated the friendship,” Comeau said. “I came to meet Tom, and he was an avid fisherman and skier — and those were two things that I also loved. The families became friendly, and we started doing dinners together, camping together, skiing together and fishing together. All the things we loved.”

Comeau recalls adventures in the Mount Zirkel and Flat Tops wilderness areas, as well as a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Elbow Lake in Wyoming’s Wind River Range, where the two men spent a week in search of the elusive golden trout.

“I don’t think there was anybody else around the lake,” Comeau said. “We didn’t catch any golden trout, but we caught a lot of cutthroats, and we endured a harrowing lightning storm … we had to hunker down, and it was a crashing all around us, and somehow, we fell asleep.”

Pioneering Spirit

Ross was the oldest of five children growing up in Madison along with sisters Anne, Laurie (Loescher), Katie and Sally. He played baseball, was a competitive swimmer and a runner. Ross’ love for skiing grew on the hills outside of Madison, and his sisters believe his pioneering spirit and love of the outdoors was the result of annual family trips from Wisconsin to Oregon, where both of his parents were raised.

“Each year my parents would load everyone into a station wagon and drive cross-country to visit the family ranch in Prineville or spend time on the Oregon coast,” Anne Ross said. “All of our ancestors went over the (Oregon) Trail, but (our great-great grandparents) kept a day-by-day diary. We had copies of it, and (Tom) had a copy of that, so he followed their route.”

Sally Ross, Tom’s sister, still recalls the three-day trips heading back to Oregon to visit the family ranch in Prineville, and the special times with her mom and dad, her sisters and her brother.

“It seemed normal at the time but amazes me when I think back on it,” Sally Ross said. “My parents would pile us all in our car, they would pile in a bunch of camping supplies and go. They were really frugal and were always trying to save money because they had five kids and one income, so we would camp on the way.”

After a long day on the road in the family station wagon, the Ross family set up camp, normally spending the night at KOA or some camping site close to their route.

“The next day we would do the same thing,” Sally Ross said. “Get up at 5, pile in the car and drive another 12 hours until we got there. Those are pretty good adventures.”

Ross would pursue similar adventures throughout his life, whether that was floating down a river or jumping in his car for a road trip. He loved the desert Southwest and always enjoyed showing off the photographs he took of scenic vistas or a unique roadside sign discovered along the drive.

Laurie Loescher said her brother was always a hands-on mentor, buying her a kite each year and helping her assemble it before heading out for flight. She said he also introduced his sisters to his love of music, sharing his adventures and always being there to offer support.

“He was an awesome big brother. He had a whole collection of Beatles 45s (records),” said Laurie Loescher, who was four years behind Ross in school. “When I was in sixth grade our teacher would let us bring 45s once a month to share with the class. He would let me borrow his Beatles 45s. He told me to pick one out so we could put it on and we’ll dance, and then you can borrow it.”

That sense of mentorship, which started with his sisters, followed Ross throughout his life. He was a mentor to those who knew him including his co-workers in his years as a journalist at the Steamboat Pilot & Today. Sally Ross believes that the things her brother learned growing up in Wisconsin and the outdoor adventures that he had along the way were part of the reason that Steamboat Springs was such a good landing spot for him.

After retiring from the newspaper in 2018, Tom and Judy continued to enjoy an active lifestyle, biking, paddling, hiking and camping across the West. They also became world travelers, visiting countries such as Italy, France, Spain and Belize. Tom enjoyed creating collage art and pursued this pastime with passion.

The family is planning a celebration of life on Aug. 17 at Bud Werner Library Hall. Judy Ross said a time has not been determined.

“I don’t think any of the people who skied with him are still here, so I don’t think he’s ever going to be remembered for being a fabulous skier. I think he will be remembered for the things that he wrote in the paper — people loved his columns,” Judy Ross said. “He always tried to be even-handed, and that was really important to him … He may not have agreed with someone’s political point of view, but he would always try to accurately represent the story.”

Tom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease in his later years, and though forced to adapt to cognitive decline, he continued to age with dignity and maintained a full life. He continued to pursue the pastimes that brought him joy — traveling, exercising, enjoying concerts and creating art.

“I think that’s why Steamboat Springs was a good fit for him,” Sally Ross said. “It clicked because he found people who were like him in that way. He just really loved trying new things. And he loved, as I’m sure you know from his reporting days, meeting new people. He could always get someone talking about themselves and find out interesting things about people. He was very gregarious and friendly, but he also had a mellow quality, so that people enjoyed talking with him, and he enjoyed learning about people. That was there from when he was younger, and I think it’s part of what made him such a good reporter.”