By Jeff Cowen, Tahoe Regional Planning Agency

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, California (InEDC) Dec 16, 2022 — [October 1956] – The calm night exploded with orange light as Russian flares hissed overhead. A group of frightened Hungarian men, women, and children crept through the forest, scanning the dark woods for communist soldiers who might have found their path.

Among them were 36-year-old Martin Hollay, his wife, and his daughter. It was July 1956, and the band of defectors was stealing into the thick woods of Austria to escape communist rule and look for a new life in the West. That journey would eventually take Hollay to Lake Tahoe, where he would live until his passing in 2022 at the age of 101.

Hollay would have preferred to be on skis for the nighttime escape. Skis had always been his outlet. As a boy, he escaped the doldrums of winter by skiing with the Hungarian Boy Scouts. And for 12 years prior to his exodus from Hungary, skiing helped Hollay avoid membership in the Communist Party. His skill as a cross-country ski racer made his sportsmanship more important than his politics.

In 2002, at the age of 84, Hollay’s lifetime of dedication to skiing was honored when he was elected to be part of the human chain that passed the Olympic flame through South Lake Tahoe as it made its way to Park City Utah, for the winter games that year. At his memorial event earlier this year at his home near Heavenly Ski Resort’s California base, he was remembered as a fatherly fixture at Lake Tahoe and the South Shore ski resort where he worked for decades building ski runs, landscaping hillsides to prevent erosion, and patrolling the slopes during the winter. A grove of trees at Heavenly carries his name because he planted them.

 

Arriving in America

When he first arrived in the United States after escaping Hungary, Hollay got a job as a glove maker in Los Angeles.

But after only eight months in America, his passion for skiing lured him to the Sierra. He came to South Lake Tahoe for a weekend in 1958 to race in a local cross-country skiing competition at Heavenly. Hollay later recalled that standing on the southeast rim of the basin and seeing Lake Tahoe for the first time was one of the high points in his life.

“I saw this beautiful lake and said, ‘What the hell are you doing in LA?”

The Norwegian gold medalist, Stein Eriksen, was then the head of the ski school at Heavenly Ski Resort. It didn’t take much to convince Eriksen that Hollay’s experience and enthusiasm were just what the resort needed. Hollay moved to Tahoe for good.

But his wife didn’t share his love of the mountains and skiing. She stayed in Los Angeles with their daughter and the two divorced.

Tahoe was then on the verge of world renown with the impending 1960 Winter Olympics at Squaw Valley. Alienated from his homeland and then almost 40 years old, Hollay knew he wouldn’t be competing. But his vast experience as a competitive skier got him invited to prepare the cross-country ski courses for the Olympics on the lake’s West Shore.

“We cleared the brush and made the track nice and level,” Hollay recalled in a 2005 interview. “I worked seven days a week, even in the summer. And for the races, we had to pull mattress springs along the course to groom it.”

 

A new passion

Preparing the mountainous terrain for people to ski became a passion and a career almost as important to him as skiing itself.

After the ’60 Olympics, Martin married Priscilla Jarvis, and the couple had a daughter, Cezi. He continued to race in cross-country ski events, earning trophies and medals, and developed a career pioneering methods to preserve soil and terrain at Heavenly by nurturing vegetated ski runs.

“The mountain was my garden, my home,” Hollay would say.

 

Carrying the torch

Hollay retired in 1989 after 30 years at Heavenly. But his skiing life was far from over. “If I can’t ski, I die,” he told his friends.

Hollay originally applied to be one of the volunteers who would carry the Olympic torch in 2002, but his friends at Heavenly weren’t going to leave anything to chance. Hollay’s application was approved before the 84-year-old skier was aware of what was happening. Not only had he been chosen, but he would be the focal point of the town’s torch celebration.

The night of the event, instead of running with the torch, Hollay got to ski the torch across the base of Heavenly’s mountain. Stadium lights laid their yellow aura across the mountain, and fireworks popped overhead as he skied past stands full of cheering spectators. Everyone in the crowd seemed to know his name.

“Way to go, Martin!” the crowd shouted. “Go, Martin. Go. Go. We love you Martin!”

A large set of Olympic rings hanging from the aerial tram swung down behind him as he made his procession. By the time he reached the next torch bearer, much of the crowd had come out of the stands to form a corridor of congratulating hands as he skied through. It was a big day for Martin Hollay. His lifetime of dedication to skiing, sportsmanship, and the mountain above was thanked and celebrated in the spirit of the greatest games.

But that wasn’t the end of Hollay’s Olympic experience. Once the love started flowing, it wasn’t easily turned off. A large group of Hollay’s friends chipped in $200 to buy the torch that he carried that night and surprised him with it. The 15-foot long set of Olympic rings, complete with colored lights, that had decorated Heavenly’s tram car the night of the event, were later strung between two trees in his backyard.

The 2002 Olympics also allowed him to show his gratitude to his homeland. Hollay hand-stitched 20 pairs of sheepskin gloves, some of the finest he ever made, and traveled to Utah to give them to the Hungarian ski team.

Crowds gathered again for Hollay in 2022 after his passing. Hundreds collected in the cul-de-sac in front of his home, comparing prized sheepskin gloves made by Hollay, sharing stories over a sound system, and leaving memorabilia for a future display at Heavenly to further honor the skier.

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• Jeff Cowen is the public information officer for TRPA.