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Inyo-Mono Reads
tackles Jill Kinmont
Boothe’s story, “The Other Side of the Mountain”
By Catherine Billey
Mammoth Times Staff Writer
 submitted image Jill Kinmont Boothe, as she appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine in January 1955. In January of 1955, Jill Kinmont was the top alpine ski racing protege of Mammoth Mountain founder Dave McCoy and preparing to compete in the 1956 Olympic Games, following the example of Andrea Mead Lawrence in 1952.
But that dream was truncated when, just shy of her 19th birthday on Feb. 16, Kinmont was paralyzed from the neck down after a ski racing accident at Alta, Utah. It was the same week she appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine dated Jan. 31, 1955.
“I can’t feel anything,” she said, prone on the slope minutes after the accident, according to a book based on her early life, “The Other Side of the Mountain: The True Story of Jill Kinmont Boothe,” by E.G. Valens.
After her rehabilitation at a center in Santa Monica, Kinmont went on to receive a degree from UCLA, a credential from the University of Washington, marry John Boothe in 1976, and gain distinction as an educator and watercolorist.
“You just march on,” she said from her home in Bishop, where she grew up in the 1940s and 50s.
“The Other Side of the Mountain” has been reprinted and rebound by Bishop’s Spellbinder Books in a special edition in conjunction with the Inyo County Superintendent of Schools Office as part of this year’s Inyo-Mono Reads program.
“It’s teamwork, really,” said Lynne Almeida, owner of Spellbinder. “The financing was split between the two places. I worked with Jill to design the cover. She selected the art that’s on the cover; it’s one of her paintings.”
Kinmont Boothe will appear at the Mammoth Lakes Library on March 10 to talk about the book and answer questions. County Librarian Bill Michael said the idea of Inyo-Mono Reads is to get as many members of the community reading and talking about the same book as possible.
“The book’s been out of print for a lot of years, so getting it available in this area is a good accomplishment,” he said. “In Mono County, we’re making it available to book groups, making sure there are plenty of copies in each branch, and we have the movie available for showing.”
Almeida said the rights to the book are still owned by Harper Collins. “I probably hadn’t read it since junior high school, which is 25 years ago,” she said. “But it reads just as well and is just as inspiring a story as I remember it being all those years ago.”
Having Kinmont Boothe at the library will be a chance for people to meet her, hear some of her story, and ask questions. She said her hope for those who attend is to realize how many choices exist for everyone, no matter what their circumstances.
“Book clubs all the way up to Coleville will be carpooling to the library in order to meet and speak with Jill. And the Booky Joint will have copies of the book available for sale here at the library the day of her talk,” said Ana Wells, Branch Support Librarian. “It’s an inspiring story for everyone. It’s amazing the obstacles she overcame.”
Because of Kinmont’s innate competitiveness, she determined never to let the accident get her down. “I went into it with that kind of attitude, as well as not dragging others into it. I had that responsibility. I think maybe my hope is for readers to realize that we all have those options,” she said in a phone interview.
“The Other Side of the Mountain” is foremost an inspirational story of a spirited young woman forced to reinvent herself from a wheelchair when her skiing career is destroyed. It also contains compelling snapshots of early Eastern Sierra skiing days from the slopes of McGee Mountain to the rising star of Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, and of skiing luminaries such as Dave McCoy along with the very young Lawrence and Linda Meyers, Bud Werner, Dick Buek, and many others whom Kinmont Boothe has outlived.
Before her accident, Kinmont faced tough life questions when her best friend at Bishop High, Audra Jo, was struck down at 17 by polio and faced extensive rehabilitation at the same Santa Monica Center where Kinmont eventually wound up – “near Muscle Beach,” she added playfully.
Kinmont Boothe is still in touch with Audra Jo, who lives in Hawaii. In the book, she tells Kinmont she’d asked her mother why something like this should happen to her, “when I’d always been good.” The response was that maybe it happened because she was better able to handle it than other people. “She said she guessed a person just had to make the best out of it.”
There is a remarkable absence of self-pity in the portrayals of both women, as well as the sympathetic pragmatism adopted by those affected by Kinmont’s accident, including her devoted parents, June and Bill, and devoted friends, Dave and Roma McCoy.
But there is the reflective turning point when the young Kinmont does look squarely at her changed circumstances for the first time.
“What I got skiing was ... because of the push you gave me,” she says to McCoy in the book. “You gave me the wish and the goal and one of the big reasons for wanting to get there.” She then stares hard into his eyes, questioning him, and asks where she is to find another incentive for what comes next.
She says today that she can’t imagine having actually verbalized those things at the time. “It’s hard to remember exactly what transpired. I just remember I was supported. I had that feeling of support by so many people.”
Valens took some liberties in dramatizing events, she said, just as David Seltzer did in his approach to the script for a film adaption of her life in the 1970s and as newspaper reporters did in their explosive accounts of the accident itself (some inaccurate reports had Kinmont flying 100 feet into the air before hitting everything in sight).
“Jill had never undergone a true depression,” Valens says, and Seltzer “wondered how he could dramatize her reaction to her accident. He talked a lot about what liberties he might legitimately take in rewriting her life for the movies.”
After reading the book, however, dramatic augmentation seems unnecessary in the story of a phoenix rising from the ashes of broken dreams to reinvent her life as an educator, artist, and ongoing inspiration to others.
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