County official holds on to Olympic record

Andrea Mead Lawrence, Mono County, Calif. supervisor, goes for the gold in 1952.

As the Olympic flame was extinguished last week in Nagano, Japan, one TV viewer in Mono County, Calif. recalled her own warm memories of participating in the Winter Games 46 years ago.

It was in Oslo, Norway in 1952 when Andrea Mead Lawrence, now a Mono County, Calif. supervisor, won a record two Olympic gold medals. (America's best woman skier this year, the irrepressible Picabo Street from Sun Valley, Idaho, took the gold medal in the giant slalom Alpine event at the Nagano Olympic games.)

Photo at right, Lawrence today.

But Street didn't capture the record for most gold medals by an American woman skier.

That record still belongs to Lawrence who, for the last 16 years, has been a county supervisor in Mono County, located high in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. She won her medals at the age of 19.

Going into the Oslo games, Lawrence was one of the world's top skiers, having gone to the previous Winter Games in St. Moritz at the age of 15. She didn't disappoint. In fact, in the first giant slalom event, she devastated the field. Run on a course The New York Times described as "icy as a bobsled run," she won by more than two seconds That's an eternity in a sport where victory margins are measured in hundredths of seconds. Quoted afterwards, Andrea said, "I've always said that you can't win unless you're having fun."

She must have had a lot of fun in Oslo. Even two falls in the downhill race that cost her another gold medal did not bother her. And despite catching a gate, she staged a remarkable comeback and finished fourth in the first run of the slalom. At the start of the second and final run, Lawrence described feeling an inner calm that led to a breathtaking run down the mountain.

"I had finally skied the perfect line," she said. She earned a second gold medal, a place in Olympic history and a cable telegram from President Harry S. Truman calling her victories "a great honor for the United States."

Now 46 years later, Lawrence still has the trim, rugged good looks of a person who has spent her life outdoors. Her voice bubbles with enthusiasm as she describes a "crystalline beautiful day" and snow-shrouded mountains out the window of her Mammoth Lakes home.

Watching the Nagano Winter Games brought back warm memories of her own wildly successful Olympics experience. "You know," she said, "winning gold medals was a wonderful experience. But it was just a starting point. It helped lay the groundwork for the rest of my life."

Unlike modern-day Olympics, where winning gold medals is measured by commercial endorsements, Lawrence's experience helped solidify values she learned growing up in the mountains of rural Vermont. She has always felt "closely tied to the land and the environment." A lifetime spent on skis, bonded to the bumps, contours and slopes of mountains, will do that.

That life also includes the last 16 years as a county supervisor representing her district on the Mono County Board of Supervisors. "That has been an equally challenging experience," she said. Lawrence shows the same competitive Olympic spirit in her job as county supervisor.

"I come from that old Yankee heritage of participatory government. Town hall meetings. Barn raisings. We've got to stand up and be counted in our own community, out of our sense of citizenship."

When she says "at a community-based level, we can make a difference," you can sense she feels her last 16 years have been another thrilling ride down the mountain.

And she continually searches for new ways to turn citizenship into action. In 1993, Andrea helped create an organization she considers essential for community-building even beyond the borders of Mono County.

Called the Sierra Nevada Alliance, the organization now represents more than 43 grass-roots community groups bound together to protect the environmental and economic health of communities in the entire region. "These are the issues that go to my heart and soul," Lawrence said.

There are no Olympics for county officials. But if there were, Andrea Mead Lawrence would be on top of the platform, and they would be playing her song.