Ground Breaking Adventure Film-Maker Warren Miller Dies at Age 93

I do not often post an off-topic blog, but the death of Warren Miller makes me want to take a moment to reflect. Warren Miller's most famous saying was “If you don't do it now, you'll be one year older when you do.” Warren Miller never waited to chase his dreams.  

After serving in the Navy during WWII, he bought an 8mm movie camera and moved to Sun Valley Idaho where he taught himself to make feature-length sports movies. For the next sixty years, he produced a full-length feature film every year.

He would travel the world, and then show his movie in ski-towns just before ski season. He would personally narrate the film with his wit and wisdom. I had the chance to meet him at a live performance narration of his movie at the Ford Theater in Detroit Michigan. Later, he would add his narration to the movie because the demand for it exceeded his ability to narrate each showing of his movie.  

For ski enthusiasts, ski season didn't begin until we would see his yearly movie. None of us had the skill to do the things we saw in the film, but like when a person sees a superhero movie, for a moment it made us think we could fly. That is what Warren Miller brought all of us. 

Warren Miller was a film-maker, an entrepreneur, a writer of more than 1000 articles, a ski instructor, a boating enthusiast, a world traveler, and a person who hobnobbed with the likes of Gary Cooper, Earnest Hemmingway, Robert Redford, and every ski legend of the 1950's – 1990's. 

He was a risk taker that anyone in business should respect. As he said in his autobiography, “ I never took business courses because I thought I would never own a business, and I never took an accounting course because I'd never have enough money to need to account for it."

He spent his entire life doing what he wanted to do while figuring out a way to turn it into a business. As Warren Miller would say: “Somewhere in the world it's snowing; some of the runs are easy and some are not." "When you make your first run (of the season) you've got your money's worth for the year because when you get the bottom of the hill you are a completely different person than when you left the top."

I only met Warren Miller once, but I will miss him. He left his mark on me and so many others.