A Colorado centenarian who spread her enthusiasm for skiing to others, young and old, white and Black, has died. Valeria Tanaka was a founder of Colorado's first Black ski club, but daughter Joanne Tanaka Cuerden said her mother’s real focus was convincing anyone to get out on the slopes.
“My mom always had extra mittens and hats and gloves and ski clothes and equipment that other people could use,” Tanaka Cuerden said. “She wanted other people to enjoy the sport because she loved it.”
Tanaka was born on March 10, 1924, in Memphis, Tenn., and grew up in St. Louis, Mo. In her early 20s, she moved to the West Coast where she tried skiing for the first time and got hooked. Eventually, she married and made her way to Denver, where she worked for the Air Force’s finance office and skied in her free time. Tanaka was featured in a 2002 PBS story about Colorado skiing where she remembered taking part in slalom competitions.
“I just loved the speed. I loved the race. I would get to the top of the gate and I'd be so nervous. I just couldn't wait for the gate to open and the minute it would open, I'm down,” Tanaka recounted in the PBS story. “I didn't think I did anything. And I got the gold.”
Tanaka told PBS that when she began skiing, Black women like her were a rarity on the slopes.
“And when we saw a person of color on the hill, we’d go skiing over to them. There were so few of us,” she said.
When Tanaka’s children were young, she taught them how to ski, said Joanne Tanaka Cuerden.
“We all learned between the legs of mom,” her daughter said.
Tanaka, her husband George, and their children often skied with a big group of friends, many of them Black. In 1972, they formed Colorado's first Black ski club, which still exists today. They called it the "Sippers and Sliders,” a nod to their love of skiing and sometimes a glass of wine after. Roxanne Garlington is the club's current president and Garlington's mother was a founding member of the club.
“We usually would have two buses going up and we would ride up with our parents and come home and do it again,” Garlington said. “That was way back in the ‘70s.”
Today, to be more politically correct, the club is called "Slippers and Sliders." It offers children a free, three-year program to learn to ski, and Garlington said it's a way to draw kids who wouldn't normally be able to afford the sport.
Tanaka did eventually stop skiing due to knee and back issues, but her daughter said her mother relished life right up until she died at the end of October.
“We were playing bingo here at her facility at Springbrooke Senior Living Community in Denver on the Monday [before she died] and won four games,” said Tanaka Cuerden.
Valeria Tanaka died two days later. She was 100-and-a-half-years-old.
