By Marty Basch

Call him Bob or Bobby. Either way he's a good-hearted guy.

"When I started teaching skiing in the 60s, they used to call me Bobby Big Name. But over the years that was shortened to Bobby V. In the ski world I go by Bobby V. In real life, I go by Bob," says Bob Vadeboncoeur, a.k.a. Bobby V.

Bobby V's been a Mount Washington Valley skier for more than fifty years, first coming as a teenaged weekend warrior from Massachusetts and eventually moving up to Jackson in 1988. The 70-year-old PSIA certified instructor spent more than forty-five years teaching at Wildcat from 1963 to 2010 and now has hooked up with King Pine for a new ski program focused on more mature intermediate skiers. "Ski with Bobby V" will debut this winter on Tuesday mornings, sessions designed to get skiers comfortable with modern gear and skiing techniques.

Come Together

"I hope to get a group of seniors together, really have a lot of fun and also raise their level of skiing," he said. "So many people our age have muscle memory of how we learned to ski. They try to do the same routine with new equipment. That is a battle. I want to try to get people skiing the modern technique as best as they can."

He notes technological changes in equipment has made recreational skiing so much easier if you learn to take advantage of the equipment.

"Most senior skiers after they learn the ways of their new equipment say to me, 'You just extended my ski life 20 years,' he commented.

A group dynamic also helps.

"Camaraderie within a ski group lowers the anxiety level of the students and creates a more productive learning atmosphere," he explained.

Lifetime Skier

Skiing's been an integral part of his life, growing up in Winthrop, Mass. and first coming to the valley at age 14. When he went to Springfield College to learn to be a physical education teacher, his father had sage advice: he told his son you love skiing but won't be able to afford it. If you want to continue you better get into the business.

So he became a United States Eastern Amateur Ski Association instructor and got his coveted white pin. He joined the Professional Ski Instructors Association and when the two merged, he became a Level III instructor.

His first job on snow was at the now defunct Snow Basin in West Cummington, Mass. at the Stan Brown ski school from 1959 to 1962 as teacher and patrol member. Then he taught from 1962 to 1963 at Otis Ridge in Otis, Mass., working for Dave and Hooker Judson, the brothers who developed the area in the southern end of the Berkshires. Dave was a 10th Mountain Division member.

Then it was on to Wildcat, where he had of late been leading Aristocat Tuesdays with a focus on skiers 50 and up.

International Schussing

Bob worked as a teacher and high school football coach before turning to Digital Equipment Corporation and positions that took him around the world leading him to skiing in places like St. Anton and Chamonix.

Just as Chamonix is in France, the name Vadeboncoeur is rooted there too. A former student was the one who told him what it meant: Go of good heart. The name traces back to the late 1600's during the artisan days of France when people had no surnames.

Bobby V says that every day is a learning experience on skis. Even for a veteran like him.

"Skiing is a way of life," he says with heart. "You never get too good."