GRACE COTTAGE FOUNDATION - THE GIFT OF GIVING

Estate of Victor Szymanski

Victor H. Szymanski of Rawsonville, VT and Terryville, CT became a close friend of Grace Cottage’s founder, Dr. Carlos Otis, during Vic’s decades-long involvement with Stratton and Grace Cottage Hospital. At the time of Dr. Otis’s death, in 1994, Vic wrote: “We will miss Dr. Otis and all he has done for us over the years, especially those of us who worked directly with Dr. Otis at Grace Cottage before the Otis Clinic at Stratton.”

Raised in Terryville, CT, Vic graduated from the University of Miami, FL and returned to his hometown to be a school teacher and assistant principal, until he “retired” in 1989 to become Ski Patrol Supervisor at Stratton. According to Vic, his first visit to Vermont was during the winter of 1961. “I had no winter clothing, so I just sat on the radiator all weekend until my friends dared me to try skiing,” he said, during a conversation in 2001. Despite this inauspicious start, Vic became an avid skier, joining the Stratton Mountain Ski Patrol and National Ski Patrol as a volunteer in 1964, becoming a paid member in 1978.

When Vic died of prostate cancer in 2003, at age 64, the estate, naming Grace Cottage Hospital and others, went to Probate Court and was finally settled this November.