Pazooie Power

Although it’s not a race, the Prouty really is a team-based event. Last year 4,140 out of 5,100 registrants signed on as members of 428 teams. Emblematic of those teams was a highly motivated group of 187 “Big Green Pazooies” gathered around Ann Smolowe ’81 (above with dog). She was dying of cancer, and she knew it. They all knew it.

They don’t come much greener than Smolowe. She skied for the College as an undergraduate, got married in Sanborn Hall, worked in the developement office and, just a month after last year’s Prouty, was eulogized before hundreds in the Bema.

“She lived in my dorm,” recalls Holly Dustin ’81, a Hanover financial advisor. “One day I saw her on her hands and knees, crawling up the stairs after a very strenuous run up Moosilauke. She was on the cross-country ski team, having never done the sport before. There were no cuts—you just had to survive practice. She did. She vomited every day until she got in shape. She came in last in every race, but she won ‘most improved skier’ that year.”

“She had a nonstop energy that fueled every activity we participated in,” says Pat Berry ’81, another close friend. “Ann had an uncanny ability to make you feel you were the center of her thoughts.”

“She was my best friend,” says Dustin. “Toward the end, when she asked for no more visitors, I thought to myself, ‘I’ll just stop by because we are such close friends.’ Then I got there. She had 100 people who thought that!”

In 2009, with her recently treated cancer in apparent remission, Smolowe rode in the Prouty with a small friends-and-family team. They called themselves Pazooie Power, named after a cartoon character created by her uncle to cheer her up when she had rheumatic fever as a young girl. That winter her cancer spread, and so did word of it among some College employees who had a small team called Big Green Fun, run by Smolowe’s development colleague Gregg Cerveny. He and Ann decided to combine their two teams, forming Big Green Pazooie. Word spread. The team grew. Funds poured in. By July 10, 2010, the day of the Prouty, the team had raised more than $90,000, topping all the others. Smolowe was there, surrounded by friends, thanking them all. Five weeks later, she was gone.