Jack Indreland

94, Los Angeles

Whether he was competing in a giant- slalom ski race as a 70- yearold, backpacking through the Sierra Nevada or driving from Los Angeles to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, in a Volkswagen bus, Jack B. Indreland was a born thrill- seeker.

“He would drive across deserts with maybe enough gas to get through … or not,” David Indreland said of his father, who was 94 when he died of complications of COVID- 19 on April 22.

Jack Indreland was born in Los Angeles on July 14, 1925. After graduating from Alhambra High School, he enlisted in the Army at age 17 and was deployed to Europe as part of an artillery battalion in 1944. That winter, he took part in the Battle of the Bulge, one of the last major battles of World War II.

Indreland returned to Southern California after the war and graduated from Occidental College with a degree in geology and co- founded a company that worked on water and geothermal projects in the U. S. and abroad.

He worked for some 30 years as a member of the ski patrol and rescue team at Mt. Baldy, competing in agegroup ski- race events well into his 70s. He also spent 20 years as a substitute teacher in the L. A. Unified School District.

David said his father was in and out of hospitals because of pneumonia for much of January, February and March and spent part of that time at the KeiAi nursing home in Los Angeles, where his family believes he may have contracted the coronavirus.

Indreland was sent to the Alhambra Medical Center with a temperature of 102 degrees on April 13.

Two days later, Vania Indreland received a call from hospital staff saying that her husband’s condition was deteriorating and that he probably wouldn’t survive.

“I was able to go into ICU with all the protective equipment and talk to him for one last time,” his wife said. “To me, he was one of a kind. We loved each other dearly.”

— Mike DiGiovanna