Vonn plows on thanks to Grandpa Don
He passed on his feistiness, drive
PYEONGCHANG, South Korea – It was Feb. 4, the day of Lindsey Vonn’s last race before the 2018 Winter Olympics, when the American ski racing star got a concerned phone call.
It was Karin Kildow, one of Vonn’s two sisters, who had seen another American skier wipe out the previous day on the same downhill course in Germany and suffer an injury that ended the woman’s Olympic dreams.
“I told Lindsey, ‘Be careful out there,’ ” Karin Kildow recalled. “And she said, ‘Oh, don’t worry, I have Grandpa. He’ll keep me safe.’ ”
Lindsey Vonn’s beloved Grandpa, Don Kildow, had been dead for more than three months. He died of natural causes Nov. 1 at 88.
“I think in her mind,” Karin Kildow said, “it’s like he’s with her now and helping her, and keeping her safe, like he’s there with her all the time.”
Indeed, on Saturday Vonn is scheduled to make her debut at the Pyeongchang Games, and she suggests she will not feel alone on the slopes during the super-G competition.
“He’s been such a big part of my life, and I really had hoped he’d be alive to see me,” Vonn said through tears at a news conference Feb. 9. “But I know he’s watching and I know that’s he’s going to help me.”
Grandpa Don losing his driving privileges serves as a good place to start in exploring who he was and his connection with Vonn, the oldest of Kildow’s 14 grandchildren.
Deb Hummel, one of Don Kildow’s four children, said the family took away his car keys in 2017 when his vision went bad.
“And he rebelled against the kids all last summer,” she said.
Against family orders, Grandpa Don drove his golf cart into town, stopping by the bank or a restaurant before word got back to Hummel or another family member.
He did it with a streak of feistiness and determination that some see in Vonn, 33, who estimated she has spent three full years recuperating from injuries suffered during her career.
Vonn’s father, Alan Kildow, traces similarities between his eldest daughter and Grandpa Don to Grandpa Don’s truncated boyhood.
By the time Don Kildow was 15, his father was gone, dead of a heart attack at 42. Don Kildow promptly got a full-time job working the night shift for General Motors to help feed his six siblings and mother, who had polio, according to Vonn’s father.
But Kildow also stayed enrolled at Milton Union High School and excelled in sports. According to his obituary in the Milton Courier, he was an All-State football player, a Golden Gloves boxer and an accomplished skier. He also enjoyed the outdoors. “We kind of called him the commandant of the deer camp,” said Milton’s Todd Hesgard, who said he and his father used to hunt with Grandpa Don, “because he had an old military tent that he stayed in. It reminded me of the old TV show M*A*S*H.”
Resilience emerged as a core trait for Grandpa Don.
“The ability to get into a boxing ring and you get knocked out and go back at it,” Alan Kildow said.
“And Lindsey has certainly demonstrated that.”
As an adult, Grandpa Don started a ski club and helped groom Alan Kildow into an elite skier.
Although Alan Kildow said he suffered a career-ending injury at 18, he and Grandpa Don together passed to Vonn their love for skiing.
Grandpa Don and his wife, Shirley, kept scrapbooks documenting Vonn’s exploits on the mountains and traveled from Wisconsin to Europe to watch her compete.
“He’d come to her important races, and I think she appreciated that,” Alan Kildow said.
As the Olympics approached, Vonn was trying to figure out how to get her grandfather to South Korea, which would have been a special trip. During the Korean War, according to Grandpa Don’s obituary, he served in the Army Corps of Engineers in Korea building roads and military facilities — sometimes behind enemy lines.
He had his own construction company back home, building more than 100 homes and later expanding into a successful concrete and excavating business, according to the obit.
When it got too cold to build, Grandpa Don focused on his snowplow business. “The Power Wagon” is how some fondly remember the dump truck Grandpa Don converted into Milton’s favorite snowplow.
“That was the plow in the community that could really plow anything out of the way,” said Dave Warren, owner of the Ace Hardware in Milton. “For many years he was the guy that plowed our hardware store’s parking lot. In fact, when he gave up plowing, I had to buy one myself because I could never find anyone who could do it as good as he could.”
Just months before his death, in fact, Grandpa Don was still driving his golf cart against family orders to the Ace Hardware store and ordering employees to round up things he needed.
“He had a very gruff personality, but he was a big teddy bear,” Warren said. “He was a good guy. We all liked him.” Vonn, however, simply adored him. “I know he’s going to be looking out for me,” she said. “I think that actually gives me a lot of piece of mind.”