My fourth year in college, I attended a charity dinner benefiting the UVa Cancer Center. The evening's purpose was to raise both money and awareness for cancer within the Charlottesville community. Debbie Ryan, head coach of the UVa women's basketball team, gave the keynote speech, and her words were nothing short of inspirational. I laughed and cried in turn, as she told the story of her battle with pancreatic cancer. She chronicled her struggle with sketches illustrating the kindness and love she had experienced along the way. As she did, one theme stood out again and again. Her message, as I heard it, was simply the importance of hope. If you can make someone in need believe that the impossible is possible, then you have done something truly great.

That same evening I reflected back over my four years at college, thinking about what coach Ryan had said, and how it related to my life. As I was driving home from dinner, it struck me that the work I'd been most proud of was my work at Massanutten, giving people the hope coach Ryan spoke of.

As an instructor, my role was to teach participants to ski - but that was not my primary objective. In addition to the mechanics of skiing, I taught participants that they could do something they might never have thought possible. It is hard to imagine ever skiing again after a paralyzing gunshot wound, but I saw it happen. And more importantly, implicit in the act of skiing lies the hope that they can do other impossible things as well. I worked with one little guy named Creed who had Cerebral Palsy. He couldn't walk, but when he skied as well as anyone on the mountain, I knew he began to think that, in his school, in his therapy and in the whole of his life, anything is possible. Moreover, the joy he got from "putting the turbo on!" made every day after a little easier.

For me, it isn't hard to explain why working at the Adaptive Ski School has been so important. The reason is simple. When I work with someone, teaching and encouraging that person, I know I am making a huge difference in his or her life. The difference isn't necessarily tangible, and I can't quantify it, but I know it exists. The hope I have given them is manifest in the excitement in their eyes, and the stories they share with me the next time I see them. And that is more proof than I could ever ask for.

Anyone who has ever been involved with the Adaptive Ski School can tell you how special it is. It's not hard to imagine that a program teaching disabled kids and adults to ski - something they might never have thought possible - is worthwhile. But adaptive ski has a magic quality that goes way beyond the program's physical accomplishments. I like to think that the hope and the joy so many people find at Massanutten are the result of that magic. But the magic itself - the heart and sole of the program - comes from the people who make it happen.

My favorite memories of Adaptive Ski aren't of the things we did. They are of the people who did them. I could tell you about everything we ever did, every run I ever took, but it wouldn't make any difference if I left out the people who were involved. You couldn't really understand what it meant for a little autistic boy to ski down on his own, unless I told you that his name was Aaron, and that the only thing he seemed to like more than skiing was talking on our two-way radios. When Aaron learned to ski on his own, it meant that he didn't have to ski with an instructor; on vacation he could ski down with his Dad.

If you measure success by enthusiasm, enjoyment and energy, then the Adaptive Ski School is huge. The same is true if you take reputation as your measure. For over two decades, disabled participants have come to Massanutten to work with volunteer instructors - many from Madison House, at the University of Virginia - at the Adaptive Ski School. It's enduring success stems directly from these wonderful people. It is a partnership I am proud to have been a part of, and one I hope will continue to thrive for many, many years.