Grandma was a water skier

Iconic photos of water ski girls enliven Lake Oswego’s present

By Cliff Newell

The Lake Oswego Review, May 28, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Still friends after more than 50 years, Marion Cruickshank, left (formerly Marion Blew), and Karen Brooks (formerly Karen Kisky) were the “stalwarts” of the Lake Oswego Water Ski Club. And stalwarts they remain.

CLIFF NEWELL / lake oswego review

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You never can tell when the water ski girls of Lake Oswego will turn up.

You might see their photos in a restaurant, a super market, a realty office, the Lake Oswego Chamber of Commerce or even hanging in the state capitol in Salem, because after 50 years they still embody fun, glamour, recreation and youth. They are timeless iconic images of Lake Oswego.

“I look in The Lake Oswego Review and say, ‘Look! Mom’s in the paper again,’ “ said Kasey Holwerda of Lake Oswego.

“Mom” is Karen Brooks, now best known as the wife of famed football coach Rich Brooks (University of Oregon, St. Louis Rams of the NFL, and currently the University of Kentucky) but best known in 1959 as a water skier extraordinaire.

Her photos with the Lake Oswego Water Ski Club decorate a couple walls in daughter Kasey’s Lake Oswego home, and when lifelong friend and water ski club teammate Marion Cruickshank (originally Marion Blew) comes by to visit, they look at the photos, laugh and shake their heads in disbelief that the photos are still around after all these years.

“Those old black and white photos really lasted,” Brooks said. “We’ve lasted 50 years, too!”

Then known as Karen Kisky, Brooks grew up around Oswego Lake, as did Cruickshank and about a dozen or so other girls – friends like Janet Wilson, Lita Schiel and Sandy Lango.

“So we water skied all the time,” Brooks said. “We had such fun and we were very close. We grew up together.”

They also became really good water skiers, and when Earl Spencer came up with the idea of a water ski performing club they eagerly accepted it. Ahead of the Lake Oswego water ski girls was fun, hard work, and, eventually, immortality.

They performed at shows like the water ski show on the Willamette River at George Rogers Park every August, the Albany Timber Carnival (“It was on a tiny lake in a continuous circle”), and most memorably at the Bi-Centennial Expo on the Columbia River.

“We practiced a lot when it was freezing and cold in the mornings at Robinson Point,” Cruickshank said.

But sometimes cold was the least of their worries.

“One time an eel wrapped itself around my ankle,” Cruickshank said. “Ewwwwww!”

Then there was the pollution in the water. All of the girls had to get tetanus shots as a preventive measure.

“You sure didn’t want to fall, that’s for sure,” Brooks said. “We always skied onto the landing.”

“I fell once or twice when my ropes got tangled up,” Cruickshank said.

Of course, accidents did happen.

“One time Earl Spencer had us put trees in our skis at the Albany Timber Carnival,” Brooks said.

But this effort at symbolism went badly awry.

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