An award-winning journalist, a beloved French actor, a '60s pop star-turned-Congressman
… deadly skiing accidents have cut short the lives of some of the best and brightest
among us.
By 1988, Sonny Bono had officially and successfully reinvented himself.
After spending the 1960s and '70s on-stage with then-wife Cher, he found himself in the
restaurant business and then in politics.
First a mayor then a member of the House of Representatives, he kicked off his second
term in 1996, and died in 1998.
Bono was on a skiing holiday in Lake Tahoe with his fourth wife, Mary Whitaker, when
the tragic accident occurred.
Whitaker spoke to the Desert Sun to recount the day that her life changed forever:
"The kids were so cold, they were crying.
I said, 'OK.
[Sonny] had to have skied to the very bottom.
That's what happened.
He'll be there waiting for us.'"
Bono hadn't been wearing a helmet, but according to those who had recovered his body, he had
collided with a tree with such force that even a helmet likely wouldn't have allowed
him to walk away.
Bono was 62 years old at the time of his death, and during an interview after his election
to Congress, he had addressed how he would like to be remembered, saying,
"As someone who is his own man, a maverick, and really a person of substance like other people.
Not necessarily the brilliant person, but recognize that there is substance there, you know?"
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrote of the accident that claimed his brother's
life in 1998,
"Why hadn't I, as his older brother, found some way to protect him?
We lived in the same province.
I should have visited him more, called him more, watched over him more, done something
to keep him from danger."
Michel Trudeau — brother to one future Canadian PM and the son of a former PM — had been
on a three-day skiing trip on the Kokanee Glacier in British Columbia when he and his
friends were caught in an avalanche.
"Wet snow, when it's moving, has a tremendous amount of energy."
According to the CBC, two of his friends were pushed off the ski trail, while he and another
friend were carried into the freezing Kokanee Lake.
Trudeau, weighted down by the gear he carried, was drowned.
The accident happened on November 13, and a memorial was held a week later.
It wasn't until 10 months later that the weather cooperated enough to allow the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police to mount an effort to recover his body from the lake, but his remains were
never found.
The Trudeau family had called off the search, and Justin would later recall his brother's
wishes, shared as they watched a documentary on burial rites:
"When it's my turn, just leave me down at the bottom of the mountain where I lie."
"If Michel had decided to stay home and play chess and Nintendo, he would have been fine.
But he chose to go out there."
When the New York Times reported on the New Year's Eve 1997 death of 39-year-old Michael
Kennedy, they said that he hadn't just been skiing, he had been doing something that the
family had been for generations: playing football, on skis.
A family friend who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that they'd seen a match
and was shocked at how dangerous it was.
The friend recalled,
"It is Kennedyesque.
There is a lot of laughing, vigor, excitement, and a big rush."
It was on one of the trips downhill that Michael Kennedy collided with a tree.
Efforts to stabilize him from the severe head injury he sustained were futile, and he was
pronounced dead about an hour and a half after the collision.
It made him the second of the late Robert F. Kennedy's 11 children to die an early death,
the Times reports, and eye-witness accounts vary.
Some say that he had been distracted by the ball, while others said that he had hit a
patch of snow that had been turned to ice.
His death came just months after he had made headlines with a massive, Kennedy-sized scandal:
He had been having an affair with the family's teenage babysitter, who had been watching
the three children he shared with his wife, Victoria.
According to the Los Angeles Times, there were rumors at the time of his death that
they had reconciled.
Cannes Film Festival director Thierry Fremaux described Gaspard Ulliel as one of the, quote,
"new generation of actors who were making tomorrow's French cinema."
Fremaux called him "equally brilliant and talented," according to Variety, as he mourned
the loss of one of the nation's up-and-coming stars.
"He's very much loved here in France by the public, but also by his peers in the world
of film."
Ulliel was already wildly popular in France after several high-profile roles led to a
slew of awards, and he had just made his Marvel debut in "Moon Knight" when he was killed
in a tragic skiing accident.
According to the Guardian, his death came on January 19, 2022, a little more than two
months away from the premiere of the show.
A local French news agency first reported that his death had come after an accident
at a resort in the Alps, where he had been involved in a collision with another skier.
Details were immediately scarce, as authorities said that there was an investigation already
in process.
Reports also revealed that the other skier had not been injured.
In 2009, the Guardian reported on a freak accident that had taken the life of Tony award-winning
actress Natasha Richardson, and it had happened when she and her two children were at a Montreal
ski resort.
They were taking skiing lessons in the resort's beginner area when she lost her balance and
fell down the hill.
Instructors said she didn't hit anything, and when she came to a stop, she was laughing
at herself for taking the seemingly harmless fall.
Her mood continued, as a resort spokesperson revealed that she was "laughing and joking"
as she went back to her hotel under her own power.
Attendants stayed with her to make sure there were no lasting effects from the fall, and
after about an hour had passed, she started to suffer from a severe headache.
After an initial team of paramedics was reportedly turned away, her condition worsened and she
was rushed to a nearby hospital.
By the time husband Liam Neeson arrived at the hospital, she had already been declared
brain-dead.
The family had her flown back to her New York City home, where she was removed from life
support.
It was later revealed that the bump she had taken had caused a condition called epidural
hematoma, which is the buildup of blood in the brain.
During John McWethy's time as a journalist, he had traveled to more than 50 countries,
reported from conflicts in areas like Kosovo and Afghanistan, and was the face of ABC News
as he reported live from the Pentagon during the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"There are many, many floors of destruction, deep into the heart of the Pentagon."
After his retirement, the New York Times says that he and his wife moved to Boulder, Colorado,
and it was there that he died in a tragic skiing accident on February 6, 2008.
According to what ABC News President David Westin told CNN, McWethy had specifically
chosen Boulder as the place to spend his retirement because of the skiing, noting,
"He was doing something that he truly loved, but he deserved many more years doing it than
what he was given."
A witness who saw the accident unfold later said that he had lost control, missed a turn
on one of the site's intermediate trails, and collided with a tree.
Reports stressed that while McWethy had been wearing a helmet, the ultimate cause of his
death was blunt-force injuries sustained when he hit the tree chest-first.
Alfonso, Duke of Anjou and Cadiz, loved to ski.
Over the course of his lifetime, he had been president of the Spanish Skiing Federation,
the Spanish Olympic Committee, and was a part of the Council of the Federation Internationale
du Ski.
After decades in the sport, he was killed in a freak accident in 1989.
According to the New York Times, the duke — a cousin of Spain's King Juan Carlos — was
at Colorado's Beaver Creek Resort for the World Alpine Skiing Championships.
He was killed when he ran into a cable that was raising a banner over the finish line
of one of the men's downhill courses, and although he was rushed to a nearby hospital,
he was pronounced dead on arrival.
More details emerged later, when the Associated Press reported that the course had, in fact,
been closed when the duke decided to go down it.
Warnings to stop were acknowledged and ignored by the skiers, witnesses testified, with defending
world champion Peter Mueller explaining that even if the duke had gotten authorization
to be on the course, quote, "I think that's a big mistake.
If the downhill course is closed, it should be closed for all people."
Doak Walker was Rookie of the Year when he joined the Detroit Lions in 1950, and in addition
to his slew of awards, this says it all: According to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, in his six
years in pro football, he was selected for the Pro Bowl five times.
He retired from football early, passing his name on to the Doak Walker Award, given to
every year's best college running back.
He won the Heisman Trophy in 1948, was All-NFL, and could play pretty much any position.
After leaving football, he settled down to a regular job as a public relations consultant,
according to the Los Angeles Times, once saying that he never regretted leaving the game behind:
"I'm not sorry, because I've got all my teeth, both my knees, and most of my faculties."
And that makes his death at the age of 71 particularly tragic.
According to the Times, he was involved in a skiing accident on January 30, 1998.
Falling after hitting a patch of questionable terrain, he was partially paralyzed.
Regaining some of his ability to talk after months of rehab, he succumbed to complications
of the paralysis and passed away in September of the same year.
Sam Beall's father — Samuel E. Beall III — was the founder of the restaurant chain Ruby Tuesday.
The younger Beall was a restaurateur in his own right: According to the New York Times,
he owned and ran Blackberry Farm, a multi-million-dollar Tennessee lodge considered one of the best
resorts and luxury vacation destinations in the country.
He did, that is, until he was killed in a tragic skiing accident that happened on February
25, 2016.
No one was there to see what happened, but after the recovery of his body from the slopes
of Colorado's Beaver Creek ski resort, it was determined that it had been a freak accident
— nothing more, nothing less.
Sam had apparently collided with one of the many wooden posts that marked the edge of
the ski run, and a lawyer hired by the family came to the same conclusion as the coroner.
It was determined that chest injuries sustained in the collision were the cause of death,
and he was buried on the grounds of his 4,200-acre property.
Mieczyslaw Karlowicz might not be a household name, but he's considered one of the best
symphonists in Polish music, and his works are considered masterpieces.
Would he have become an even more globally renowned musician had his life not been cut
short?
Born in 1876, Karlowicz began composing around the turn of the century.
Culture lauds his compositions, saying that he wasn't just a composer, but a mountaineer
as well — a hobby that inspired his musical creations.
By 1906, he had settled in the Tatra mountains and published accounts of his adventures in
the Polish wilderness, and ultimately died there.
Karlowicz wasn't just an experienced outdoorsman — he had become a pioneer in the field of
mountaineering.
It wasn't odd, then, that he was skiing alone on February 8, 1909, when he was caught in
an avalanche and killed.
In February of 2012, the Dutch royal family was dealt a heartbreaking blow when Prince
Johan Friso was caught in an avalanche while on a skiing trip in Austria.
According to the BBC, he and three companions had been on the slopes when the avalanche
happened, and although emergency rescue workers were able to get to him relatively quickly,
the 15 minutes he spent buried in the snow had catastrophic effects.
The lack of oxygen resulted in massive brain damage, and the prince also suffered a 50-minute-long
heart attack.
In spite of hope that the damage done might actually be slowed by the hypothermia he also
suffered, hope quickly dimmed.
The prince spent months in a coma, and the BBC reported that there was little information
being released about his condition.
The months continued to stretch on and on, and in July of 2013, he was released to his
family and transferred to the royal residence at The Hague, where he was reportedly in a
"state of minimal consciousness."
In spite of the specialized care and medical attention, in August of 2013 it was announced
that the prince had died.
The official cause was "complications related to the hypoxic brain injury," and he left
behind his wife and their two daughters.