That was somewhere around 1975.
Lt. Gen. Shutler is now just Phil, 85, a ski instructor at Liberty Mountain near Gettysburg. He gets up at 5 a.m. two days a week at his home in Northern Virginia, drives, and is on the slopes by 8.
I have long wanted to write about Rob's dad, and spent a day with him last week.
First thing, I rode up on the ski lift with Phil and his wife of 63 years, Margaret. She is 86 and still skis.
Phil went off to Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., for a year, and double dated with two girls from Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts. He was much more attracted to the other girl, Margaret, than to his date. But he made such a weak impression that a year later - when he was a midshipman at the Naval Academy - he invited Margaret for a visit and she didn't remember him.
But she went anyway.
"It was wartime and men were scarce," Margaret said.
She grew up in Minnesota, loves the snow, but has always been more at home on skates than skis. I heard their love story on the way up the mountain, and saw it in action on the way down.
Phil was still a strong skier, but she was much more tortoise-like, conservative, making wide turns, and he followed her patiently, and bent over mid-mountain to tighten her boots for her.
"You need a rest, Muggs?"
"No, I'm fine."
Phil flew com in Korea and taught flight instruction in Texas in 1956. But at Liberty Mountain, he quickly realized that naval aviators as a rule came more highly motivated than many beginners in ski school. A typical refrain: "My boyfriend told me I had to come take a lesson."
But he loves teaching, not only for the joy of being on skis, but for the mental challenge. And in his own subtle way he's teaching much more than just skiing.
