WWII Navy Veteran Ted Crittenden Turns 99, Celebrated at Deer Valley East Village

Ted Crittenden laced up his veteran's cap and stepped into a 10-passenger gondola at Deer Valley East Village last Tuesday, marking 99 years with his first lift ride above a valley he has called home for most of a century.

Crittenden was born March 24, 1927, in his grandmother's Hoytsville home, delivered there because no hospital stood nearby in the Kamas Valley. He joined the U.S. Navy as a teenager near the end of World War II, and in the eight decades since he has lived what amounts to several distinct lives: sailor, farmer, milkman, custodian of the Summit County courthouse and lifelong member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The gondola ride was arranged through his son Kendall Crittenden, a Wasatch County Councilor who works regularly with the Military Installation Development Authority, the state agency that helped develop Deer Valley East Village and operates a Morale, Welfare and Recreation hotel on the site with benefits accessible to military service members and veterans. The 142-cabin East Village Express gondola, which opened last autumn, rises 2,570 feet over nearly three miles at 1,400 feet per minute. Each of its 40 support towers was flown in by Chinook helicopter.

Ted was openly awed. "It's an absolute miracle of engineering," he said. "To get all those poles and all those cables? I can't believe it."

The sense of wonder is earned. During his Navy service, Crittenden traveled to Australia, the Philippines, Japan and China on a postwar goodwill tour before separating from the service in 1948. Shipboard life offered considerably less comfort than the gondola. Crittenden and his crewmates regularly found weevils in their bread. "We used to hold it up at the light and pick them out," he recalled, "but pretty soon, we didn't give a crap. Protein. A little cream or butter or something on them, and they went down just fine."

Joining him for the ride were son Kendall, daughter Cindy Odekirk, daughter-in-law Linda Crittenden, and two great-grandchildren, Zia, 10, and Akryn, 12. Crittenden's full family tree includes five children, seven stepchildren, 36 grandchildren, 95 great-grandchildren and five great-great-grandchildren. He summarized it in characteristic fashion: "I could go to a stake president and say, 'You need a new church? I can furnish it for you.'"

Kendall attributed his father's vitality to a lifelong refusal to go idle. "He's always been busy; he's been involved in a lot of things," Kendall said. "I think that's why he's doing as well as he is at 99: because he's always physically and mentally been challenged and doing things."

Cindy Odekirk, thinking of the great-grandchildren along for the ride, put it more plainly: "I hope they see how strong he's been, and what an example."

Crittenden was recognized as the oldest living military veteran in the Kamas Valley last May, when he attended the dedication of a new veterans memorial next to Kamas City Hall, a ceremony that drew more than 100 veterans and community members. He turns 100 next March.