John Caldwell, the Vermonter who literally wrote the book on cross-country skiing, has died at age 97.

“It is with heavy hearts that we share the news,” the New England Nordic Ski Association posted Friday on its Facebook page.

Caldwell’s trailblazing 1964 how-to guide, simply titled “The Cross-Country Ski Book,” has been deemed by the Boston Globe as “the bible of the sport.”

In a 2018 VtDigger interview, Caldwell recalled befriending the late Brattleboro, Vt., publishers Stephen and Janet Greene after he competed in the 1952 Winter Olympics.

“They said, ‘Are there any books on cross-country?’ I said no.”

Soon there was one, which Caldwell updated until its eighth and final edition in 1987.

“It sold over 500,000 copies,” he told this reporter. “It promoted the sport and kept me out of the poorhouse.”

Born in Detroit, Mich., in 1928, Caldwell moved to Putney, Vt., with his family in 1941. When his high school needed a cross-country racer for the 1946 state championships, he strapped on his sister’s wooden alpine skis. Continuing on to Dartmouth College, he borrowed his coach’s slats before the school bought him a pair.

Caldwell represented the nation in the 1952 Olympics in Oslo, Norway.

“That was back in the dark ages,” he recalled in 2018. “When I was racing, nobody knew much about cross-country, and people hardly knew we were there.”

Older Vermonters remember the 1952 games as the ones where Rutlander Andrea Mead Lawrence became the first U.S. woman to win two skiing gold medals. But while the late female legend experienced the thrill of victory, Caldwell felt the agony of defeat.

“I was on the combined team — cross-country and ski jumping — but I was poorly prepared.”

Knowing little about proper training, Caldwell toured too many Norwegian eateries, he confessed. The onetime 145-pound athlete weighed 170 by the time he dressed for his event. But that wasn’t why he needed help buttoning his shirt: His shoulders ached from falling so much in practice.

“That really inspired me to help better prepare athletes,” he recalled, “so they wouldn’t be so flummoxed, overwhelmed and thoroughly thrashed.”

Caldwell started by coaching at his alma mater, the Putney School, where he worked with such up-and-coming skiers as Bill Koch, the first U.S. Nordic athlete to win an Olympic medal (silver in 1976). That, in turn, led him to help the American team in a succession of Winter Games.

Caldwell also nurtured cross-country by co-founding the New England Nordic Ski Association and by forging a family with his wife, the late Hester “Hep” Goodenough Caldwell. Their four children would carry on the tradition: Tim competed in the Olympics in 1972, 1976, 1980 and 1984, Peter raced undefeated in college, Jennifer made the U.S. ski team and Sverre coached Nordic athletes during his 40-year tenure at Stratton Mountain School.

The man considered the father of U.S. Nordic also was a grandfather of 10, including Olympians Patrick Caldwell and Sophie Caldwell, who he wasn’t afraid to push.

“I joke with them, ‘Are you suffering?’” he recalled when Patrick and Sophie competed in 2018. “I spell and say it ‘s-u-f-f-a-h.’ It sounds masochistic, but that’s the way it is. When you do it you hurt, but you feel great afterward — like when you stop hitting your head against the wall. All of us must be nuts, but it’s a lifestyle, a culture.”

And something that, at the end of the interview, made him smile.

This story was republished with permission from VtDigger, which offers its reporting at no cost to local news organizations through its Community News Sharing Project. To learn more, visit vtdigger.org/community-news-sharing-project.