Franconia Notch, NH – Fifty years after winning a pair of Olympic silver medals at the 1960 Winter Games at Squaw Valley, California, Penny Pitou of Gilford, N.H., will be awarded the New England Ski Museum’s Spirit of Skiing award at the group’s 33rd Annual Meeting and Dinner to be held Nov. 13 at Gunstock Mountain Resort in Gilford.nPitou won silver medals in both downhill and giant slalom at Squaw Valley. Her silver in downhill was the first American medal in that most exalted of alpine events. Since retiring from ski competition, she has remained active as a ski instructor and leader in ski-based tourism, having led ski trips to Europe for many decades.

The event begins at 5:00 p.m. and will feature a reception, a brief business meeting followed by a buffet dinner at the Gunstock main base lodge. Pitou will make remarks after dinner, and the event is expected to conclude by 9:00 p.m.

This will be the fifth year that the ski museum has presented the Sprit of Skiing award. Previous honorees include: Tom Corcoran, founder of Waterville Valley resort; Stein Eriksen, the iconic Norwegian champion who ran the Sugarbush ski school for several years before moving on to the West; Sno-engineering, the Franconia ski resort planning agency that became mountain resort consultant to the world; and Herbert Schneider, Cranmore Mountain owner and dean of American ski instruction.

Directors of the museum enjoy taking a nomadic approach to their Annual Meeting and Dinner, and have tried to locate the event at a venue that relates to the person being honored. The Gunstock location is a fitting place for honoring Pitou, as the ski area is her home mountain, but in addition, the 1937 base lodge is historic in its own right. It was built during the Depression as part of the Belknap Mountain Recreation Area, as is certainly the oldest existing ski area base lodge in the state, and one of the oldest in the country.

The Gilford region has a committed population of skiers, as evidenced by the frequency with which teams from the area win the Museum’s Hannes Schneider Meister Cup race. Once home to the Northland Ski Company, the Laconia-Gilford community is actively supportive of skiing in general and Pitou in particular.

The event is open to the public and reservations can be made by calling the Ski Museum at (800) 639-4181. Before Oct. 1, the price per person is $55; thereafter it is $65.