Stockton, CA – Bud Klein, the founder, patriarch and visionary behind California’s Kirkwood ski resort, lost his battle with cancer on May 5 in Stockton, Calif. He was 83.

A number one draft pick for the Red Sox upon his graduation from Stanford in 1950, Klein forewent a baseball career to instead return home to Stockton to help run the family agriculture business. Klein was a prominent northern California winemaker who invested heavily in the wine cooler phenomenon that became popular in the 1980s.

It was Klein’s pioneering spirit, entrepreneurial vigor and tireless energy in the early 1970s that led other Stockton area investors to convert a remote wilderness outpost on the Sierra Crest into one of California’s best known ski mountains. Klein saw opportunity where others saw challenges – developing not only the resort, but also all the roads and infrastructure leading to the isolated meadow that would one day become the community of Kirkwood.

The story of Klein’s efforts and accomplishments have been chronicled in a book entitled Mountain Dreamers and this story will be further memorialized in the Kirkwood Inn, the spot where he first put together what became Kirkwood. Klein loved his views of the Kirkwood Meadow from his Sun Meadows unit and in his honor, that meadow will be renamed in a conservation trust bearing his name.

“Over the past several years Bud has encouraged us all to ‘finish the painting’ that he started and we intend to do everything we can to support his legacy,” Kirkwood officials said in a prepared statement. “Bud Klein represented all things Kirkwood and he will be deeply missed.“

Klein is survived by his wife of 62 years, Jane, and three of their children.