Snowdown, the annual dayslong winter festival in Durango that spreads gaiety, hilarity, merriment and drunken shenanigans far and wide, has become a staple of the jubilee since its start in 1979.

John Murrah, one of Snowdown’s founding fathers, thought up the idea to host a series of fun-filled events to entertain residents and bolster commerce, according to the playful history described on Snowdown’s official website. He quickly recruited more organizers who would offer their own creative spins to the celebration for decades to come. Many of them grew to become dear friends along the way.

Peg Ochsenreiter, Snowdown board member of 30 years, said her last board meeting was in May. She retired from the board because she is getting old, but all that means is she can enjoy Snowdown while someone else puts in the work, she joked.

She said she still plans to help with the Fashion Do’s and Don’ts, a flashy fashion show where participants razzle and dazzle the audience, which started as a clever reproach to a USA Today article calling into question Durangoans’ dress sense. And she intends to continue contributing her crafting skills by creating Snowdown button posters that are sold every year as merchandise.

Chip Lile, Snowdown board president, said Ochsenreiter has played many roles in organizing the winter celebration over the last several decades.

“She’s been really great to work with because she has answers to questions about things other people have forgotten,” he said.

He said Ochsenreiter is wise about approaching modern challenges while sticking to the spirit and intention – it’s about the community – of Snowdown as decided by Snowdown’s founders.

“It’s just fun to have somebody around that’s had that much longevity on the board and (has contributed) in so many ways, to be so involved,” Lile said. “Even though she’s retiring, I’ll try to keep her roped into some things. She’s too valuable to let go.”

Ochsenreiter said she probably has thousands of memories from Snowdowns past. Some make her smile; others evoke laughter; and at least one memory is saddening, or heartfelt.

She said she remembers the first Snowdown Follies in 1984. Longtime Snowdown legends Terry Fiedler, Debbie Howard, Linda Mannix and Rick Armstrong came up with the idea for the music- and gag-filled variety show that would become a beloved component of the winter festival.

She was in the audience, watching the show through the lens of an ancient VHS camcorder (it wasn’t ancient at the time, she said). She thought to herself, “I’ve gotta do that next year.”

The next year, she auditioned for the Follies and returned to participate nearly every year since, she said.

“I met so many really fun people that were doing follies that were also on the board of directors,” she said. “Terry Fiedler, who was one of the main founding members of Snowdown. Some of the other people that were involved in Follies.”

In 1993, the Snowdown board asked Ochsenreiter if she wanted to join the team.

“We just became such a close-knit group,” she said. “We would meet twice a month all year long. We have a regular official board meeting and then we have what we call the B and B, which was short for ‘beer and bull.’”

She said everyone who participated in the Follies, including board members, became family. Even months later, she would run into first-time participants in the grocery store and they’d laugh together about something that happened backstage.

She said she remembers the cream pie hit squad, which was first deployed during Ochsenreiter’s first year on the board and continued for about a decade.

The year was 1994. Although Ochsenreiter had participated in the Follies for years by then, it was her first season on Snowdown’s board of directors. Organizers were strapped for cash and needed a creative moneymaker, she said. The festival’s theme was, “It’s no secret anymore,” a sort of mystery motif.

The group came up with the idea of offering cream pie “hit services” for $5 per hit. Think of a surprise mobster shootout, but with cream pies instead of Tommy guns. PegO and her bruisers would wear black jackets and fedoras and blare the “Peter Gunn Theme” on a boombox as they approached their targets.

Splat.

Of course, the hits were nothing personal – just business. So if somebody wanted to avoid getting hit, they could pay $5 for “insurance” and the cream pie hit squad would go on its way, she said.

“But that $5 (only) covered one hit, so if you had half a dozen people (who wanted) you to be hit with a pie, you had to pay $25 for an umbrella,” she said.

She remembered the many Snowdown parades; the 1999 parade paired with that year’s theme, “Can you dig it?” with more than 100 floats. She said the parade is one of her favorite events because of how much creativity goes into it.

And she said she remembers when Alzheimer’s disease caught up with Fiedler, who died in 2018, and how the community rallied together with a fundraiser that raised more than $11,000 in just a few days.

“I’m going to get a little choked up,” she said. “He was moved by his daughter to Philadelphia to a home. So with the 40th anniversary, we thought we needed to celebrate Mr. Snowdown, because he started the whole thing.”

Organizers held a silent auction and “people came out of the woodwork” to provide Snowdown memorabilia to sell, she said. Ochsenreiter contributed a tuxedo jacket covered with every single Snowdown button for the fundraiser, as well as a complete-to-date set of the Snowdown Sneer, a satirical newspaper that poked fun at prominent Durangoans and life in Durango.

Lile, Snowdown president, said there’s always one person in the room who is livelier than the rest, and that person is usually Ochsenreiter.

“There’s never a dull moment and always a good laugh, for sure,” he said.

He said Ochsenreiter and her husband Ron are great at supporting new board members, such as himself when he got involved about 10 years ago.

“Even though she’s leaving, she’s really worked over the last couple of years to make sure we really understand kind of what our role is and what our purpose is from her standpoint,” he said. “So that’s been great.”

cburney@durangoherald.com