For more than half a century Roland Palmedo was a contributor to the affairs of the NSA and USSA at all levels: as an organizer of ski teacher certifications, as an international competition official and as a founder of the Amateur Ski Club.

Roland Palmedo was a graduate of Williams College (Williamstown, Massachusetts) where, in 1915, he started the Williams Outing Club. It was the start of a 50 year career contributing to the development of skiing in the United States.

Palmedo was among the organizers of the NSA’s first alpine ski team in 1934 and a year later, with Alice Damrosch Kiaer, helped to organize the first women’s international ski team. At the time he was president of the Amateur Ski Club of New York and prime organizer and backer of the 1936 Women’s Olympic Team at Garmisch, Germany. Beginning in 1937, he headed the NSA International Competitive Committee and subsequently became a member of the Congress of the Ski Union of the Americas.

Among his numerous other accomplishments, Palmedo organized the Ski Teacher Certification program in the United States and became a respected alpine competition official in the United States and abroad. He was also one of the organizers of the National Ski Patrol.

Palmedo was a founder of the Amateur Ski Club of New York and held honorary memberships in the Ski Club of Great Britain, Kandahar Ski Club, Ski Club Chile, Club Andino Boliviano and the Mount Mansfield Ski Club. He was also the editor of Skiing, the International Sport (1939) and other books as well as magazine articles.

After his death in 1977, his family donated his extensive ski sport library to the U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame. The Roland Palmedo Memorial Library remains as a lasting tribute to his ski sport builder career.

Roland Palmedo was elected to the U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame in 1968.