LAKE PLACID — Kathryn “Kay” Jones, a long-time bobsled fan who became a photo journalist for the sport, will be one of four inducted into the USA Bobsled and Skeleton Hall of Fame on Saturday at the new Mountain Pass Lodge at Mount Van Hoevenberg.

Jones, who died on Aug. 1, 2004 at the age of 82, will be joined by Gilbert Colgate Jr. of New York City, Richard Lawrence of West Chazy and David Kurtz of Pennsylvania in the new class of inductees.

The ceremony, starting at 5:30 p.m., is free and open to the public. The event will be part of the International Bobsled and Skeleton Federation World Cup season finale on Lake Placid’s 1-mile chute.

When Jones was 10 years old and living in Lake Placid, she went to the 1932 Olympic Winter Games in her hometown with her father and watched Curtis and J. Hubert Stevens win the two-man gold medal in bobsledding. Sixteen years later, at the 1948 St. Moritz Winter Olympics, her older brother Fred won bronze in the two-man competition.

While watching bobsled in the 1960s into the 1980s, Jones would stand above Lake Placid’s Zig Zag curve and take countless pictures of bobsleds from all over the world. When some of those rides did not go according to plan, Jones was there to capture them, sometimes upside down.

She was not alone in the family’s interest in photographing winter sports. Her son, Dave, and grandson, Davey Jr., have been similarly involved as camera operators for international television productions covering sliding and skiing.

Jones and her husband David opened Adirondack Photo Service in 1947. In that time, she spent most of her weekends at the original Lake Placid bobsled run, where she honed her photography skills. In 1966, she captured the ill-fated crash of Italian slider Sergio Zardini in the Zag portion of the infamous Zig-Zag curve. The image was published on the back page of the New York Daily News.

After the death of her husband in 1968, Jones found it difficult to maintain the Main Street Lake Placid camera store in those pre-1980 Olympic announcement years. When the business was sold, her freelance photography career began. Jones was often found at the track with her 35-millimeter Pentax camera with a 50-millimeter lens, shooting single frame. She became a permanent figure — the track crew and sliders dubbed her “Mrs. Zag.” An avid pin collector, Jones was clearly visible by her hat cloaked in souvenir items.

In an interview at the 1980 Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, while working for the Associated Press, she told broadcaster Curt Gowdy of ABC Sports of her two favorite pictures: “Bottoms Up,” the photo of an Austrian sled at the 1978 World Championships that became an immensely successful poster, and her photo of the four Morgan brothers of Saranac Lake crashing during the 1980 U.S. Olympic Trials.

While working the Sarajevo Winter Games in 1984, also for AP, the bus she was riding rolled on its side and she suffered two broken ribs. Jones still worked in Sarajevo for 15 days with the broken ribs, while hiking up and down the Trebevic Mountain with her gear, never complaining and always with a smile on her face.

Upon her retirement, the U.S. Bobsled Federation honored her with a plaque for her long career and love and passion for bobsledding.

During this month’s World Cup racing at the Olympic Sports Complex, Jones’ son Dave will see double duty capturing the action as sleds arc around curve 10, and then turning quickly, he will show viewers the athletes’ reactions as then complete their runs beyond turn 20. Davey Jr. will have similar responsibilities along the 20-turn course.

Jones’ fellow inductees, Colgate Jr. and Lawrence, combined to win a 1936 Olympic bronze medal. Colgate, a 1922 Yale University graduate, was also one of five children of Gilbert Colgate Sr. The elder Colgate was the great-grandson of William Colgate, the founder of what is now the Colgate-Palmolive Company. Gilbert served as a director of Colgate-Palmolive and was chairman of the Colgate-Larsen Aircraft Company.

In addition to the 1936 Olympic bronze medal, Lawrence piloted the U.S. four-man sled in those Games to a sixth-place performance. He and Colgate Jr. also collaborated on the 1934 North American two-man title.

Kurtz, a Pennsylvania attorney, became a skeleton racer in the 1980s and was the 1994 and 1998 Olympic bobsled team manager. He was also a vice president of the IBSF.

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CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Curtis and J. Hubert Stevens as Kay Jones’ brothers. Jones is not related to them. The Enterprise regrets the error.

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