Skiing a family activity for F.L. Gorman

By Nora A. Jones
Special to The Daily Record
Posted: 5:32 pm Fri, January 27, 2012

With four sisters and one brother, Francis L. Gorman III celebrated his mother’s 75th birthday on the slopes in Deer Valley, Utah — all skiing, including mom. It is the same kind of family zest for downhill skiing that made Gorman’s four children avid and accomplished skiers.

How it started

Growing up in Homer, Cortland County, Gorman’s parents took their six kids skiing every weekend.

“It was a ritual,” Gorman said. “By the time I was in third or fourth grade, I was into racing. My dad was working with the ski area developing their surrounding real estate and when he wasn’t working he would ski with us. We’d ski five times a week and when the lifts weren’t running we’d hike the hill for training.”

Gorman also played football and lacrosse at Homer High School. His senior year he received a congressional appointment in Washington, D.C., and went on to Georgetown University, where he majored in government and played lacrosse.

Before venturing on to law school, Gorman moved to Heavenly Valley, Calif., to teach skiing. Although Gorman hadn’t really done any serious skiing during college, he attended a weeklong clinic to try out for a ski instructor position.

“My clothes and equipment were a dead giveaway that I had been taking a break,” Gorman recalled. “In khakis and a windbreaker, I wasn’t much of a fashion statement but I did meet Glen Plake, just out of Lake Tahoe high school and now one of the ski industry’s biggest icons.”

In the spring of 1984, Gorman injured his knee in an avalanche. Upon recovery, he returned to Upstate New York, coaching ski racing at Labrador Mountain while attending Syracuse University College of Law (1984-1987).

Career path

Osborn, Reed & Burke hired Gorman right out of law school, providing him with a foundation in civil litigation and real estate. He began coaching skiing at Bristol Mountain and continued there for five years.

Gorman’s next position was with Saperston & Day‘s Rochester office in 1990, where he focused on commercial real estate and gained experience in foreclosures and bankruptcy. In 1995, his colleagues at Saperston’s Syracuse office saw an opportunity for Gorman to expand his real estate practice at Wilmorite Corpo. He served as senior counsel for litigation and operations and acted as Wilmorite’s registered Albany lobbyist for several years.

His projects included expansion of the Eastview Mall with the aid of New York’s Empire Zone program, assisting with the acquisition of the Tysons Corners shopping center in Virginia, and ultimately the sale of several Wilmorite properties to a publicly traded California-based real estate investment trust. 

“My time at Wilmorite was tremendous; the chance to deal on a day-to-day basis with the cutting edge issues in real estate and working with such a great family [the Wilmots] will always hold fond memories,” Gorman said.

Next, Syracuse-based hotel and shopping center developer The Widewaters Group called on Gorman to handle site selection, acquisition and development.

“On behalf of Widewaters, I acquired and developed retail properties in Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, including developing the company’s first ‘ground-up’ grocery-anchored shopping center in Virginia,” Gorman explained. “However, I also witnessed firsthand the implosion of the commercial real estate financing market, which ground new developments to a virtual standstill.

“It was a good time to make a move,” he said. “Of course, I was familiar with Bond, Schoeneck & King’s footprint throughout the state and its great history [since 1897]. After talking with Tim Fitzgerald and Kevin Recchia, the opportunity to join the firm’s Rochester office fell into place.”

Coaching

Following a stint at Bristol Mountain, Gorman coached at Hunt Hollow Ski Club in Naples from 1995 to 2010. When he started, there were about 50 kids in the program, and it grew to nearly 250 kids — one of the biggest ski racing programs in New York state and the country.

“I remember one year, one of the U.S. Team coaches came to see what we were doing that was making our program so successful,” Gorman recalled. “I think the growth of the program was directly related to the fact that rather than emphasizing winning, our emphasis was on kids having fun and learning how to put forth their best effort. But don’t think we didn’t win: Graduates of the Hunt Hollow Race Team have been high school champions and college racers, including at schools such as Boston College, Dartmouth, Colgate, Cornell, Harvard, Hobart William Smith and St. Michaels.”

From 1988 to 2004, he served as the volunteer lawyer for the New York State Ski Racing Association, participating in drafting a code of conduct for ski races, and creating an appellate review procedure for race participants. Other states’ ski racing programs have modeled their rules after the New York standard.

Gorman figures he has coached over 500 ski racers in his time and his students have moved on to great successes on and off the hill. His former students include a world extreme snowboarding champion, an orthopedic who volunteers his time with the U.S. Ski Team, investment bankers, school teachers and even a couple of lawyers.

Family

Throughout Gorman’s office at BS&K’s Linden Oaks location are photos of his family skiing. Luke (17), is a junior at Mendon High School and was last year’s ski team MVP, an honor he shared with his sister, Catherine (18), now a freshman at William Smith College, who hopes to sneak in a few ski races for her college when the lacrosse team is not practicing.

In 2010, Catherine and her older sister Carolyn (20), led Mendon’s girl’s high school ski team to its first state championship. And Francis (21), now a senior at Binghamton University, also served as captain of the Mendon High School Ski Team. Francis’ future plans include law school.

Community ties

Gorman, together with several other local commercial real estate professionals, are planning their second annual ski fundraiser to benefit the U.S. Adaptive Ski Team and Shared Ski Adventures, an adaptive learn-to-ski program that helps people with disabilities to become independent skiers.

“It’s about people who grew up in ski racing giving back in appreciation to the enjoyment and camaraderie that they have received from the sport,” he said.

Gorman is still a volunteer race coach at Brantling Ski Area in Sodus, home to two-time Olympian Diane Roffe. He also participates in an adult lacrosse league in Rochester.

Gorman is a member of the International Council of Shopping Centers where he currently serves on the Economic Issues committee. He is past chair of the New York State Government Relations Committee, the Upstate Turnaround Management Association, the American Bankruptcy Institute, and the New York State Tax Assessors’ Association.

He is also a licensed real estate broker, and certified by New York State to act as a Receiver and/or Receiver’s Counsel.

In 2004, as a member of the New York Army National Guard JAG Corps, Gorman served as legal counsel to the Joint Military Task Force for the Republican National Convention.

 

— Photos provided by F.L. Gorman