STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Those attending events in Ketchum’s Rotary Park will soon have a work of art to sit on, thanks to the friendship of two women who met on a Sun Valley chairlift 42 years ago.

Fifty friends toasted the moment with champagne as Nancy Winton and Nina Sakaguchi cut the ribbon on a mammoth steel bench with towering loops Tuesday afternoon at the park.

“This art is sustainable It’s going to be here long after we’re gone,” Ketchum Mayor Neil Bradshaw told the group. “It will be here 150 years from now—and in a couple days it will be safe to sit on,” he added, noting that the bench had yet to be planted in concrete moorings.

The tale of how the bench came to be in Rotary Park started way, way back in 1951 when Nancy Winton came to Sun Valley on the Union Pacific Railroad.

She worked as “a Roundhouse girl” and as a waitress at Trail Creek Cabin, living in a Sun Valley Resort dorm before returning home to Modesto, Calif., where she got married. But her heart remained in Sun Valley, and she and her husband brought their three children to Sun Valley often on vacation.

Winton moved to Sun Valley in 1976 and one of the first people she met riding up the Warm Springs chairlift was Nini Sakaguchi. Twelve minutes later when the two had arrived at the top of Bald Mountain, they had forged a friendship that would only deepen as the years went on, despite their 26-year age difference.

“Nancy had the gift of gab. I didn’t know anyone and she warmly welcomed me,” recalled Nini. “We  traveled together. And when I lived in Paris she visited me while she was golfing and hiking her way through Switzerland.”

When Nini married Jeff Sakaguchi 25 years ago, Winton hosted a bridal luncheon for her in the Lane Ranch home she’d moved into a week earlier. And when the couple had a son five years later they named Winton their son’s godmother.

Winton cherished her time in her Lane Ranch home, filling the house with art and treasures she brought back from her travels, including a silk rug from Turkey. And, when she spotted a rectangular steel bench with seat slats that would allow snow to melt through at Gail Severn Gallery, she decided it was perfect for her rolling green lawn.

But overnight she reneged.

“It’s going to be buried by snow for six months of the year,” she thought. “Is there a way to make it visible even in winter?”

Gallery Owner Gail Severn suggested she commission Idaho sculptor Mark Stasz, who has created more than 450 geometric monumental sculptures. And soon a new $13,000 sculpture bench was informing the artwork on her lawn.

Winton spent many an evening sitting on that bench enjoying a glass of wine. But then she suffered a heart attack during one of the heavy snowfalls of the winter of 2016-17. Unable to reach her daughter Anne, who was out of cell phone range, she finally contacted a son who lives in the Bay area.

He told her to call 911.

“Surrounded by all these handsome paramedics, she said, ‘Why didn’t I call them hours ago!?’ ” Nina Sakaguchi recounted.

Winton’s son, concerned about his 88-year-old mother being isolated in the event of an emergency, insisted that she move into a retirement community near him in Marin County. And, so, Winton reluctantly left behind her beloved Sun Valley this past year.

Jeff and Nini Sakaguchi bought her house.

“We told Nancy 25 years ago that if she ever went to sell the house and her kids didn’t want it that we wanted first dibs,” said Jeff, a semi-retired management consultant who sits on the American Red Cross and other corporate boards. “We live in L.A. and Sun Valley is our escape. And the house is very comfortable, very cozy—a place we always envisioned living in and calling home.”

Fishing around for a way to honor their friend and her long-term philanthropy, Nina and Jeff landed on the idea of donating her bench in the back yard to one of Ketchum’s parks where it could be enjoyed by everyone.

Courtney Gilbert, who met Winton 12 years ago when she came to work for the Sun Valley Center for the Arts, noted that the donation reflected Winton’s enthusiastic support of the arts in the community.

“Without people like her we wouldn’t have the strong arts community we do,” she said. “She came to every one of my exhibition tours. She was at the forefront of concerts and lectures—she even went with us on a field trip to Shoshone. She’s curious about the world, and I admire her zest for life.”

“She’s been an inspiration to a lot of people for her love of life, added Nancy’s daughter Anne Winton, a teacher with Footlight Dance. “She’s the dancer at the front of every concert they put on. And she’s an incredible collector of art. No one super famous, but the walls in her Lane Ranch home were covered and her new place is a condensed version of her home here. An even the jewelry she wears are pieces of art.”

Even as the ribbon cutting party wore down, it was clear Winton had lost none of her penchant for living life to the fullest.

When Nancy McMath asked her if she was going dancing afterwards, Winton didn’t miss a beat.

“I’m going to Taco Tuesday, then Ketchum Alive,” Nancy Winton replied. “And I learned there’s a rent-by-owner house in Lane Ranch. I want to come back next year for two months in summer—I’m thinking July and August.”

Her attention was diverted just then by Ketchum City employees who began loading her bench onto their backhoe to haul it away.

“We can’t leave it. We’re taking it back,” Joney Ottesen said, explaining that it would be dangerous to leave it behind until they can install it permanently. “But we’ll bring it back.”