Over the past 25 years, Chip Perfect (right) has converted his southern Indiana farmland into a thriving recrea-tional skiing area near Lawrenceburg, Ind.

Chip Perfect, BS '79, sees a little of the 1989 movie Field of Dreams in his southern Indiana venture, Perfect North Slopes.

When his family turned 100 acres of farm ground near Lawrenceburg into a ski area 25 years ago, he, too, heard the whispers.

"When we started Perfect North Slopes, it was just like the movie," Perfect says. "A lot of people told us, 'If you build it, we will come.'"

In Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner's character, Iowa corn farmer Ray Kinsella, hears a voice tell him, "If you build it, he will come." He takes this as a message to build a baseball field on his farm, which attracts the ghosts of the eight Chicago White Sox players banned from the game for throwing the 1919 World Series. When the voices continue, Ray chases his dream by going to Boston to seek out a reclusive author and to Minnesota to talk to a small town doctor to help him understand the meaning of the messages and the purpose of his field.

But in the Chip Perfect story, "the dream" chose a more direct approach. It came looking for him.

Hard work has made Perfect king of his own skiing mountain in southern Indiana.

"A guy named Kelly Green drove right up our drive, parked his car, walked into our barn and introduced himself as a student at Indiana State University. He asked dad (Clyde) and me if we ever thought of turning our farm into a ski resort," Perfect recalls of that life-changing day in 1980.

"Are you kidding?" was Perfect's short answer. A ski resort in southern Indiana made about as much sense to Perfect as surfing in Alaska.

Timing was perfect

But Perfect harbored a dream of being an entrepreneur, and Green appeared at a time when Perfect was feeling a bit discontented.

Perfect had enrolled at Purdue with long-range plans of becoming a veterinarian. He soon switched to agricultural education, because "being a teacher and a coach seemed like a pretty good fit. Plus, I thought having the summers off would give me enough time to start my own business, whatever that may be."

He had tried different things after he graduated from Purdue. He worked briefly in agricultural sales, then at a research farm for Dekalb Hybrids. He taught vocational agriculture at the high school level, and even did a little coaching while he worked the family farm.

But deep in his heart, in that place that keeps you up nights by posing the simple question "what if?" Perfect felt, at least professionally, unfulfilled.

In many ways, those other jobs had been rewarding. And they certainly paid for a comfortable lifestyle for Perfect and his family. But Perfect considered himself an entrepreneur at heart. Like his father before him, an independent masonry contractor, Perfect wanted to be his own boss.

Suddenly, it made sense

So the Perfects gave Green the time to make his case.

"You've really got a great location," said Green, a business student who had done his homework. He wanted to use the Perfects as his class project.

"You've got a nice hill that faces north, so the snow would last longer than on surrounding hillsides, and your close proximity to a heavily populated area (Cincinnati is 30 minutes away) would give you a good market to draw from."

Clyde Perfect thought building something as big as a ski resort could be a once in a lifetime opportunity. And to build it hand-in-hand, father and son? How cool would that be? Just ask Kevin Costner.

Maybe, just maybe, this wasn't such a hare-brained scheme after all. The Perfects figured a ski resort is hills, a building, machinery that has a tendency to break down, and lots of snow.

They already had the land.

Clyde could build the lodge; just bring a stack of bricks big enough and he could build a lodge big enough to hold every skier in southern Indiana.

As for the machinery, is there anybody on God's earth more qualified to fix broken machinery than an American farmer?

The snow? Well, the Perfects theorized, how much different could that be than farming? "We even call it snow farming," Chip Perfect says. "After all, we're just making and managing snow, just like we do with crops and livestock. They say you have to make hay while the sun shines - well, we'd just have to make snow while it's cold."

So they reached a decision: "Let's do it!"

Bargains abound, but not skiers

They went to work, looking for every bargain they could find to make skiers the biggest cash crop on the Perfect farm.

That's when Perfect started hearing the whispers.

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