This article was published in Waterski Magazine April 2007:

Standing on His Feet

By Jim Frye   (more by this author)

How Keith St. Onge was saved from prison, poverty and polar winters to become one of the greatest footers ever

A dream can make you do what no sane person would, like sleep in a shed. In the not-so-distant past, that was Keith St. Onge’s life. With sweat beading all over his face, he’d lean up and bang on the wall-mounted air-conditioning unit that strained to fight off the thick Florida heat.

After a quick piece of toast or bowl of mac-and-cheese, he’d be out the door to the lake, where he gave his landlord (shedlord?) barefoot lessons instead of rent. St. Onge would grab a few passes himself and then jump into a ramshackle pickup truck. All the windows would be down because there was no AC. He’d head to his under-the-table job of installing lights, and halfway there the truck would overheat, so he’d push it to the side of the road, wait 10 minutes and then start it up again. He’d work, return that night and crawl back into the shed, only to start it all over again. Read the rest of this entry »