This school year, I'll be highlighting VCHS's greatest asset: its people. More importantly, I want to share with you what makes them tick - their purpose, their goals, their aims, their calling.
Sprinkle some French together with some Austrian and what do you get? Jean Claude (JC) Moritz and two iconic Vail restaurants: St. Moritz and La Tour. Like many early Vail pioneers, Mr. Moritz’s parents were on their way somewhere, stopped in Vail, and never left. Mr. Moritz with an older brother and a younger brother grew up in bucolic Vail, and he’s never left either.
A product of Battle Mountain High School, Mr. Moritz had the likes of Pat Phelan and Mike King as mentors, teachers and coaches. All-state in football and alpine skiing, he led the Huskies as a tight end, punter and cornerback all the way to a football state championship game. A Renaissance man, he also played drums for high school bands. In the 1980s you would have spotted him at the Red Lion in Vail playing bongos for Westwood. On the drums, he did his best to emulate, Neil Peart, one of his musical heroes. When he wasn’t playing sports or the drums, he was writing “hangman” programs, perhaps on his Radio Shack TRS-80 or Apple IIe.
After high school, he was a football walk-on with the CSU Rams and after one year transferred to CU Boulder to play football for Bill McCartney. He was a member of the Buffaloes 1990 National Championship team. He graduated from CU with, guess what, a Computer Science Applications degree.
After his Boulder days, Mr. Moritz returned to the Vail Valley first working IT at Vail Resorts followed by starting his own company, DocApps.com. There were also several years in which he worked as the Director of IT at The Steadman Clinic which included writing software for world-renowned doctors. Today, Mr. Moritz continues his work with DocApps.com which includes serving both VCHS and St. Clare as IT Manager. At VCHS, he’s also heavily involved with all things Saints basketball both as Boys’ Varsity Assistant and JV/C Head. He loves how basketball provides a platform to teach young men life lessons, and he also gets charged from designing the “chess match” strategy for a WIN.
Why does he give so selflessly to VCHS? He loves that our school stands for academic challenge coupled with a commitment to faith and spiritual formation. He also has a big servant’s heart wanting to see VCHS be the very best that it can be. He’s also a devoted husband and father married to Ellen and together they have three boys (Sebastian ’18, Purdue ’22, Alec ’20 and Theo ‘’23). As for hobbies, how can a Vail native not have skiing as one of them, but they also include anything outside, golf with Ellen, beach life and programming.
Cutting turns on Riva Ridge with his earbuds in, I imagine Mr. Moritz “aka Tom Sawyer” listening to a little Rush:
A modern-day warrior
Mean, mean stride
Today's Tom Sawyer
Mean, mean pride
Though his mind is not for rent
Don't put him down as arrogant
He reserves the quiet defense
Riding out the day's events
The river
Mr. Moritz, lives of purpose…
