Boise Weekly's Citizen Boise: Pirie Grossman

Boise Weekly - Not Your Everyday Newspaper: News: Citizen Boise: Pirie Grossman: "Pirie Grossman

BY LAURA WYLDE

Word that Idaho would host the 2009 Special Olympics World Winter Games was welcome news to Jim and Pirie Grossman, who spearheaded efforts touting Idaho as the best location for the quadrennial games. But the politically active power couple has also dabbled outside the sporting events and worked to bring the Dalai Lama to Sun Valley last September. So what motivates the duo to bring world events to Idaho? Pirie (pronounced 'Perry') answered our questions.
PG: It's amazing just for our state to experience these things. It makes better people out of us. The Special Olympics will have a great economic impact on Idaho, but we're going to get another wonderful surprise in spirit that's going to make us fuller people. Everyone we've talked to that have hosted the games before still talk about how the games affect lives of people in the community since the games left. It's remarkable and I look forward for Idaho to experience that.
You wrote a bid to the Special Olympics global headquarters saying Idaho was a better location to host the games compared to four other potential locations. How intricate and specific did you have to get in writing this proposal?
We were competing against Reno, Nevada; Garmish, Germany and Austria in the bid process, so we had to really showcase Boise. The 300-page document was very, very precise. It's like a regular Olympic bid. So we had to "