CHERRY HILLS VILLAGE- Brian Dovey has been missing a big piece of his life since his 11-year-old brother, Matthew, died three years ago in a skiing accident at Breckenridge.

Brian, who has Down's syndrome, lost not only his bunk mate and buddy, but also the tutor who read to him, made comic home videos and boosted his confidence.

"Sometimes Brian grows very quiet now and appears sad. He tells us he misses Matthew telling jokes and reading to him," said their father, Jim Dovey.

Little can assuage the loss for Brian, now 16, who despite his retardation attends Cherry Creek High School.

But Jim and Ellen Dovey hope to extract a measure of good from Matthew's death. They plan to use settlement proceeds obtained in a lawsuit against the former owner of Breckenridge to ease difficulties for other children like Brian.

The money, an amount held confidential under the settlement agreement, will be used to establish a foundation charged with giving special education students a boost in reading, writing and life skills.

"From the first day," Ellen Dovey said, "we said the proceeds would not go into our pockets. Specifically, we knew we would not use it for our personal purposes. We just didn't know what it should be."

The clock stopped for the Dovey family at 11:00 a.m., March 23, 1993, when Matthew fell while skiing and crashed into a pole that held a sign on the Pika run at Breckenridge.

Witnesses said Matthew never saw the pole when he slid into it at 10 to 12 mph - about the speed a boy can run, according to Doveys' attorney Jim Chalat.

In the next moment, the stellar athlete and top student at Cherry Hills Elementary School lay silent in the snow. Matthew had died instantly of a broken neck.

"That ended his life as we know it," Jim Dovey said.

Dovey, a top TCI executive, and his family had been spending their spring vacation at the ski resort with friends, including another 11-year old, named Eric.

At the moment Matthew died, Ellen Dovey had just finished a ski lesson and planned to join her husband and sons for lunch. By chance, she stopped for a cup of coffee at a cafe across the street from the Breckenridge Medical Center.

Eric spotted her and ran to tell her that Matthew had been hurt. Moments later, she knew he was gone.

"We went through the motions. A police officer questioned us. A priest came in and talked to us. They wanted to take Matthew to Idaho Springs for an autopsy. We packed up and came home," Ellen Dovey said.

A week later, the grieving parents returned to the site of the accident and got their first look at "that damn pole."

I couldn't stand not to know what happened to him. I couldn't visualize it. I wanted to talk to everyone who saw him," Ellen Dovey said.

Ski resort officials escorted the parents down the hill to the sign. On the way, Doveys noted that the green sign, which blended into nearby trees, was nearly invisible and that bare spots in the snow were unmarked.

"When we saw the post, we were appalled. That was a 4-inch-by-4-inch square steel pole without any real padding," Jim Dovey said.

With that discovery, the parents began a mantra that still haunts them: "Why, why, why?"

"Why not break-away poles? Why not suspend the sign from the trees? Paint it optic yellow or surround it with huge pads?" Dovey asks.

Their next move might have been different, he said, if only the ski resort, then owned by Victoria Holdings, Inc., had done something about "the damn pole."

The Doveys returned to their Cherry Hills Village home and, after long talks, decided to sue.

"In our minds, we wanted them to fix the sign. It was clearly not safe. We wanted them to move it, pad it or get rid of it. If another child hit that post, I would not be able to take it," Ellen Dovey said.

After consulting several lawyers who warned them that Colorado's Ski Safety Act would make recovery nearly impossible, the Doveys hired Chalat. He agreed to press their contention that the ski area should take responsibility in the death of their son.

"It is a partnership. You do your part. You take equipment, you take lessons, you get training, look at a map. Then they should have to do theirs," Ellen Dovey said.

Last spring, the sign pole where Matthew died was still there, Dovey said. The resort has changed ownership twice since the accident.

But the Doveys take consolation in the fact that the settlement from the ski corporation will spark "something positive."

The Matthew J. Dovey "Difference Education" Foundation will finance training of special education teachers in the use of stat-of-the-art computer and video technology. The foundation will provide the first such effort in the area of special education.

The teachers in turn can bring a new dimension of technology into special ed classrooms.

For instance, Dovey said, children such as Brian benefit from multisensory training in which they are bombarded with sound, pictures and motion. Technology also can supply "surrogate teachers" to provide the repetitious tutoring and reward systems that help speed learning, the role once filled for Brian by his brother.

"Matthew would have been proud of the foundation," Ellen Dovey said. "It doesn't target one group of the handicapped. It's for the rich, the poor and the in-between."