My first encounter with Ken Dryden ’69 was in the fall of 1967. I was a freshman and he was the goalie for the Big Red men’s ice hockey team, crowned national champions earlier that year. I made my first trip to Lynah Rink, and there was Ken, standing in the crease, leaning on his stick, while Cornell’s relentless offense pounded away at the other end.
When the play came his way, he was always focused and sharp, calmly turning away almost every shot.
In the two years I watched the tall guy wearing number 1 play at Lynah, the Big Red never lost a game there—and, frankly, few of them were even close. Ned Harkness’s team was very, very good and Ken was a dominant force.
Many years later, in 2009, when I was the editor and publisher of Cornell Alumni Magazine, Ken came back to campus for an event at Bailey Hall. He engaged in a conversation with basketball great and former U.S. senator Bill Bradley, moderated by sports journalist Jeremy Schaap ’91.
I covered that event for the magazine, noting that both of them had excelled in sports but sometimes struggled in their political endeavors.
Ken said that being an athlete had taught him how to accept criticism, which proved useful when he was running for office. In both sports and politics, he said, you can’t be motivated by what others think of you: “You have to live up to your own expectations, or it won’t be your own life.”
Read the full remembrance by Jim Roberts '71 on the Cornellians website.
