A belated happy birthday...

[RichH]

One great thing about going to the Frozen Four and showing your colors is that you get into some great conversations with strangers.  It happened all week, of course, but the last one surprised me.  While waiting in line at the particularly slow airport check-in counter on the way out of St. Louis, the guy behind me noticed my CU Hockey hat and said, "hey, I've got a good piece of Cornell Hockey trivia that you probably don't know..."  OK, I'm always interested in things like that.  The question:

What was the significance of this past Friday, April 6?

I figured it couldn't be of one of our Championships, since the tournaments were played earlier back then...so I was pretty stumped.

Answer: it was the 50th anniversary of the dedication of Lynah Rink.

(It also happened to be the same day the airport trivia guy was born, so I guess that's how he knew.)  I just verified it on a couple websites, and it's true.  From the wikipedia entry:

It was constructed for $500,000 with a donation from Walter Carpenter whose gift came with the stipulation that he did not want his name on the building. The facility was designed by Van Storch, Evans, and Burkavage of Waverly, PA and constructed by Streeter Associates of Elmira, NY.


The rink opened on March 21, 1957 with a match between the New York Rangers (NHL) and the Rochester Americans (AHL) in front of 4200 spectators. It was subsequently dedicated on April 6, 1957 and named the James Lynah Skating Hall.  The rink opened on March 21, 1957 with a match between the New York Rangers (NHL) and the Rochester Americans (AHL) in front of 4200 spectators. It was subsequently dedicated on April 6, 1957 and named the James Lynah Skating Hall.

I'd be interested in hearing any stories old timers who were present for that.  

Happy birthday to one of my favorite places in the world.  With a new face lift, I hope it gets to start its 2nd half-century with plenty of raucous celebrations.

[jtwcornell91]

How did we miss that? ::doh::

[Jim Hyla]

[quote RichH]
Answer: it was the 50th anniversary of the dedication of Lynah Rink.

The rink opened on March 21, 1957 with a match between the New York Rangers (NHL) and the Rochester Americans (AHL) in front of 4200 spectators. It was subsequently dedicated on April 6, 1957 and named the James Lynah Skating Hall.  

I'd be interested in hearing any stories old timers who were present for that.  [/quote]Well, that lets Al and me out.:-D

[marty]

[quote RichH]
Happy birthday to one of my favorite places in the world.  With a new face lift, I hope it gets to start its 2nd half-century with plenty of raucous celebrations.[/quote]

I remember that at Lynah during the mini-celebration after beating Yale in the 2002 ECAC preliminaries I mentioned to my family that "There's no other place in the world I'd rather be."  I was 50 myself at the time and don't remember ever having that thought before then about any other event/place.

[Trotsky]

My favorite spot on the map.

[schoaff]

[quote RichH]Answer: it was the 50th anniversary of the dedication of Lynah Rink.

(It also happened to be the same day the airport trivia guy was born, so I guess that's how he knew.)  I just verified it on a couple websites, and it's true.  From the wikipedia entry:

It was constructed for $500,000 with a donation from Walter Carpenter whose gift came with the stipulation that he did not want his name on the building. The facility was designed by Van Storch, Evans, and Burkavage of Waverly, PA and constructed by Streeter Associates of Elmira, NY.

[/quote]

Then again, I wrote that wikipedia entry so I hope you found confirmation elsewhere. ;-)

[RichH]

[quote schoaff][quote RichH]Answer: it was the 50th anniversary of the dedication of Lynah Rink.

(It also happened to be the same day the airport trivia guy was born, so I guess that's how he knew.)  I just verified it on a couple websites, and it's true.  From the wikipedia entry:

It was constructed for $500,000 with a donation from Walter Carpenter whose gift came with the stipulation that he did not want his name on the building. The facility was designed by Van Storch, Evans, and Burkavage of Waverly, PA and constructed by Streeter Associates of Elmira, NY.

[/quote]

Then again, I wrote that wikipedia entry so I hope you found confirmation elsewhere. ;-)[/quote]

Sure did.  The following confirms the date:

http://bigred2.athletics.cornell.edu/lynah/history.htm

And Adam & Arthur's book also has that information, which I'm going to assume was your source material for the wiki entry.

The Sun digitization project hasn't completed 1957 yet, but I found the following from June 8, 1956 that shows that the naming had been decided by the groundbreaking.

http://cdsun.library.cornell.edu/content.php?c=y19556&d=06.08.D150.1.6&pdflink=doc6.pdf&ispage=

[Jim Hyla]

[quote RichH]The Sun digitization project hasn't completed 1957 yet, but I found the following from June 8, 1956 that shows that the naming had been decided by the groundbreaking.

http://cdsun.library.cornell.edu/content.php?c=y19556&d=06.08.D150.1.6&pdflink=doc6.pdf&ispage=[/quote]

It's hard to believe that there was a benefactor in the mid 50's who gave $500,000 anonymously and didn't ask that it be named for him/her. I'd like to know who that was and let it be known that we still appreciate it.

[MINIteam8s]

My question, too. Someone here in the past 51 years must know the name of the benefactor. Lynah surely surpassed his / her wildest dreams! We'll do some behind-the-scenes investigating to see what can be found out. Quite a return on their investment.  And 50 years later - the renovation worked hard to keep best of the original rink.

[KeithK]

[quote Jim Hyla][quote RichH]The Sun digitization project hasn't completed 1957 yet, but I found the following from June 8, 1956 that shows that the naming had been decided by the groundbreaking.

http://cdsun.library.cornell.edu/content.php?c=y19556&d=06.08.D150.1.6&pdflink=doc6.pdf&ispage=[/quote]

It's hard to believe that there was a benefactor in the mid 50's who gave $500,000 anonymously and didn't ask that it be named for him/her. I'd like to know who that was and let it be known that we still appreciate it.[/quote]
The donor was Walter Carpenter.

[ftyuv]

[quote KeithK][quote Jim Hyla][quote RichH]The Sun digitization project hasn't completed 1957 yet, but I found the following from June 8, 1956 that shows that the naming had been decided by the groundbreaking.

http://cdsun.library.cornell.edu/content.php?c=y19556&d=06.08.D150.1.6&pdflink=doc6.pdf&ispage=[/quote]

It's hard to believe that there was a benefactor in the mid 50's who gave $500,000 anonymously and didn't ask that it be named for him/her. I'd like to know who that was and let it be known that we still appreciate it.[/quote]
The donor was Walter Carpenter.[/quote]I assume that's the same Walter Carpenter who donated the money for Carpenter hall, which opened the same year?  Or did he and a relative double-team the Uni?

[Jim Hyla]

[quote KeithK][quote Jim Hyla][quote RichH]The Sun digitization project hasn't completed 1957 yet, but I found the following from June 8, 1956 that shows that the naming had been decided by the groundbreaking.

http://cdsun.library.cornell.edu/content.php?c=y19556&d=06.08.D150.1.6&pdflink=doc6.pdf&ispage=[/quote]

It's hard to believe that there was a benefactor in the mid 50's who gave $500,000 anonymously and didn't ask that it be named for him/her. I'd like to know who that was and let it be known that we still appreciate it.[/quote]
The donor was Walter Carpenter.[/quote]Thanks, where did you get the info/

[RichH]

[quote Jim Hyla][quote KeithK][quote Jim Hyla][quote RichH]The Sun digitization project hasn't completed 1957 yet, but I found the following from June 8, 1956 that shows that the naming had been decided by the groundbreaking.

http://cdsun.library.cornell.edu/content.php?c=y19556&d=06.08.D150.1.6&pdflink=doc6.pdf&ispage=[/quote]

It's hard to believe that there was a benefactor in the mid 50's who gave $500,000 anonymously and didn't ask that it be named for him/her. I'd like to know who that was and let it be known that we still appreciate it.[/quote]
The donor was Walter Carpenter.[/quote]Thanks, where did you get the info/[/quote]

Well, the wikipedia entry that schoaff wrote and I referenced in the original post of this thread mentioned Walter Carpenter as the donor.  But for a more concrete and researched reference, it's in the "Cornell University Hockey" book written by Adam Wodon and researched by Arthur Mintz.  I'll quote from chapter 2 (page 19):

Then, at a Thanksgiving Day luncheon before the 1954 Cornell-Penn football game, alumnus Walter Carpenter told director of athletics Bob Kane that he might be interested in helping Cornell build a hockey rink.  Carpenter was chairman of the DuPont Company and a 1910 graduate of Cornell.  Several weeks of negotiations resulted in disappointment, however -- in the end it was decided that Carpenter's money would fund the costs of a new engineering library instead.  But Carpenter was concerned about disappointing his old friend Kane, and shortly thereafter he arranged for the Carpenter Foundation to underwrite the costs of a new rink as well.  The $500,000 donation was originally announced as an anonymous gift.

Apologies to Adam and Arthur for use without permission.

[ACM]

[quote RichH]

Apologies to Adam and Arthur for use without permission.[/quote]

That's OK. We took the information from Bob Kane's book about Cornell athletics, "Good Sports".

[reilly83]

... alumnus Walter Carpenter told director of athletics Bob Kane that he might be interested in helping Cornell build a hockey rink. Carpenter was chairman of the DuPont Company and a 1910 graduate of Cornell.

FWIW, Carpenter's service to Dupont spanned 80 years (wow!).  It appears that he never actually graduated from Cornell.  Carpenter's bio on the DuPont site states that he left school to manage DuPont's Chilean nitrate interests in the fall of his senior year in 1909.