by Charlene Giannetti, Woman Around Town, February 14, 2024
In 1970, Ken Kunken was a junior at Cornell University majoring in engineering. As a member of Cornell’s lightweight football team, players weighing 154 pounds or less, Ken had missed the first two games, once because of the Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur, a second time because of the death of his paternal grandfather. In the third game against Army, he was involved in a total of seven plays. On October 31, the fourth of the season’s six games, the university had shut down for “Citizenship Recess,” when students could go home to campaign for candidates in the upcoming mid-term elections. The campus was nearly deserted, and had it not been for Cornell meeting Columbia on home turf, Ken would have gone home to Long Island. Instead, he was on the field, and during his fifth play, he hit head first a Columbia player who was carrying the ball. He felt an electric shock shoot through his body and although the Columbia player slowly got up, Ken couldn’t move. He had severed his spinal cord and was paralyzed from the shoulders down. Read full text here
