Tommy Ryan can be best illustrated by Jim Ward’s recollection of how he came to play organized hockey.
“I was one of 12 kids growing up,” said Ward, who played hockey at both Classical and Tech. “I never played hockey, but always wanted to.”
His uncle, Ed Brady, played in a pickup league at the old North Shore Sports Center on Boston Street, a stone’s throw from Flax Pond.
“But they didn’t have a goalie,” said Ward, whose grandson, Aidan Dow is a star pitcher for Classical and is headed to St. Anselm’s College in the fall, “so he asked me if I’d do it. He bought me all the goalie equipment so I did it.”
There, he met Ryan, who was the first president of the fledgling Lynn Youth Hockey League. Ryan asked him why he wasn’t playing organized hockey. Ward answered that being one of 12, his family couldn’t afford it.
“The following week, he told me he’d found a sponsor for me, and that I was now on a team. I played Lynn Youth Hockey for many years after that, and never paid a nickel. Tommy took care of it. He didn’t know me from Adam, but he helped me out.”
Ward said the one lesson he took from that, above all others, was to pay it forward.
“For as long as I was involved in Lynn Youth Hockey, and I was a coach later on, I found two kids from clinics and got them sponsors.”
“That was Tommy,” said Lynn Youth Hockey veteran Rick Comfort. “If he did something like that for Jimmy, he did it for countless others. He’d see kids who needed help and he’d go out and get sponsors for them.”
Ryan, who former president Kevin Cassidy called the “father of Lynn Youth Hockey” died last week at the age of 83. He built the program up to a powerhouse, said Comfort, who still maintains the ever-popular Massachusetts high school hockey website (masshshockey.com) that is a bible for hockey coaches and aficionados every winter.
“He went out and beat the bushes and got all kinds of people involved,” said Comfort. “At one point, in the late ’70s, the program had almost 2,000 kids involved. There were 12-14 traveling teams, from mites to midgets.”
Lynn Youth Hockey, Comfort said, turned into a top-notch feeder system for Lynn’s high school teams as well, said Comfort.
Cassidy played for Ryan in youth hockey and has fond memories.
“He was such an amazing guy,” Cassidy said. “He was the man. He was the president of the league. He was the kind of guy who gave so much. He noticed me when I was a little kid, and he took an interest in me the same way he took an interest in a lot of kids.
“You never wanted to disappoint him,” Cassidy said. “He was such a powerful personality. He always tried to make me better … always pushed me. And when I became a coach myself I tried to be the same. I took an interest in the kids I coached.”
Cassidy also said that seeing Ryan any way always brought him back to those days.
“Whenever I saw him, I was a little kid again,” Cassidy said. “I learned from him that’s the influence your coach has on you. That’s the guy you don’t want to disappoint. Even now, some of the kids I coached are in their 20s, and they treat me as the coach.”
When Lynn Youth Hockey established its Hall of Fame, Cassidy was the president of the association.
“He was the first guy we put in,” he said.
