HONORING ED FERRY ‘63

Stanford Athletics Hall of Fame and Olympic Gold Medalist

Stanford Hall of Fame member Edward Payson Ferry ‘63 passed away on September 18, 2023, at his home in Mill Valley, CA. Ed was a member of the first decade of illustrious Stanford Rowing Olympians in the 1950s and 1960s, and his photo headlines the Stanford Men’s Rowing Olympians web page, rowing port in between legends Conn Findlay (stroke) and Kent Mitchell ‘61 (cox) in their Tokyo 1964 Gold–winning M2+.

Read an excellent and comprehensive obituary at row2k.com, including an excerpt of Kent Mitchell’s comments at Ed’s memorial service, which bring in a lot of the connections to Stanford Rowing. This content is copyrighted by row2k, so please click here to read Ed’s amazing life and contributions to rowing and Stanford.

Ed came to Stanford in a different era of collegiate sports – freshman–only teams (including Stanford Football), many (or mostly) walk–on athletes, and a less–clear distinction between club and varsity programs across sports. Thankfully for Stanford Rowing, Ed chose to come south from his native Seattle for college and decided to try rowing after a start on Stanford’s freshman football squad.

While Stanford Rowing was still a mostly grassroots effort (like many sports), there was a recent history of Olympic success with Jim Fifer, Jim Beggs, Dan Ayrault, Kurt Seiffert, Dick Draeger, Lou Lindsey, Duvall Hecht, and Conn Findlay that infused the program and pushed it to the highest levels of performance. While Stanford was a far western outpost of rowing, the US Olympic team of that era was well–supplied by the established eastern base, and the Olympics themselves were very competitive with the strong European national programs where rowing was considered a major sport. With this in mind, Ed’s achievement from walk–on to gold medalist was no easy task. While Ed’s story comes a bit later and in a slightly different context, there are many similarities to his achievement and the story told in The Boys In The Boat, a movie we expect most Stanford Rowing athletes and alums will see this winter holiday season.

Stanford Rowing is honored to have Ed as one of its own, and his legacy is an early thread line to the achievements of all three programs (Women’s, Lightweight Women’s, and Men’s) today.