Daniel Perry Dryden II died August 9, 2008 in Rio Dulce, Guatemala. A memorial service and potluck will be held at The Red Beet Restaurant in Palmer, Alaska on Sunday, October 5, 2008, from 3 to 7 pm. The Red beet is in the Dahlia Street Market located down town between the Borough Building and the Palmer Library
Dan was born on March 15, 1943 in New York City to Daniel P. Dryden and Elizabeth Macmillan Dryden. Dan was raised on a farm in rural upstate New York, where he learned to love and appreciate the natural world. He enjoyed riding horses, farming, exploring, hunting, downhill skiing, and teaching youth at his family’s summer camp. Adventuring, studying natural history and wilderness survival were a lifetime focus for Dan.
Dan graduated from Bethlehem Central High School in Delmar, NY in 1960 and attended Hudson Valley Community College, studying engineering and drafting. After finishing school, he began a series of adventures that included riding his motorcycle west to New Mexico, California, and eventual arrival in Alaska in 1968.
The vast beauty of Alaska’s wilderness captured Dan’s heart. He settled in the Mat-Su Borough (Chickaloon and Wasilla) and worked on an oil platform in Kenai with the focus of saving enough money to buy a sailboat. In 1971 Dan bought a 1930 wooden sailboat in England and met his lifelong partner and wife, Nancy Korns Dryden. Together they sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, lived on their sailboat in England, the Caribbean and New York (and many ports in between), and began raising their two children, Jessica and Daniel.
To support their travels, Dan and Nancy spent two years in Fairbanks, Alaska where Dan drove a semi-truck on the Haul Road and enjoyed the technical challenge and beauty of driving through the arctic wilderness. He acquired the truck driver handle (nickname) “Professor,” for his keen inquiring mind and his desire to share what he had learned.
In 1983 Dan and his family moved to Sutton, Alaska, where Dan began building their log home, which became a gathering place for people of all ages and cultures. Over the next 25 years Dan’s trucking career continued, and he was active with his family in developing their property. He served on the Sutton Community Council and many community development committees, and was outspoken because of his strong desire to live in a healthy community.
Dan was an inventor, problem solver, world traveler, craftsman, mechanic, bread maker, hiker, reader, philosopher, researcher, adventurer, skier, leader, skilled carpenter, steward of the earth, and a very spiritually focused husband and father. He is greatly missed by his family, friends and community. Dan will always be remembered as someone who lived life to its fullest.
