Life was not easy for Ken Roering growing up on the north side of St. Cloud.
"We were a really poor family," he recalled. "We didn't have a television until I was a freshman in high school and that was a gift from a friend. We had outdoor plumbing until I was in eighth grade and this was in the city."
Things got even more difficult when his father Joseph – a World War I veteran who worked for Great Northern Railroad – died suddenly in 1956, leaving his mother Nora as a single mom to 14-year-old Roering and his three siblings.
"He went into the hospital for a routine hernia operation and acquired some kind of contagious disease," Roering said. "He never came home. That was hard. Life got pretty rough for us after that."
His mother took a job as a secretary at St. Cloud Hospital and Roering began working as well, doing everything from cutting grass in local cemeteries to working as an usher at the Paramount Theater downtown to help make ends meet.
Meanwhile, his studies suffered and his passion for sports dimmed.
"I was actually a terrible student my freshman and sophomore year at (St. Cloud) Cathedral," Roering said. "But the summer before my junior year, a group of friends and I made a pact to see who could do the best academically and in sports.
"I'd given sports up when my dad died, and I didn't play at all my freshman and sophomore year. But I went back out for football, basketball and baseball as a junior and wound up starting in all three."
Football was an especially strong suit. With childhood friend Craig Muyres '64 throwing him the ball, Roering earned first-team Catholic all-state honors as a senior in 1959 and raised his GPA to a perfect 4.0.
That success earned a number of scholarship offers, including one from University of Minnesota head coach Murray Warmath, whose team was about to embark on a streak of two-straight Rose Bowl appearances.
But with his younger brother William suffering from severe asthma, Roering chose to remain close to home to help out with his care. That meant following his good friend Muyres to Saint John's to play football for John Gagliardi, who'd taken over the head coaching job in Collegeville just seven years earlier in 1953.
"I always called Ken my golden retriever," Muyres said. "All I had to do was throw the football and he'd find a way to go get it. That's how it was at Cathedral and it was the same way at Saint John's. No matter what happened, Ken found a way to get open."
The talented tandem of Muyres and Roering joined an exceptional corps of freshmen classmates at SJU in the fall of 1960 – a group that included names like John McDowell '64, Bob Spinner '64, Bernie Beckman '64, Dave Honer '64 and others.
"The winning culture of Saint John's athletics that we know today really started when those guys got here," said Joe Mucha '66, a football and basketball standout for the Johnnies who arrived on campus two years later.
"They didn't just hope to win, they expected to. And Ken was the culture leader of those teams. He was well-skilled. As a senior, he made All-American ahead of Otis Taylor, who went on to win a Super Bowl in the NFL. But the biggest thing was he knew what it took to win and he made it happen."
That started in the fall of 1960 when Roering was a freshman and earned a starting spot. He continued to excel as a sophomore, then earned All-MIAC and All-American honors as a junior and senior in 1962 and '63.
In those two seasons, the Johnnies did not lose a single game – compiling a perfect record of 19-0 and outscoring their opposition 659-166.
The 1962 team finished 9-0 but were left out of the four-team NAIA postseason field. That didn't happen the following year, when SJU again finished the regular season 9-0 and outscored their opponents 298-45.
The Johnnies then beat Emporia (Kan.) State 54-0 before a crowd of 12,438 at Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington to earn a trip to the national championship game – then known as the Camellia Bowl – against Prairie View A&M (Texas) on Dec. 14 in Sacramento, Calif.
"Maybe a couple of us had ever been on an airplane before," Roering recalled. "So this was a pretty special moment."
Roering made it even more special. Despite battling a back injury, he had a key two-point conversion catch, then hauled in an 18-yard touchdown reception as the Johnnies recorded a 33-27 upset victory over a Prairie View team whose roster included a number of future NFL standouts - including Taylor as well as Ken Houston, who was later inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
"Ken caught everything that came his way," recalled Randy Hallstrom '66, who was two years behind Roering and Muyres at Cathedral, then followed them to SJU and was part of the 1963 national championship team (and won a second as a senior in 1965).
"He never failed. He did all that while overcoming issues with his vision that began at an early age.
"I started wearing glasses when I was 5," he said. "I didn't wear them in sports though. I just relied on the remarkable capacity of youthful eyes to adjust.
"I guess I've always sort of had a capacity for persistence. My wife calls it bullheadedness. But I have that unwillingness to relinquish or give in. I hate to lose. I can't stand it. That's continued on into the rest of my life. I even had to give up board games a long time ago because I couldn't handle losing."
Roering's success drew the attention of NFL scouts, including from the Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers. But he elected to head north of the border, signing a contract with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League then coached by Bud Grant, who went on to lead the Vikings to four Super Bowls and send two of his sons to play at SJU.
"I had been in ROTC on campus, and I'd even gone through camp at Fort Riley in Kansas for eight weeks," he said. "But they were gracious enough to let me out of my commitment, and I was able to sign a $10,000 a year contract up there with a $2,500 bonus.
"I got to Canada and played a couple of games in the preseason. But then I got hurt, and eventually they released me."
Which launched him into a long and successful career in academia. By 1972, Roering had earned an MBA and a Ph.D. and started his academic career at the University of Missouri.
His books and numerous research articles garnered a good deal of attention throughout the country and he received numerous offers from other academic institutions. He chose the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. His career at the U of M included serving as department chair and as the Pillsbury Company-Paul S. Gerot Chair in Marketing from 1981-2011.
He also served as a consultant for numerous national corporations – including 3M, Whirlpool, Cargill and Motorola – and has sat on the boards of companies, including Artic Cat, where he was named board chairman in 2015, and nonprofits like the Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis.
In addition, he has been a prolific author.
Roering and his wife Betsy, who taught special education for 25 years, raised two children - both of whom went to Stanford and have had successful careers. After receiving her MBA at Duke, his daughter had a successful career in industry, while after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of California, his son has become a highly regarded geology professor at the University of Oregon.
Throughout all that, Roering has also remained connected to SJU. He served on the school's Alumni Board in 2004, on the Board of Regents/Trustees from 2006-13 and as a volunteer for his graduating class. He also chaired the Saint John's Presidential Search Committee that identified, recruited and successfully hired Michael Hemesath in 2012.
In 2019, he received the
Fr. Walter Reger Distinguished Alumnus Award, the highest honor bestowed by the SJU Alumni Association for service to the Saint John's community.
"There was a genuine sense of caring for each other I found at Saint John's," said Roering, who was diagnosed with CLL (Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia) 23 years ago but has continued to remain as active as ever. "There were people who looked out for you and had a real concern for your well-being. That had a huge impact on me.
"It helped shape the person I am now."
