He was a snowboarding outsider who brought the sport to a ski resort near you — and to the Olympics.

The executives at Kendall Insurance had to have done a double take. It was the early 1980s and they’d taken a meeting with the representative for a group of snowboarders — known to be unruly, anti-establishment punks — who were complaining that ski resorts wouldn’t let them on their lifts. Then Paul Alden walked in.