Dennis Shippey

Beloved husband, father, son, brother and Coach

Growing up in Davenport, Iowa, Dennis L. Shippey knew what it was like to get up and go to early morning swim workouts. For him it was fun and little did he know that the sport of competitive swimming would become his passion, his career and his friend.

Once he entered Davenport West High School (’62), Shippey quickly became a state figure in swimming. He was state swimming champion in breaststroke and runner-up in the 200 Individual Medley.  His accomplishments placed him as an All-American swimmer in the breaststroke for two consecutive years. In 1996, Dennis was inducted into the Iowa Sports Hall of Fame as a high school swimmer athlete.

After high school, Dennis accepted a swimming scholarship to Eastern New Mexico University (Portales, NM). There he majored in health and physical education. This Greyhound swimmer went on to become an NAIA All-American breaststroker and champion.

When Shippey graduated from ENMU in May 1969, he was drafted into the Army. In 1970, Dennis and I married. Shortly thereafter he was drafted and proudly served with the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam. After military service, Dennis entered the Master’s program for Health and Physical Education at the University of Northern Iowa. As part of a graduate internship with the university, he served as the assistant coach for swimming and diving while completing the program.

From graduate school, Shippey moved to Elkhart, Indiana, where he was head coach for swimming and diving at Elkhart Central high for two years before relocating to Texas in 1976. In August of 1976, he moved his family to Pasadena where he would coach both boys’ and girls’ swimming.  Coach Shippey remained in this position until retirement. Actually he held a dual assignment for Pasadena ISD as coach and aquatic coordinator from 1988-2004.

During the years at J. Frank Dobie High School, Coach took numerous swimmers to state competitions in Austin. His teams won District Championships and showed good standings at the Regional competitions. He was honored on more than one occasion as District Swim Coach of the Year for Boys and  District Swim Coach of the Year for Girls.

At 55-years-old, Dennis was diagnosed with Early On-Set Alzheimer’s. With that diagnosis came a shocking reality of what life had in store for him and for us. With the support of doctors and our district, Dennis was able to work 1.5 years after the diagnosis. Then at that point there were obvious indications that he was struggling with the daily routine of coaching and being director over the district swim programs.  So in 2004, Dennis retired and was honored by over 200 former swimmers and swim parents at a Retirement dinner.  Most who attended gave testimony to the impact Coach had on their personal lives. Then in 2007 Dennis was honored by the Texas Swim Coaches Association with the Theron Pickle Lifetime Achievement in Swimming award. At a state conference in Austin, Shippey was presented with a coveted ring than only 7 recipients had received before him.

Dennis never accepted his diagnosis. He knew he had some memory problems, but maintained his determination to live life to its fullest. Through swimming and biking he maintained his mental and physical abilities. He started swimming in the YMCA, United States Masters and Senior Games competitions at the state and National level. With Senior Games he became a national champion and was inducted into the Texas Senior Games Hall of Fame in June 2011 (the first swimmer for that state). In US Masters swimming he achieved All-American status on a national championship relay while competing with his best friend, Bruce Rollins, on the The Woodlands Masters team. With the help of Bruce, Dennis competed as a national champion at the YMCA Nationals in Florida.  Shippey’s highest honor was being recognized as Top Five in the World FINA rankings in 2008. That statistic was revealed at the Hall of Fame Banquet in Bryan, Texas.

Doctors, family, and friends believe that the progression of Alzheimer’s was held back by Dennis’ athleticism and desire to keep active. With the help of his best friend, Bruce, he entered every swimming competition available. The two traveled as a team until the last 18 months when Dennis could no longer travel safely and follow the process of competition.

When Dennis was not swimming, he was biking. With the help of his son, Scott, Coach Shippey rode the 2005 RAGBRAI (444 miles, 7days across the state of Iowa). So, the normal routine for any given day of retirement at the Shippey house was a bike ride in the morning then a swim workout with the high school kids in Pasadena.

Throughout the years of treatments, doctors continually questioned their diagnosis. They did not believe Dennis had the profile or conditions of Alzheimer’s, but there was no other explanation or known treatment.

The last 18 months of Dennis’ life were met with wandering on foot over 40 miles from home and being found near death in a field 3 days later; an unrelated hospitalization that put him in the hospital for 9 weeks experiencing respiratory arrest on ventilator followed by extensive blood clots in both legs; extreme aggression against loved ones and finally placement in a specialized dementia care facility where he died in August 2011.

In June 2011, as a way to honor the legacy of his dear friend, Bruce Rollins nominated and presented Dennis with the Texas Senior Games Hall of Fame Award at a state banquet. This was just a few weeks before his death but he was able to attend surrounded by family.

Six weeks before Dennis’ passing, I received information about brain donations with the Concussion Legacy Foundation. I had tried for over one year to find a place for donation and nothing was readily available. It was amazing to me that this brain-donation program would solicit brains with no concussion histories to be used for control purposes. Our family wants to thank Dr. McKee, Dr. Stern, and Dr. Nowinski for their global research in searching for answers that can help families in the future.

Dennis Shippey is survived by his wife, Linda (Pearland, Texas), son Scott, wife Melissa, and grandchildren Luke and Mia (Austin, Texas), as well as his daughter Sondra and her children Ian, Aaron, and Hannah (Pasadena, Texas).

Robert Shisslak

Much to my disgust, he put peanut butter on his pancakes and ketchup in his macaroni and cheese and was still the person I named as my hero in Kindergarten. Robert Shisslak could strike up a conversation with absolutely anybody and it is something my mother always tells me I inherited. He raised me on the Oldies on vinyl, Ford trucks, fishing and Forrest Gump but still refused to buy me a Nerf gun because I’m a girl. He also told me I would be going to military school and be unable to date until I was 35. After throwing many temper tantrums because I actually believed he would ship me off to the Navy, I can say that while I’m proud of our Navy and my dad, the thought of even basic training terrifies me. By the time I got my first boyfriend, Dad could not do much about it since he was already gone. Dad died on April 12, 2011 and I still half expect him to walk through the door with a BJ’s bag full of useless things we will never use; but hey, they were on sale!

I asked our daughter Abigail to write a short little something about her dad and in less than 5 minutes she wrote the above paragraph. She captures her dad in the perfect light. My husband of 14 years and 10 months was the kindest man I knew and the type of guy who would give the shirt off his back to someone who needed it.

Robert (Drew as he was known to his family and friends) grew up in Central and then Western Pennsylvania, the youngest of 4 children and the only boy. He entered the Navy right after high school. He often told stories of his days living on an aircraft carrier. Following his military career, he became employed at McDonnell Douglas where he was chosen to be a part of the Space Shuttle Endeavor assembly team. Robert also had the gift of being a good listener. Robert was a Court Officer for the Massachusetts Trial Court where he would often encounter newly arrested individuals who just needed someone to listen.

Robert was everybody’s friend, but to me, he was my one-of-a-kind husband, companion, best friend, the father to our wonderful and beautiful daughter who can never be replaced.

Charles “Bubba” Smith

Read this excerpt from Spartan Verses by Pat Gallinagh; edited by Jim Proebstle, author of Unintended Impact. 

Pat and Jim were teammates of Bubba’s at Michigan State University during the 1965 and 1966 seasons, when they won back-to-back National Championships.

Every now and then you run into a character who is “bigger than life.” Charles “Bubba” Smith of Beaumont, Texas at 6 ft. 7 in. and 270 lbs. did both literally and figuratively fit that mold. Bubba was a passenger on the “underground railroad” of talented black athletes from the Jim Crow south that prohibited players from playing in the South. He, along with many others, was actively recruited by Coach Duffy Daugherty of Michigan State University in the sixties in what was to become one of Duffy’s hallmark achievements. Given a choice, Bubba probably would have preferred playing at a major university in his home state, like the University of Texas or Texas A&M.

 

By far the biggest member of the Spartan freshman football team in 1963, it was impossible for him to blend in with the thousands of new students pouring into East Lansing from all over the world. He stood out like a giant oak in an apple orchard. Many students stared at him in disbelief and rather than shy away from the fact that he was a behemoth, Bubba played the role to the hilt using his comedic talent to pretend to be a dim-witted, bumbling, good-natured oaf. A skill he would parlay into a successful acting career in Hollywood. He was a teaser and practical joker pushing his teammates’ buttons and his coaches to their limits with his pranks. In reality, Bubba was a good friend to those around him and never actively sought out the notoriety that just naturally presented itself.

There were some members of the college community who thought football players were modern day Neanderthals who dragged their knuckles on the ground as they prowled the campus. Others felt the football scholarships were a form of color-blind affirmative action for the intellectually challenged. Bubba was neither uncivilized nor stupid, although his persona did often catch the attention of the administration and coaching staff as his celebrity peaked during his senior year. The many Bubba sighting and urban legend stories that still exist to this day on the MSU campus are telltale of a man who easily adapted to the “big stage.”

With his enormous physical talent, he was often accused of not using it to the fullest on the field. There may have been some truth to that at times, but if so, it probably had more to do with peer pressure than not making an effort. When you are the biggest kid in your class you are often chided for using your superior strength and size by your classmates. Being labeled a class bully was not a coveted title back then or now, so unless prodded to do so by teammates or coaches, he sometimes may have appeared that he wasn’t trying very hard. And, it may have been because he didn’t have to. We should ask Terry Hanratty, Notre Dame’s QB who was permanently knocked out of the 10-10 Game of the Century, what he thought after a crushing tackle by Bubba in 1966. In any event, most teams ran their offense away from him as the fans in the stands chanted, “Kill, Bubba, Kill.” In the locker room Bubba was a very unique actor and just one of the guys adding tremendous chemistry and humor to a determined team of athletes.

The pros knew what they were doing when he was selected as the number one draft pick in 1967. He helped lead Baltimore to two Super Bowl performances in his five years with the Colts, winning Super Bowl V in 1971. After the Colts he spent two seasons each with Oakland and Houston. As one of the best pass rushers in the game, Bubba often drew two blockers, yet was effective enough to make two Pro Bowls, one All-Pro team and be recognized through the Vince Lombardi Trophy. Bubba Smith was enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame in 1988. The Big Ten Defensive Lineman of the Year Award bears his name. It is not documented to what extent he experienced concussions during his playing years. Clearly, there was significant punishment. What is known, however, is that the Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) discovered in Bubba’s brain by neuropathologists at Boston University Medical Center was classified as Stage III CTE with symptoms that included cognitive impairment and problems with judgment and planning. Bubba died on August 3, 2011 at the age of 66. Smith was the 90th former NFL player found to have had CTE by the researchers at the UNITE Brain Bank out of their first 94 former pro players examined.

He was likely on his way to the NFL Hall of Fame until landing on a sideline marker in an exhibition game that curtailed his playing career and headed him into his acting career. Between 1979 and 2010, Bubba appeared in various roles in over twenty-two movies and television performances. Probably his most noteworthy efforts came in his role of Moses Hightower in the Police Academy movies and his role with Dick Butkus in the “taste great…less filling” Miller Lite commercials. It was this beer commercial contract that led to his proudest moment. When he realized that he was being used as an instrument to promote drunkenness; he walked away from his contract. His matured social consciousness took both strength and courage to break such a lucrative deal. He valued integrity over money. In the final analysis he was just Bubba: friendly, easy to approach, generous and never getting “too big” as a result of his success.

Bubba Smith is survived by his son, Nathan Hatton.

 

Fred Smith

Fred, my beloved husband of 43 years, was an awesome husband, father, grandfather, and friend. To us who loved him, he was extraordinary.  But in his love for playing the game of football, he was quite ordinary and like so many other men and boys.

It is my hope that Fred’s story will give another human face to CTE, the devastating, but preventable, dementia caused by head trauma. I hope that Fred’s story will encourage parents, coaches, players, and medical professionals — whole communities — to support the work of the Concussion Legacy Foundation and the BU CTE Center. And, finally, I hope his story will help former players and families struggling to find answers to bewildering changes.

CTE caused my Fred to change so subtly and so slowly, but so remarkably, over time that it’s hard to remember the Fred of our beginning and impossible to pinpoint the moment CTE laid its claim.

Fred and I met in college, the unlikely story of a blind date going well. . . his roommate dating my roommate. We were Navy brats who shared a love of traveling.  We raised two fine sons, Shayne and Jeremy. We were supported by family and blessed to gather lifelong friends along the way, many attracted by Fred’s warmth and humor.

Anyone who met Fred for the first time knew immediately that he loved people. He drew people to him with his mischievous sense of humor, wry smile, and pranks. He never failed to bring a smile to those he lured into his practical jokes. He was fun and could engage strangers whether in a village along the Amazon or in a checkout line at Kroger’s. Who else could entice a couple on the eve of their wedding to abandon their wedding party to join us strangers for a few hours of laughs? He was the proverbial “people person.“ Fred’s humor drew people to him, but his honesty, compassion, and unpretentiousness kept them there.

Typical of many boys, Fred grew up with a love of sports, particularly football. At Elkton High School in Virginia, he played football (All-State), basketball, baseball and track. At Virginia Military Institute he played left tackle on the football team for four years. He said he went to college to please his parents, but stayed to play football. He shrugged off “getting his bell rung” as just part of football. In a televised game, he was taken from the game after a hard hit and returned minutes later. . . but joined the huddle of the opposing team. A picture of this play in a local newspaper is a haunting reminder of that day. Once seen as a humorous memory in his mother’s scrapbook, it now represents the kind of hit that had potential long-term consequences.

After graduating from VMI in 1969 with a B.A. in Economics, Fred served as an Army Field Artillery officer for 10 years, beginning with a tour in Vietnam where his men would later describe him as a respected leader: caring and calm under fire. These qualities were used to describe Fred repeatedly throughout his military career. Fred’s last assignment took us to Germany where Fred jumped at the opportunity to join a rugby team. The oldest and least experienced on the team, he played with fervor and enthusiasm but, unfortunately, in the style of football which led to several concussions.

In 1979, Fred left the Army to pursue a new career in sales. During the next 20 years, he worked for several companies in the paper industry, and eventually worked himself into management.

Along the way, there were nagging concerns about very subtle changes in judgment, temper, and confusion in doing seemingly simple tasks. Things just didn’t seem right. And Fred’s long history of headaches seemed to worsen.

Gradually, the early hints of something wrong evolved into serious mistakes, hostility to those whom he disagreed with and confusion, particularly in math, problem solving and organizing. He had trouble writing coherently, learning new computer software, and using his cell phone. He began having night terrors and would yell out that people were trying to get him. Early neurologists and imaging found nothing wrong. . . and, as we would be told often in the coming years, his “memory” was great.

In the last two years that he was employed, Fred was demoted from general manager to sales manager to salesman, and finally to dismissal. Confusion and inappropriate responses in interviews cost him any chance of getting another job. Neurologists attributed these changes to depression from losing his job, but antidepressants didn’t stop the declines. Fred recognized that he had trouble with word finding and with learning new things, but rejected any other suggestion of personality change.

The night terrors and an obsession with watching war movies took us to the Veterans Administration in 2006 where Fred was screened for PTSD. Fred’s ability to communicate and remember events 36 years in the past were iffy at best by then, so the screener did not see PTSD; but he did see that something was definitely wrong and suggested more testing. After years of searching for answers, Fred received a tentative diagnosis of a dementia that, like CTE, begins with behavioral and personality changes. By this time, Fred’s mounting frustration turned to frequent angry outbursts.

When research started emerging about a kind of dementia that could be caused by concussions and repetitive hits, something clicked.  Was it possible that Fred’s years playing football and rugby had caused his dementia. CTE wasn’t a dementia Fred’s early neurologists recognized as a possibility. And I was initially skeptical, too, since most of the first cases of CTE had been found in elite professional athletes, athletes who had played much longer and at a much higher intensity than Fred had. After all, if Fred did have CTE, how many thousands of Freds could be out there. What a truly horrifying possibility!

The boys and I needed to know the truth, and I was absolutely certain that Fred would want that too, so Fred became part of the Concussion Legacy Foundation and BU CTE Center brain donation program.

CTE took Fred little by little, one ability after another. It was especially hard on him because he understood on some level and was often scared. He knew us to the end even though he had lost his ability to think, talk, and walk. I miss him terribly, but know how blessed we were to have had so many years of fun, adventure, and love, the memories of which will last a lifetime. And although our grandchildren never got to know their fun and loving grandfather, I am comforted knowing that the best of Fred lives on in our sons.

As hard as his illness was, the confusing years searching for answers and then the heartbreaking steady declines, the real tragedy was that Fred’s death from CTE was totally preventable.

Those of us who loved Fred are comforted that Fred’s death and story may help researchers learn more about CTE. . . Perhaps to find markers and educate doctors which will lead to earlier diagnoses and thus shorten the anguished years of not knowing. Perhaps to sound the alarm about the potential epidemic among us. . . Perhaps to alert parents, players, and coaches of youth contact sports to listen to the research. . .  and perhaps to save another typical young person from living Fred’s story.

I can’t thank the researchers at the Concussion Legacy Foundation and BU CTE Center enough. Their dedication not only for uncovering the depth of the problem but also for searching for solutions is inspiring. Thank you, Dr. McKee, Dr. Stern, and Chris Nowinski and the staffs at CLF and BU for giving Fred’s family and friends the peace of finally knowing and the opportunity to help others.