DUmmies incensed that a 79-year-old can't remember something

[BannedFromDU]

Star Member FLPanhandle (5,496 posts)

Willie Wood Made the Most Memorable Play of Super Bowl I. He Has No Recollection.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/05/sports/football/willie-wood-made-the-most-memorable-play-of-super-bowl-i-he-has-no-recollection.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=image&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1



The Green Bay Packers’ agile, lissome safety, Willie Wood, snatched the wobbly pass thrown by the Kansas City Chiefs’ quarterback, Len Dawson, and zigzagged to the doorstep of the Chiefs’ end zone, setting up an easy Packers touchdown. Green Bay never looked back in a 25-point rout of Kansas City in the first Super Bowl.

Wood’s interception is one of the most famous plays in Super Bowl history.

Fifty football seasons later, Dawson, who played 19 years of pro football, recalls it well.

“Maybe the No. 1 play I wish I could have back,” he said.

Wood remembers nothing of the play.

He does not even recollect playing in the first Super Bowl, on Jan. 15, 1967, or ever being on an N.F.L. roster.

Wood, who spends most of his time in a wheelchair, has been at an assisted living center in his hometown, Washington, for the last nine years, first for physical woes — debilitating neck, hip and knee operations — and later because dementia robbed him of many cognitive functions.

Nonetheless, Wood, 79, likes to wear a green Packers cap most days now as he sits in his sunny room listening to jazz and 1950s doo-wop. Wordlessly and impassively, he will point to the logo on the cap as if he knows it has some shadowy meaning in his life. But specifics elude him.

When asked about various photographs on the walls next to him — pictures of his wedding or the day in 1989 when he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame — Wood stares vacantly.

“Do you remember going into the Hall of Fame, Willie?” Dee Dee Daniels, an assistant living coordinator at the center where Wood lives, asked one morning last month.

Wood cast his eyes downward and shook his head side to side: no.

“You were the best of the best,” Daniels said.

Wood, who sometimes goes days without speaking, suddenly looked up, his eyes glistening as he raised an eyebrow as if to say, “I was?”

Len Dawson, a Hall of Fame quarterback with the Chiefs, at his Kansas City home last month. He said his pass that was intercepted by Wood was “maybe the No. 1 play I wish I could have back.” Credit Christopher Smith for The New York Times

Dawson earned a spot in the Hall of Fame, too, and has spent much of the last five decades as an award-winning national and Kansas City-based television and radio broadcaster. At 80, he is a Midwest sports institution.

As fluent as he is, Dawson, who has not seen Wood since 1967, grew quiet when the conversation turned to the troubles of his football peers.

“I’ve got teammates who have some problems like Willie Wood,” he said. “I think maybe from concussions and things like that. It’s, well, it’s a rough game.”

He paused.

“They all have problems, particularly the offensive and defensive linemen,” Dawson said. “I’ve been lucky. The game has been good to me.”

--------------------------------------------------------------

Color me stunned...a man who is 79 can't remember something from 1967.

nadinbrzezinski (143,434 posts)
2. If they fix the problem

I guarantee most fans will not like the results. Why the NFL has been fighting this.

For the record, a few other sports need to fix it too.

     There is no fixing the problem, Nads. You can put a lid on it, try to ignore it, light it on fire, whatever...it'll still be there tomorrow, and we all have to deal with it.

     Oh, wait, for a moment I thought we were discussing the triumvirate of your stupidity, ugliness, and hubris. Sorry.

Odin2005 (50,869 posts)
12. This is heart-breaking.

     Your heart breaks about 20 times a day, you fat ****, but from cholesterol, not feelings.

[franksolich]

Geezuz.

When seeing the title but before reading the thread, I honestly thought this was about Bernie.

<<<disappointed it wasn't.

[BannedFromDU]

Geezuz.

When seeing the title but before reading the thread, I honestly thought this was about Bernie.

<<<disappointed it wasn't.

      Yikes, I hadn't even considered that. Sorry for the misdirection. I'm sure it's because of all the brain damage and PTSD and what have you.

[BattleHymn]

Geezuz.

When seeing the title but before reading the thread, I honestly thought this was about Bernie.

<<<disappointed it wasn't.

I thought the same thing.  But then I remembered that Bernie is at least 109, and not a spring chicken at 79 anymore.

[CollectivismMustDie]

I bet if you asked Willie how many states there are in America, his answer wouldn't be "57".

I bet hes better at math than bernie too. Bernie might be better off playing football for a few years, then try to run again.



CMD

[SVPete]

So... DU folk are mad at the NFL ... for not knowing in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s ... what no one knew and could not be known until the 200Xs and 201Xs ... and may or may not be relevant to the cited case?

Re my latter clause, how many here know or have known a sexagenarian or septuagenarian whose memory has been partly or largely taken from them by some sort of dementia? Willie Wood is 79, and his case is truly sad. Mrs. SVPete and I lost, late last year, a friend to Alzheimers who was 69, whose deterioration began some 15 years earlier. Absent a definite diagnosis that may or may not be possible at nearly 50 years' remove, it is no service to anyone - least of all Willie Wood - except for ambulance-chasing lawyers to ascribe Wood's condition to having played football.