Greg Ploetz finished this painting after his health problems were in full swing. Former teammate Billy Dale has gathered signatures of Longhorns from the Darrell Royal era on strips and surrounded Greg’s work with them. The tentative plan, still being re-evaluated, is to auction the painting to benefit the Darrell K. Royal Fund for Alzheimer’s Research in conjunction with the Notre Dame-Texas game in September. (Courtesy Billy Dale)
My latest story on Greg Ploetz, who spent part of his childhood in Colorado Springs before becoming a starting defensive tackle for the 1969 national champion Texas Longhorns, is in the Monday paper and online. As the story details, Greg had severe dementia issues, died in May and last week his widow, Deb, was told Greg suffered from Stage 4 CTE. This came after the couple’s brief stay in Colorado in 2014, when they hoped to be able to openly administer marijuana-based oils and products to help manage Greg’s dementia symptoms.
The picture above and caption takes care of one passage that didn’t make the story, and here are several others.
Greg Ploetz is at left at the September 2004 joint reunion of ’69 Texas and Arkansas teams in Fayetteville. Since I had interviewed many of the players on both teams and written a book on them, I was the “neutral” guest speaker. I’m second from the right. Between us are Benton County Judge John Scott and Arkansas kicker Bill McClard. Texas rover Mike Campbell is at right.
— The story quotes Greg Ploetz with the kicker: “…said in 2001.” That was before his dementia was full-blown. The way the story was edited, it isn’t clear why that interview was conducted and it isn’t clear that I’m not borrowing from someone else (minus attribution).
To be clear, this is from my own interview of Ploetz for my book Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming. I would have been asked to cite the source of the quote if I was borrowing it from anyone else. But since it’s from my own work, that specification was eliminated.
I retrieved the Ploetz cassette from the case holding all the tapes of my interviews for HHNC Sunday and listened to it again. It was wrenching.
— Greg thought he was headed for Oklahoma until Texas head coach Darrell Royal came to Sherman and took Ploetz and high school teammate Mike Dean and their parents out to dinner, both Sherman boys ended up Longhorns. “I said, ‘OK, I’m in,’ ” Ploetz recalled with a laugh.
— Deb agreed to be part of a Netflix documentary on the subject of marijuana products and managing dementia and Alzheimer’s symptoms, and returned to the Denver area to tape a segment at a Cherry Creek medical marijuana dispensary.
Julius Whittier, 2001
— A year ago, . Whittier had been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. His lawsuit asked for $50 million on behalf of college players who did not make the NFL but are suffering from brain injuries. (I also interviewed Whittier for HHNC, and this picture is from that session.)
Greg Ploetz’s former roommate and teammate, David Richardson, presents Deb Ploetz with the $14,000 check from the UT Lettermen Support Group in Arvada in 2014.
Terry Frei: tfrei@denverpost.com or
