Tim Casey, 63; Played For Chicago Bears
Bill Schenley
FROM: The Oregonian ~
By Norm Maves Jr., Special to The Oregonian
For Tim Casey, life was all about what you did with your
heart.
Casey's chosen arena in his youth was football. He played
it at Jesuit High School and became famous for the way he
played it at the University of Oregon from 1963 to 1965.
Timothy Michael Casey, 63, died of Parkinson's Disease
Friday at a Portland care facility with his family around him.
Such was his influence on a wide range of people that a
memorial service will beheld at 9:30 a.m. Saturday at the
Knight Center at his beloved Jesuit.
Casey wasn't just a football player in his college days --
he was an era.
Football at Oregon was different then. It was played on the
grass at Hayward Field. Rally women in long pleated skirts
cavorted on the cinder track that surrounded the field.
And the Duck defense was called Casey's Commandos.
They were characteristically small, quick -- and ferocious.
"The defense was like the ugly duckling," says Jack Clark, an
undersized (190 pounds) defensive tackle and Tim Casey's
roommate at the Beta Theta Pi fraternity house. "I was a
walk-on who had just earned a scholarship and he was the
fiery go-get-'em leader of the team.
"That was his persona. He'd always be running around saying
'They're more tired than we are.' Sometimes he got going so
fast he'd get to places too soon."
Dave Wilcox was a relatively bony defensive end in 1963 who
went into the NFL Hall of Fame as a San Francisco 49er.
He was a senior when Casey was a sophomore.
"He wasn't a really big guy, but he played hard and intense,"
Wilcox said.
Casey's intensity was already the stuff of high school legends
by the time he reached Eugene. As much as Casey was
identified by Oregon people for his work with the Commandos,
the real alpha and omega of his life was Jesuit High School.
The dust was still settling at the small all-boys school when
Casey got there in the fall of 1958. He graduated in 1962, only
the third class in the school's history.
"He was really the foundation of football at Jesuit," said John
Allen, the Crusaders' coach then. "It was not his physical
being that made him what he was. I've always said it was his
self-efficacy -- the ability to believe that he could cause
something good to happen.
"I'm not talking so much about him as a football player. It was
his intensity and commitment and determination to make
everything around him better.
"That's what singles him out among all the players I ever
coached."
Casey's size finally caught up with him after he left Oregon and
tried the NFL. For all his ferocity and leadership on the field,
the biggest honor he got was first-team academic all-America.
So he did two years on special teams with the Chicago Bears,
played a little semi-pro football for the Eugene Bombers, then
returned to his native Portland as a businessman, probably best
known for Casey Bros. janitorial supply.
And he worked his way back to Jesuit. Even when the
Parkinson's was eroding his ability to move and talk, he'd find
a way to get to Jesuit practices and games.
"He was with us the last five or six years," said Jesuit coach
Ken Potter. "The kids really loved him and he loved them.
Somehow he'd find a way to take a bus from his assisted living
place, then got his walker down to the field. How he got down
there was amazing."
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Stats:
http://www.databasefootball.com/players/playerpage.htm?ilkid=CASEYTIM01