Ottawa Hall of Famer with Dementia Soupy Campbell Dies
While Ottawa Rough Rider and Calgary Stampeder Hall of Fame LB Jerry "Soupy" Campbell died of a heart attack at 73, he also suffered dementia and Alzheimer's raising questions once again about football's connection with brain damage.
Here's a link to teammate Bob McKeown's Fifth Estate broadcast on Soupy Campbell and concussions (http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/episodes/201...from-the-field).
The following article contains lots of great stories about his "shenanigans".
Quote:
Campbell died in Toronto early Wednesday, felled by a heart attack at the age of 73.
He suffered from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, but it was when he really lived that we remember him — he always had that mischievous twinkle in his eye. There are stories of Soupy’s shenanigans, some of them outrageous, some of them X-rated — many of them true. ...
As a football player, Campbell was in a class of his own. He started his career in Calgary and wound up there in 1976. But it was the time in Ottawa where he was at his best, winning Grey Cups in 1968, 1969 and 1973. He was a team captain and was the heart and soul of the defensive unit which was tagged Capital Punishment. He was inducted into the Ottawa Sport Hall of Fame in 19995 and the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1996. ...
Campbell was featured in a terrific Fifth Estate with teammate and journalist Bob Mckeown on concussions last November. In recent months, he’d shown flickers of who he was.
“He wasn’t the Soupy he used to be, but there was an emotional response when his football buddies came to visit,” said McKeown. “When I saw him last, about a month ago, he was still as physically robust as I remember him. He looked like he could still play tomorrow. He had a grip like a vice. He seemed physically indestructible, which is why when Kim told me that he’d had a heart attack, I hadn’t even considered that possibility.”
http://ottawacitizen.com/sports/football/cfl/some-of-the-stories-x-rated-but-soupy-campbell-was-a-legend
