Ex-Packer Nitschke Dies Of Heart Attack Punishing Linebacker Helped Green Bay Win Five Nfl Titles

Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, whose fierce play epitomized the champion Green Bay Packers of the Vince Lombardi era, died Sunday. He was 61.

He died in Florida of a massive heart attack, the Packers said.

Nitschke’s daughter, Amy Klaas, said she and her 17-month-old daughter, Jacqueline, had been visiting with her father at his winter home in Naples, Fla., and they were driving to a friend’s house when her father felt chest pains.

They stopped at a service station in Venice, Fla., and she went in for water and a soft drink. When she returned, he had been stricken.

“A man at the gas station helped me get him out of the car and I started CPR,” she said, adding that a “wonderful lady” then came and relieved her. Her father was taken to Venice Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 1:30 p.m.

Nitschke, a third-round draft pick of the Packers out of Illinois, played for the Packers from 1958 to 1972, and was the defensive anchor on the Lombardi teams that won five NFL titles, including the first two Super Bowls. He on the NFL’s 75th anniversary all-time team.

Nitschke and former Chicago Bears star Dick Butkus were the standard for the punishing middle linebacker of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

“He was one of the great players, not only in Packer history, but in NFL history,” Packers spokesman Lee Remmel said.

In a recent poll, he was voted the fourth-best player in the team’s history, behind receiver Don Hutson, current quarterback Brett Favre, and Bart Starr, the quarterback on Lombardi’s teams.

Nitschke, who made his home in Green Bay after his retirement, was often at Packers practices and traveled to road games. He would chat with whomever approached him - a man whose private demeanor was in stark contrast to his fierce on-field persona.

“The last time I saw him, he was critiquing the entire Super Bowl to me. It comes as a shock,” said Packers offensive lineman Adam Timmerman.

“He was loved by thousands and thousands of Packers fans, because he always had time for them,” said Remmel, who covered the Lombardi teams as a reporter and has been with the team since 1974.

“I remember sitting in the hotel lobbies when we were on the road and he obligingly posed for many photos and signed hundreds of autographs.”

That persona had its effect on the current Packers, Super Bowl champions for the 1996 season and NFC champions in 1997.

“What people don’t understand outside Green Bay is that here we have to exorcise those ghosts - Willie Wood, Willie Davis, Bart Starr, Ray Nitschke,” defensive end Sean Jones said as the Packers were making the run to the Super Bowl in 1996.

“I think Ray Nitschke thinks we stink.”

Not so, Nitschke said, but the image lingered - tough, unyielding, proud.

On the field, Nitschke was a destroyer.

“He was a thunderous tackler,” Remmel said. “He didn’t know the meaning of taking it easy on the football field. He did that every play of his career.

“He was intense about his profession, about as intense as any performer in the history of the game. He was a very devoted father to his three children off the field.”

Nitschke’s daughter said her father should be remembered for his humanity as much as his football ability.

“He was a wonderful human being. He was like the epitome of what a football player should be,” she said. “He thought of it as an honor for somebody to ask him for an autograph. He thought that was a privilege. He took time for anybody.”

The death was the second in the past month involving a former member of the Packers’ championship teams of the 1960s. Ex-defensive end Lionel Aldridge was found dead of natural causes in his suburban Milwaukee apartment Feb. 12, two days shy of his 57th birthday.