Randy Schaefer was unflappable.
No matter the circumstances, he was always friendly. He always maintained his faith. He was always positive.
In short, he was always Randy.
And 50 years after he suffered a life-changing injury — 38 years after he died — fond memories of Randy and the legacy he left behind still live in the hearts of the countless number of people he impacted, here in Greeley and elsewhere.
When Randy’s mother, Doris, compares the type of person her son was before a severe neck injury on the football field Sept. 18, 1975, left him paralyzed from the neck down to the type of person he was after the injury — she sees no difference in the person her son was on the inside.
Different life circumstances, no doubt. Same Randy.
“He was calm, and he talked to everybody,” Doris recalls. “All the young, little kids said, ‘I want to grow up to be like Randy Schaefer.’ … After he got hurt, people would say, ‘I don’t know what to say to him.’ I would say, ‘Well, he’s still Randy. He’s still a human being. He’s the same person. Just talk to him like you would before.’ ”
Pictures of Randy Schaefer throughout his life are displayed on a desk in the Schaefer family home in Greeley on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. (Brice Tucker/Staff Photographer)Randy was the oldest of Doris and her deceased husband Gerald’s four children. He had three siblings: sister Tamara and brothers Rodney and Jerry Allen. Jerry Allen died in 2012.
Fifty years ago, Randy — just 15 years old and 12 days into his sophomore year of high school — jammed his head and neck into the turf while positioning his body low for a tackle in a junior varsity game against Fort Collins.
The injury happened just a few feet from Doris and Gerald, who were watching the game from the sidelines, while their other three children were at home.
“I seen Randy come across the field to try to make the tackle,” said Doris, who is now 87 years old. “And the junior varsity field at Greeley West was real holey, the grass was not very good. And Randy was a little pigeon-toed, so that didn’t help. … There was a dogpile. And when they unpeeled, there was Randy, just laying. I’m looking down. He didn’t get up.”
Doris initially assumed Randy just had the wind knocked out of him.
Longtime area coach and former Greeley West athlete Jim Jorgensen recalls being just a few feet away when the injury happened.
Jim is the son of Juils Jorgensen, who died at 90 years old in 2021 and was the coach of the Spartans’ junior varsity team when Randy was hurt.
Jim was playing quarterback in that game, while Randy was at linebacker on defense.
Jim was on the sidelines during the play, as the Spartans’ defense was on the field. He remembers the scene vividly.
“It was 3rd-and-long, and I’m standing next to my dad,” Jorgensen said. “We were playing Fort Collins, and they ran a sweep towards us on the sideline. We kind of just backed up, and literally, Randy landed, basically laying on mine and Dad’s feet. And he just kind of rolled up and looked up at Dad and says, ‘I can’t move.’ ”
Juils Jorgensen stands in his home in 2016 in Greeley. Jorgensen was the coach that witnessed Randy Schaefer's injury 50 years ago. (Greeley Tribune file photo)Even though Jorgensen would have plenty of fond memories of Randy even after the injury, that scene still lingers in Jorgensen’s mind to this day.
“That was haunting,” he said. “It was haunting for my dad, I know, because he always felt that because he was the coach, he was a little responsible for that, which is ridiculous. But it was tough for me, too. I just remember looking into Randy’s eyes and seeing that fear that was in his eyes right at that moment.”
Jorgensen remembers showing up to practice that next day, and about 10 kids on the team decided they were never going to play football again after witnessing Randy’s injury.
The injury would require Randy to utilize a wheelchair and breathe through a ventilator for the rest of his life. He lived for about another decade after the injury.
He died at 26 years old in 1987 after his breathing tube came loose in the middle of the night while he slept.
Rodney was 8, Tamara was 10, and Jerry Allen was 13 when Randy was injured.
In many ways, each of Randy’s three siblings were simply too young to adequately process what had happened to their older brother at the time of the injury.
Yet, Rodney very much remembers the precise moment he, Tamara and Jerry Allen found out about Randy’s life-altering injury.
“I remember my dad coming home that evening and saying, ‘Hey, Randy got hurt and broke his neck. Mom is up at the hospital,’ ” Rodney said. “I’m 8 years old. So I’m thinking, ‘Well, he broke his neck, so they’ll put a cast on and he’ll be right home.’
“Well, they didn’t come home.”
Weeks later, Randy’s siblings were finally able to visit Randy, who was now staying at Swedish Medical Center in Denver.
“I remember the moment the three of us walked into his room, it was hard,” Tamara said. “Walking into his room and seeing your big brother laying on that bed, all the tubes and the breathing machine … we walked in as little, vulnerable, naive kids. And not a word was said, to be honest, because we didn’t know what to say.
“… That was pretty much the moment when all our lives truly changed.”
Randy Schaefer poses for a photo in 1974. He was in ninth grade. (Schaefer family/Courtesy)Doris constantly fought for Randy’s life, even when some medical professionals advised her just to let go.
She said she’ll always be thankful for the vast support people from all over offered her and her family after Randy’s injury.
“We heard from people from the East Coast to the West Coast, because it was in the national newspapers,” she said. “And then the kids Randy went to school with in elementary or out here at Franklin (Middle School), they saw it and they sent cards and stuff.”
To say Randy came from a nurturing household would be an understatement.
Doris didn’t only take care of her own children. She seemed to care for the entire neighborhood’s kids within her warm, welcoming home of 57 years in the heart of Greeley.
“All the other kids, their parents weren’t concerned,” Doris said. “If anybody needed to find their kid, they came here. We had fun. One time, they had a party with Randy and his friend. We had about 60 people in the backyard playing volleyball. My husband made hamburgers, and I made a big bowl of potato salad.”
Though Randy would spend the rest of his life after the injury splitting time between his childhood home and in assisted-living and independent facilities, Doris would remain his primary caretaker. She would routinely train nurses on the proper way to care for her son.
Ultimately, the entire Schaefer family was well-versed in all that went into caring for Randy on a daily basis.
“By the time I was 10, 11 years old, the whole family were like nurses,” Rodney said.
Doris recalls having a premonition, of sorts, just a couple days before Randy was injured.
“I’m talking to my supervisor at work, and I’m looking out the window,” Doris said. “I said, ‘You know. I’m so lucky. I have four healthy children. But I have a feeling, one day, I’m going to get a big ‘lump.’ Two days later, I got my lump. I have premonitions. I also had a premonition about Randy being paralyzed six weeks before it happened but in baseball.”
Randy Schaefer poses in his baseball uniform in 1975. (Shaefer family/Courtesy)In the immediate aftermath of the injury, Randy was transferred from North Colorado Medical Center to to Swedish Medical Center. From there, he would ultimately make his way to Craig Rehabilitation Center in Englewood.
Embracing a new reality
Before the injury, Randy was a stellar young multisport athlete.
Even though his injury dashed his hopes of one day playing sports in college, or maybe even in the pros, Randy never surrendered his friendly demeanor or his ever-positive approach to life.
“I never saw him cry once,” Tamara said. “He never felt sorry for himself. He never questioned his faith. He never questioned, ‘Why me?’ He always tried so hard. That’s how he was, even in the wheelchair, trying to get out of it, trying to breathe on his own. I think he was a mentor to so many people. He was so positive. He always smiled. You never heard him complain once about the wheelchair, about what he couldn’t do, about his circumstances.”
Tamara said that Randy, always the optimist, almost treated his injury as a blessing. The injury gave him a completely different perspective on life.
“When you’re 15, you’re an athlete, you’re strong, life is great, and you’re invincible, you may not have an appreciation for life like you do when something like this happens,” she said. “He said, ‘I met people I would never have met.’ He just had a different perspective because of it. And I think that’s a remarkable human being.”
Brent Poppe was a former teammate and lifelong friend of Randy.
Not many people experienced Randy’s trademark charm and joy more closely than did Poppe.
Poppe said Randy seem to exude even more positivity after his neck injury.
While most people would be consumed with justifiable sorrow and despair after suffering such a traumatic injury, Randy seemed to gravitate in the opposite direction.
“He was just always a positive guy, and I especially noticed that after his injury,” Poppe said. “I spent a lot of time with him, and in all the years that he was paralyzed, I only saw him down one time. He just had an attitude that he was going to make it. … He sure put a smile on everybody’s face.”
Randy Schaefer poses in front of a Christmas tree in 1984. (Shaefer family/Courtesy)Poppe can recall sharing times that were so enjoyable with Randy that sometimes Randy had to politely ask his close friend to take a break from making him laugh so much so he could catch his breath via his ventilator.
“You had to talk with him in between breaths of his ventilator,” Poppe said. “You would get him to laugh so much, he’d tell you to stop because he wasn’t getting enough air.”
‘Nothing stopped him’
In addition to always having such a positive mental outlook, Randy would also try to get the most out of his body — and out of life itself. He would outright refuse to let his obvious physical limitations hold him down.
“I would load him up in the van, and we’d go out to the lake, because he wanted to go fishing with me,” Rodney said. “We would go down the dirt road and push his wheelchair down there. He would go anywhere, everywhere.”
Doris recalls that with his kind, welcoming personality, Randy became somewhat of a local celebrity within what was, at the time, a small town.
One of the baseball fields at a former local sports complex at Elks Lakes was named “Randy Schaefer Field”.
The city of Greeley once dedicated a day of the year to Randy, dubbing it “Randy Schaefer Day”.
“When Randy had first come home (from the hospital), they had just built the mall,” Doris said. “Randy said, ‘I don’t know if I want to go in there. Everybody will look at me.’ I said, ‘That’s OK. When they look at you, just turn your head, look at them and give them a smile.’ And, I heard people say, ‘There’s Randy Schaefer. There’s Randy Schaefer.'”
Tamara said that Randy actually loved when young children would run up to him at the mall and ask what happened to him or why he was in that wheelchair. He was always gracious and eager to tell his story.
And in his decade-plus of life after the injury, not only did he never feel sorry for himself; he never stopped pushing forward.
He essentially learned to use his wheelchair as a valuable tool rather than viewing it as a hindrance.
“He would control that (wheelchair) — and I have no idea how — just by the pressure of when he would sip on (a tube used for navigation) and the pressure of when he would puff on it. And he could maneuver that thing,” Tamara said. “He would cruise all over Greeley.”
Randy Schaefer poses for a photo in 1974. (Schaefer family/Courtesy)Tamara has fond memories of taking Randy to New Year’s Eve celebrations and other social gatherings.
She also has a not-as-fond memory of one time she and Randy were at home alone in the family’s backyard on the verge of being caught in an approaching tornado.
Randy took charge to assure his younger sister was safe.
“He said, ‘Tam, you need to go down to the basement and you need to get in the corner, in the bathroom, and do this right now,'” Tamara said. “I told him, ‘I’m not leaving you out here.’ Between our garage and our house, there’s a breezeway. He said, ‘Put me in the breezeway, and you go down and you get safe.'”
Tamara refused to leave her big brother behind. So, they both tucked into the breezeway, and fortunately, the storm passed before the tornado could reach them.
Tamara considered Randy her mentor. He was the perfect big brother.
In fact, Randy inspired Tamara to dedicate much of her life to assisting people with disabilities.
After the injury, Randy ultimately returned to school to earn his GED certificate.
He could use a stick to type on a keyboard.
He would play backgammon with his siblings.
He would paint using his mouth.
At one point, he worked from home for Hewlett-Packard.
He even flashed some entrepreneurial skill by purchasing a soda machine for the family’s backyard. He would stock the machine up with beverages that were then routinely purchased by the many guests who came by the Schaefers’ frequently visited home.
“Nothing stopped him,” Tamara said. “He was an amazing human being. … I’m so grateful for the perspective that God gave him in that he got to see life in a whole new way — appreciation of people, dedication, commitment. That’s really where the legacy continues.”
Randy would also frequently contribute to his church. He and his family have credited their faith for helping him maintain such a positive outlook during his 26 years of life.
“He had so much faith,” Tamara said. “He would talk about how he was going to walk again. That was perspective on how he could continue the journey and use the purpose.”
A photo of Randy Schaefer's grave with a couple of Greeley West items on it. (Shaefer family/Courtesy)A different world
Neither Tamara, nor the rest of the family, blame the sport of football for Randy’s injury
In fact, Tamara married a pro football player, Reggie Doss, who played in the National Football League for the Los Angeles Rams from 1978-88 and even competed in Super Bowl XIV.
Still, Tamara and Reggie allowed their three boys to play only flag football, rather than tackle football, until they were in high school.
Even though a high-contact sport like football will never be entirely safe, the medical community has made meaningful advancements in recent decades in regards to preventing, handling and treating traumatic head and neck injuries on the field.
Dr. Sourav Poddar is a sports medicine physician at UCHealth CU Sports Medicine-Colorado Center in Denver. He’s also an associate professor of family medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine.
He has practiced sports medicine for 26 years. He has also worked as a team physician for the University of Colorado football team for 22 years.
Poddar points out that just a year after Schaefer’s injury, the act of spearing — leading with the crown of the helmet for a tackle or block — was banned at the college and high school football levels. The NFL followed suit three years later.
That led to a significant drop in quadriplegia cases.
It also seemingly ignited an effort to continue to modify the rulebook, decade after decade, to further reduce the risk of head and neck injuries.
“Medicine changes all the time; we continue to try to do things better,” Poddar said. “But when we’re thinking about sports, probably the biggest impact that we make are with rule changes. … Especially over the past couple decades, every year, the NFL is looking at, ‘OK. How do we continue to make the game safer for our athletes?'”
There have also been changes in recent decades to the manner in which head and neck injuries are handled the moment they occur on the football field.
Poddar said, nowadays, during football games at all levels — including high school — there is almost always someone with proper medical training, whether it be an athletic trainer, a physician and/or paramedics, on the sidelines ready to respond at a moment’s notice.
From top left, Doris Schaefer, Randy Schaefer, Jerry Allen Schaefer, Gerald Schaefer, Tamara (Schaefer) Doss and Rodney Schaefer pose for a family photo. (Schaefer family/Courtesy)Such protocol was far less common 50 years ago when Schaefer suffered his injury.
Of course, even the most immediate of medical responses may not be adequate to prevent lifechanging injuries like Schaefer’s.
But these advances, along with a strong push to teach young athletes proper tackling form, aim to significantly curtail the frequency of catastrophic injuries in a sport where contact is king.
“Things are so different,” Poddar said. “How the game was played in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, even the ’80s, started evolving in the ’90s and 2000s. It will be really interesting to see what is purported with the old guys and how things are going to be moving forward with all these new protections and rules.”
Yet, another notable factor that has been utilized in recent decades with the hope of reducing head and neck injuries is simply, awareness.
People in the medical field, the coaching ranks and even the general population are simply more knowledgeable about head and neck injuries than they were 20, 30, 40 years ago.
Rare is the push to play through injuries, which was once a common approach in football and other sports.
What might have once been referred to as “getting your bell rung” just to return to the game a few plays later has been replaced by concussion protocols that sometimes take weeks for an athlete to complete before they return to the field.
“When I played back in the 70s, I don’t know how many concussions I had,” Jorgensen said. “You would get hit. You would get ‘dinged.’ I remember going in the wrong huddle one time. I was definitely concussed. I went off to the sideline for about three plays and I went back in. That’s just how it was back then.”
It was once common practice for a coach to try to revive an unconscious player by simply shaking them — something people now know can significantly worsen the effects of a neck injury.
If a young athlete returns home postgame feeling a little “loopy” after receiving a hit to the head, most adults now know to immediately bring that child to a medical facility rather than assuming their condition will ultimately return to normal.
“Awareness has really moved the needle,” Poddar said. “And I see this even from a practical day-to-day standpoint. Athletes, a lot of times, used to try to hide injuries. It’s the tough guy mentality, and you’re playing a collision sport. But, now, they’re aware.”
Along the same lines of awareness, Poddar mentions the evolution of strength and conditioning programs that athletes go through in the preseason, which are better designed and optimized now to mitigate the frequency and overall severity of head and neck injuries.
A lasting legacy
It might be impossible to find anyone who has a single negative thing to say about Randy Schaefer.
Likewise, even as a teenager and young person, Schaefer seemingly never had a bad thing to say about anyone else — even in the most brief, impulsive moments of warranted frustration while near those who were closest to him.
“Randy never said one bad word, he never cussed me out or spit on me, any of those things,” Doris said. “When they were wanting to put him in a Denver (assisted-living facility), he said, ‘Mom, if they put me in there, I’ll die, because they don’t know how to take care of me.’
“… 10 1/2 years — he was the most perfect patient. And he was determined. He just knew he was going to walk again one day.”
Juils Jorgensen finds himself in an old team photo from his time coaching with the Greeley West Spartans. Juils and his children visited Randy Schaefer's grave every year at the beginning of the football season. (Greeley Tribune file photo)Jeff Richardson was perhaps Randy’s best friend, beginning when they were in elementary school together. They were locker partners in junior high and in high school before Randy got hurt.
Randy had a paper route when he was young, before the injury.
When Richardson would spend the night at the Schaefer house, the next morning, he would get up early with Randy, ride his bike and follow behind Randy.
Randy would have his newspaper sack hanging from his shoulder, as he he slung papers from house to house.
Richardson would carry another bag full of newspapers while he rode his bike. And, when Randy would run out of papers in one sack, he would swap with Richardson and proceed along his route.
It’s safe to say, wherever you found Randy, Richardson wouldn’t be far behind, and vice versa.
“He was something special. … He had a big heart,” Richardson said of Randy. “I think about him often. … That man would have went far in life, whether it was in sports or he would have nailed a really good job and used his head to make a lot of money with whatever career he would have picked up.”
When Randy was in the hospital after the injury, Richardson would frequently visit him with a group of friends, including Debbie Shaw, Randy’s girlfriend at the time. Randy would confide to Richardson that he one day hoped to marry Debbie.
The love that Randy had for his friends, his family, his community and for life itself was infectious.
Everyone around Randy seemed to take after him.
“He’s really the mentor of my life,” Tamara said. “I learned so much from him and from being with him. I am who I am today — spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically — because of his leadership, our relationship, his wisdom and advice. Would I have liked another day, week, month, year with him? Yeah. Would I have loved to have seen him live until 30, 40, 50? Yes, I would have. … But, I really did treasure every day with him.”
Hence then, the article about 50 years later former greeley west football player leaves lasting legacy was published today ( ) and is available on GreeleyTribune ( Saudi Arabia ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( 50 years later, former Greeley West football player leaves lasting legacy )
Also on site :