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              DAVID JOHN CASPER

DAVID JOHN CASPER

PRO FOOTBALL HALL OF FAME, PRO BOWL 1976-1980, FIRST TEAM ALL-PRO, 1976, 1977, 1978, AND 1979

David Casper was born in Bemidji, Minnesota, in 1952. He is known for his achievements on the American football field, but is most proud of his family, his marvelous wife of 49 years, Susan, his three children, and their five grandchildren.


He had early success on the football field when, in 1969, his senior year at Chilton High School in Chilton, Wisconsin, his team out-scored its opponents 363-0.


David attended the University of Notre Dame, graduating with honors in Economics in 1974. He was a member of the Omicron Delta Epsilon Honor Society for Economics. Playing for head coach, Ara Parseghian, he was named an honorable mention All American at offensive tackle in 1972, and then a consensus All American at tight end in 1973. He was captain of the 1973 National Champion team. Parseghian called Casper the finest athlete he ever coached! He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2012.


The Oakland Raiders picked David, nicknamed “Ghost,” in the second round of the 1974 NFL draft. Casper was heavily involved in the first Raider Super Bowl victory and played 11 years in the NFL, finishing his career with 378 receptions and 52 touchdowns in 147 games. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2002 and the NFL All 1970s Team. He was a first team all- pro in 1976, 1977, 1978, and 1979, and the Pro Bowl, 1976-1980.


David was at the center of two of the NFL’s most famous plays during his career, “Ghost to the Post” and the “Holy Roller.


Following his retirement from football, David represented the Northwestern Mutual Financial Network for 25 years, helping business owners with business and personal financial planning. He now is retired and enjoying life in Florida with Susan.

I Don’t Know Any More

DAVID JOHN CASPER


When I was three or four years old, I started counting. Although words and names challenged me, numbers did not. I soon realized that there were really only ten numbers, and you could “stack” those numbers forever. My only limitation was knowing the words for the bunch of the numbers with the next three zeros that came after billion, trillion, and quadrillion, as they marched on to infinity.


In kindergarten, our teacher asked us to count as far as we could. I was scared. This assignment meant I would be there “forever.” I solved the problem by telling a little lie. When I got to the number 32, I said, “I don’t know any more.”


I ran into a similar problem years later, when I started to study space. I could easily see the sun, moon, and stars. They seemed right there. But after learning that they were so many lightyears away, I’d contemplate how monstrously large they must be for us to see them as that small. Then, when I tried to imagine what came past the stars, I became deeply perplexed, realizing I couldn’t name a value or a number that would limit space. It seemed that no one could really be able to tell us what is there beyond the stars because there is no “there” in the usual sense of the word. The “there” goes on to infinity, too. At this point I think we all tell ourselves little lies like I did in kindergarten, saying “I don’t know any more.”


It’s frightening to come to the limits of what we can count and measure. But the problem doesn’t stop there. We don’t even know how basic things like gravity actually work. It’s supposed to be the force that binds the universe together. We know what it does and how to measure it, but we can’t explain how it works. We seem for now to have come to the limits of understanding. Then there are even greater mysteries beyond. There seems to be something called “dark matter,” which we know must exist because it makes the calculations about the universe work. But we don’t even know how to ask all the questions about it, let alone explain what it is and how it functions. At least not yet.

Just as I knew that there must be something beyond what my mind can count, I know that something exists that is larger than the universe, and that makes this all work. When I jump and come back down to earth, something is working, whether or not I can explain it. Something went BANG to create the cosmos itself, with its gravity and dark matter and other mysteries that always seem to be there beyond the limits of what we can explain.

We know it exists, that number beyond which we can count and the “there” that lies beyond the stars, the thing that is more than we can see. This Something is there and it’s really big!

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