Star fullback blocked out a path to a career in radiology
Staff writer
Ron Oelschlager doesn’t remember which team selected him in the 1965 NFL draft.
“It was either the Cowboys or the Broncos,” Oelschlager said. “One of them took me in the very late rounds.”
Oelschlager, a Marion High School graduate of 1961, is 82 now but still spritely. At the high school last week to present a scholarship in his honor, he flutters from conversation to conversation.
He speaks with enthusiasm and speed, as if he’s on a few shots of espresso. He cracks jokes and makes a reporter promise not to relay them to his wife.
So it’s not memory loss that causes him not to recall whether it was Denver or Dallas. (It was the Broncos, with the 145th overall pick.)
It’s more like one of the best athletes in county history doesn’t actually care which NFL team picked him. It’s not as if he accepted, anyway.
Born in Clay Center, Oelschlager moved to Marion in eighth grade after his parents bought a furniture store in town.
He played several sports in high school, including track and basketball.
His lack of offensive acumen in basketball gave him the unwanted position of “standing guard,” in which he was told to stand around and not touch the ball on offense.
Oelschlager found his sport in football, which he began playing in high school after coach Edward Frickey recruited him.
“A great guy,” Oelschlager said of Frickey. “A really encouraging guy. … We had an awfully good faculty here.”
Oelschlager also was complimentary of his high school classmates.
“Class was full of really good guys.” he said. “We had four D1 scholarships, guys that got PhDs.”
On the gridiron, the Marion–Hillsboro rivalry of the ’60s was heated, and Oelschlager excelled in the aggressive atmosphere.
“It used to be a bloodbath,” he said. “They’d come over and pull crap over in Marion. The others in that league, Peabody and Herington — they were rivals, but not like Hillsboro.”
After four years of leading the football team (he wasn’t bad at track, either, winning the state 60-yard dash his senior year), Oelschlager recieved a football scholarship from the University of Kansas.
It was a bit awkward. His two closest friends, fellow athletes John Christensen and John Russell, had offers from rival Kansas State. But Oelschlager accepted anyway.
As a 6-foot, 205-pound defensive back and halfback, Oelschlager sat on the bench his first year at KU.
Freshmen weren’t allowed to play varsity football, per NCAA regulations at the time.
From his sophomore year on, Oelschlager became a vital cog in the Jayhawk machine.
During his senior year, coach Jack Mitchell moved him to the fullback position, despite his lack of size.
“That’s when my brain damage started,” Oelschlager joked. “Why he decided to move me there, I had no idea. After I graduated, he got a big laugh out of it. You had to know Jack. He was kind of a loose cannon.”
Oelschlager was joined in the backfield by no less than Gale Sayers, the “Kansas Comet” and eventual Hall of Famer for the Chicago Bears.
“If they handed me the ball, it was a mistake,” Oelschlager said.
Nonetheless, he was a capable rusher himself, racking up 431 yards and three touchdowns in just seven games at fullback.
Oelschlager’s combination of on- and off-field intellect led to his selection to the Academic All-Big 8 team three times.
He also was elected to the National Football Foundation Scholar-Athletes Hall of Fame after graduating KU.
Doug Westerhaus, a friend who accompanied Oelschlager in awarding the 408 Recognition Scholarship to senior Kenna Wesner last week, recalled attending Jayhawk games during Oelschlager’s college career.
Westerhaus’ father had season tickets.
Getting autographs from players “was always a big deal for us 10-year-old kids,” Westerhaus said.
No matter how brightly Oelschlager shone on the field, he never considered football as his career of choice.
Charlie Magee and T.C. Ensey, two Marion doctors, had encouraged the young man to go to medical school as soon as he arrived in town.
“Those two sent me to thinking,” Oelschlager said. “I really liked them, and they took care of me and my mother. … I decided when I was a sophomore or junior that I wanted to go to med school.”
NFL higher-ups tried to persuade him otherwise.
Oelschlager recalled speaking to legendary Cowboys scout Gil Brandt as well as Buffalo Bills coach Lou Saban at the Kansas City airport.
He told both men he planned to go to medical school.
The Broncos took a flyer on Oelschlager in the 1965 draft anyway, hoping he might be convinced after the fact.
He had the chance, after all, to become the first professional athlete in recent county history.
Charlie Faust, Tex Jones, and Fay Moulton, two baseball players and an Olympic sprinter, hailed from Marion County, but none of the three played past 1911.
“It was ego-gratifying, obviously, when those guys flew in and tried to talk me into it,” Oelschlager said. “But, stupid or not stupid, I wanted to go to med school.”
He defends his decision to this day, pointing out that football wasn’t nearly as lucrative as it is now and that he could easily have been cut from pro team.
“Who says I’d have made it?” Oelschlager said. “They were talking six rounds.”
In any case, Oelschlager remained at KU for medical school.
He went to a surgery residency in 1969 for two years, then spent three more honing his craft as a radiologist.
In 1974, he was drafted into the military. He spent two years at Fort Eustis, Virginia.
“They didn’t need a radiologist in Vietnam,” Oelschlager said. “And if they’d have given me a gun, I’d have hurt myself.”
Watching an Oklahoma State football game in 1976, Oelschlager ran into fellow radiologist, veteran, and Jayhawk Dave Heibert, who was moonlighting as a team physician with OSU.
Oelschlager asked Heibert what he should do with the rest of his life.
Heibert told him to go back to Lawrence and work at the hospital.
Once again, Oelschlager took the advice as gospel.
“It was an impressive hospital,” Oelschlager said. “I really didn’t think of anyplace else.”
He would work as a radiologist in Lawrence for the next quarter-century, retiring with the new millennium.
Pushed to compare his two careers of football and radiology, Oelschlager said it couldn’t be done.
“I don’t think they’re too compatible,” he said.
Although, he conceded, “You don’t get called in the middle of the night in football.”
He still is grateful to the sport. It paid for college and about three years of med school, after all.
But he has no regrets about opting for a career in radiology.
Last week was Oelschlager’s first time back in Marion in four years.
He lives in Lawrence, and his parents, formerly the reason to make the trip, died a while back.
The scholarship Oelschlager was in town to present was recently tweaked.
For the first 20 years of its existence, the 408 Recognition Scholarship was made in honor of school coaches.
But two years ago, Westerhaus convinced the scholarship’s patrons to begin honoring local scholars, as well.
It is fitting that this year the award honored Marion’s definitional scholar-athlete, who gave up a spot on the Denver Broncos for medical school, and who remembers the decision with unwavering pride.