Frederick William Enke (December 15, 1924 – April 13, 2014) was a professional

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

quarterback The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...

who played in seven

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

(NFL) seasons from 1948 to 1954 for the

Detroit Lions The Detroit Lions are a professional American football team based in Detroit. The Lions compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) North Division. The team play their home games at Ford ...

, the

Philadelphia Eagles The Philadelphia Eagles are a professional American football team based in Philadelphia. The Eagles compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. The team plays ...

, and the

Baltimore Colts The Baltimore Colts were a professional American football team that played in Baltimore from its founding in 1953 to 1984. The team now plays in Indianapolis, as the Indianapolis Colts. The team was named for Baltimore's history of horse breed ...

. He started for the Lions for two years. Enke played

college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States. Unlike most ...

at the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. T ...

and was drafted in the seventh round of the

1948 NFL Draft The 1948 National Football League Draft was held on December 19, 1947, at the Fort Pitt Hotel in Pittsburgh. This was the second year that the first overall pick was a bonus pick determined by lottery, with the previous year's winner Chicago Bea ...

. Enke was inducted into the

Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...

High School Sports Hall of Fame as an inaugural member in 2007. He graduated from Tucson High School as a three-sport star (

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

) in 1943 after starting a 52-game winning streak for the school as quarterback. He was a two-time All State quarterback leading the Badgers to the State Championship in all three sports during the 1942–43 school year. He was the first Arizonan to start as a quarterback in the NFL. After leaving the NFL, Enke retired to

Casa Grande, Arizona , settlement_type = City , image_skyline = Casa Grande-Casa Grande Union High School-1920-2.jpg , imagesize = 250px , image_caption = Historic Casa Grande Union High School which now serves as the ...

to become a cotton farmer.Hansen, Greg (January 21, 2014)
Former UA, NFL QB Enke still stands tall
''Arizona Daily Star''; accessed February 5, 2018.

Personal life

His father, Fred August Enke, was a

college basketball In United States colleges, top-tier basketball is governed by collegiate athletic bodies including National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), the United States Collegiate Athleti ...

coach.

Death

Fred Enke died in 2014 from

dementia Dementia is a disorder which manifests as a set of related symptoms, which usually surfaces when the brain is damaged by injury or disease. The symptoms involve progressive impairments in memory, thinking, and behavior, which negatively affe ...

, aged 89, in

.Obituary (April 14, 2014)
Ex-Arizona 3-sport star, NFL QB Fred Enke dies
, sacbee.com, April 14, 2014; accessed February 5, 2018.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Enke, Fred William 1924 births 2014 deaths People from Casa Grande, Arizona Sportspeople from Pinal County, Arizona Basketball players from Tucson, Arizona Basketball players from Louisville, Kentucky Players of American football from Tucson, Arizona Players of American football from Louisville, Kentucky Tucson High School alumni American football quarterbacks Arizona Wildcats football players Detroit Lions players Philadelphia Eagles players Baltimore Colts players American men's basketball players Arizona Wildcats men's basketball players Deaths from dementia in Arizona

Personal life

Death

See also

References