Ralph Wenzel, Whose Dementia Led to Debate on Football Safety, Dies at 69 Ralph Wenzel, a former National Football League lineman whose early-onset dementia helped draw attention to recent debates about the safety of football, died on June 18 in Annapolis, Md. The cause was complications of dementia, said his wife, Eleanor Perfetto. A guard for the Pittsburgh Steelers and the San Diego Chargers from 1966 to 1973, and later a successful teacher and coach, Mr. Wenzel began having significant memory lapses and other cognitive problems in 1995 at age 52. Those symptoms worsened to the point that he could no longer work, communicate or feed himself; he began living in a home for dementia patients in 2006. At reunions, Dr. Perfetto, who has a Ph.D. in public health, had met other retired N.F.L. players experiencing similar problems. When a debate over football's long-term effect on brain function began making national news soon after Mr. Wenzel was institutionalized, Dr. Perfetto forcefully held out her husband as an example of football's costs to its players and the families left caring for them. The N.F.L. consistently countered that the dementia experienced by a rising number of former players could not be attributed to football. In a profile in March 2007 in The New York Times, Dr. Perfetto said that in more lucid times, Mr. Wenzel had assessed his total number of on-field concussions as "more than I can count." During one game, he was knocked unconscious for 5 or 10 seconds, stumbled to the wrong huddle, took a few plays off and then returned to the field. Dr. Perfetto allowed subsequent profiles of Mr. Wenzel in the news media to raise public awareness of football's risks. She confronted N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell outside a 2008 meeting with retired players when he did not allow her to attend on Mr. Wenzel's behalf. Most notably, she described his case before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on football head injuries in October 2009. "The N.F.L. must stop its denial of the relationship between brain trauma and brain disease," Dr. Perfetto testified, urging the league to become the "proactive leader that it should be" and adding that she would have taken Mr. Wenzel to the hearing had his health allowed it. "The denial is disrespectful of the players and the families that are suffering," she said, "and it endangers current players and children." Without citing Mr. Wenzel specifically, the league soon acknowledged that the dementia exhibited by retirees like him could be football-related. The league began not only revising its policies and safety rules pertaining to head injuries, but also advocating similar changes that have improved safety at the youth level. Dr. Perfetto said last week that she had told Mr. Wenzel about the effect of his case, "but by that time, he couldn't understand." Boston University will test his brain tissue for chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative disease caused by repetitive head trauma that is linked to symptoms resembling early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Ralph Richard Wenzel was born on March 14, 1943, in San Mateo, Calif. He was an 11th-round pick of the Green Bay Packers in the 1966 draft out of San Diego State, where he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in education. He later coached at San Diego City College, the University of Rhode Island and North Carolina Central University. Besides his wife, Mr. Wenzel is survived by his son, Matthew; his daughter, Amy Wenzel McCoy; his parents, Richard and Leslie Wenzel; his brother, Alan; and four grandchildren. His first marriage, to Gretchen Wenzel, ended in divorce.