Longtime Husker team doctor remembered as ‘excellent, compassionate’ servant

Dr. Pat Clare patrolled the sidelines of Memorial Stadium as the Huskers’ team physician for more than four decades, the kind of position that made him Nebraska’s version of a doctor to the stars.

As a Husker football player himself, intimately familiar with both the ferocity of the game as well as the demands placed on the student athlete, Clare found patients with names like Turner Gill, Tommie Frazier and Brook Berringer under his charge.

A founding member of Nebraska Orthopedics and Sports Medicine, where he worked until his retirement in 2015, Clare was also responsible for countless repairs to knees and ankles, hips and shoulders, and more.

Tim Clare, a member of the University of Nebraska Board of Regents, said while his father was passionate about keeping student athletes healthy and giving patients help in seeking a fulfilling life, the care his father exhibited was constant.

“He was an amazing surgeon, an amazing doctor, caring for people beyond fixing the bones or whatever the injury was,” Tim Clare said. “He was really compassionate, just a great father and grandfather.”

Clare, once described by an Omaha World-Herald columnist as “a gentle soul with a concerned look,” died on Sept. 30. He was 84.

The Sioux City, Iowa, native emerged as one of the Hawkeye state’s top high school athletes in the late 1950s, excelling on the gridiron as “a pug-nose halfback” and in track and field, where he was a state champion in the sprints and throws.

In 1958, Clare turned down an offer to play football at Notre Dame, instead choosing to enroll at the public land grant university in Lincoln.

Tim Clare said his father, who already had been eyeing a career in medicine, was sold on NU after the coaches gave him the blessing to miss some practice time while he completed lab requirements for some of his science courses.

At Nebraska under Bill Jennings, Clare played both offense and defense, becoming one of the Huskers’ first Academic All-Americans in 1960 before he was elected team captain along with Don Purcell and Mick Tingelhoff a year later.

A knee injury that required surgery led Clare to pursue a career in orthopedics rather than pediatrics, Tim Clare said, as he enrolled at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in 1962, graduating in 1966.

Clare interned in Greeley, Colorado, and completed a surgical residency in Minneapolis, Minnesota, before moving to Ohio, where he served as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force Medical Corps, rising to the rank of major before being honorably discharged in 1973.

At the time, Clare had options, his son said. The Minnesota Vikings were calling, interested in bringing him on as their own team doctor. So, too, was his alma mater in Lincoln.

According to Linda Clare, Pat’s wife, “the lure of the locker room” in Memorial Stadium won out and the family moved back to Lincoln.

Clare and his partner, Dr. Charles Newman, succeeded Dr. Paul Goetowski as Husker Athletics’ resident physicians beginning in 1974.

It was a position he would serve in for 41 years.

Tim Clare said his father’s experiences, from recovering from his own knee injury and surgery, to caring for his own children or their friends following injuries, gave him a bedside manner that reassured everyone.

“He had a lot of different angles; he could relate to parents, he could relate to student-athletes, which I think was really a benefit to the athletic department,” Tim Clare said.

Along with football, Clare also served other athletes, working with Huskers that would go on to become national, world and Olympic champions in other sports to ensure they were performing at their top level.

Husker Coach Tom Osborne said the staff quickly learned to lean upon Clare’s expertise and judgment to assess players quickly and accurately during games and practices.

“We trusted Pat implicitly and he did a great job,” Osborne said in a phone interview this week. “He was an excellent surgeon, but also a good person and a good father.

“We had a great deal of respect for all he accomplished,” Osborne added.

Clare was eventually joined on the sidelines by his son, Dr. David Clare, which became an added point of pride for the family, assessing Husker athletes in football, basketball, baseball, wrestling and soccer.

Tim Clare said that in the days since his father’s passing, athletes across the decades have reached out to share their condolences or tell a story of how “Doc Clare” had helped them, often giving them hope in what was a dark time.

“We’re hearing from people that — I don’t even know some of them — but they’re reaching out and sending us letters and cards,” he said. “They talk about how kind and compassionate of a doctor he was. It makes me extremely proud.”

The care Clare showed to his patients was also reflected at home, Tim Clare said, even up to his father’s final days.

As a young boy, Tim Clare said he remembers often waiting for his father to come home after a long day of operating on patients and assessing student-athletes.

Clare never retreated inside after arriving home after dark, but under floodlights he had installed in the back yard, he would quarterback pickup football games, or throw batting practice to his sons, Tim Clare said.

That focus on family grew stronger in the decade after Clare retired.

In addition to being a regular at his grandchildren’s basketball and baseball games, and going on hunting and fishing trips with his sons, Pat and Linda Clare continued hosting the family for Sunday night dinners — a tradition that started a quarter century earlier.

Clare’s last family dinner was Sunday, Sept. 29, Tim Clare said, following a weekend watching his beloved Huskers with his family, as well as attending church.

“Everything was good,” Tim Clare said.

A Rosary will be 7 p.m. Friday at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church at 1940 S. 77th St., with a visitation scheduled beforehand at 6:15 p.m.

A Mass of Christian Burial is scheduled for 10 a.m. Saturday, also at St. Joseph’s, with a reception to follow at Firethorn Golf Club.