David J. ‘Dave’ Pivec, former NFL player and Baltimore business executive, dies

David J. “Dave” Pivec, a former NFL tight end who became a millionaire business executive and philanthropist, died of complications from dementia May 11 at his Cockeysville home. He was 80.

“Dave was such a great ballplayer and a really good guy,” said Robert Papa, his University of Notre Dame football teammate and roommate. “He was aggressive, tough and a well-liked guy, and he was big. He was 6 feet, 3 inches and weighed 240 pounds, which was typical in those days for a player, and he could catch anything. 

“He was unstoppable on the field and I remember during a kickoff when he banged heads with another player and you could hear it throughout the stadium,” Mr. Papa said.

David John Pivec, son of Jerome Pivec, a plumber, and Eleanore Doherty Pivec, a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised in the 400 block of North Luzerne Avenue in Highlandtown.

By the time he was 8, he was so large that he played on the age 10-12 football team of the old Red Shield Boys Club on Clinton Street.

When he entered the old Patterson Park High School, he played on the varsity football, basketball and baseball teams.

Football coach Irv Biasi proved to be an unrelenting force in the lives of Mr. Pivec and his teammates.

“He pretty much would not let us quit, drummed it into us that we only got what you deserved and that you earned your way to the top,” Mr. Pivec told The Sun in 2004. “It made me develop this tremendous fear of failure, one I still have.”

Named an All-American in football his senior year, Mr. Pivec held a record for years of scoring 44 points in a single game, against Carver Vocational-Technical High School.

Wooed by recruiters, when he graduated in 1961 from the new Patterson on Kane Street, Mr. Pivec chose to attend the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana.

“I wanted to get the best education I could,” he told The Sun. “I knew I didn’t want to dig ditches in the heat of Baltimore summers, putting pipe together like my father did.”

He earned a varsity letter his first year at Notre Dame, but left in his sophomore year after being in a barroom fight.

“I was emotionally deflated. Felt that I had let down my family, my friends, my neighborhood,” he said in the interview.

Mr. Pivec signed with the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts, where he was a tight end for two years, until being drafted by the NFL’s Chicago Bears, who immediately traded him to the Los Angeles Rams, where he played for three years.

He then played one season for the Denver Broncos before calling it quits.

“It was becoming a grind, constantly moving, always renting your furniture and car,” he told The Sun, as he had married Sharon Stamey in 1974 and the couple had young children.

He took an advertising job for CBS Records in Los Angeles and then joined an ad firm in Minnesota.

In 1976, he returned to Baltimore and established Pivec Advertising Ltd., now 186 Advertising, and became the mid-Atlantic representative for 170 Toyota dealerships.

“He was never afraid to ask questions and could see things from another person’s point of view,” said a son, Grant Pivec, of Timonium.

“He had tenacity on the football field and in business. He never let play get in the way of work, and no matter what you may have done the night before, he always said, ‘You show up for tee time,'” his son said.

In 1999, Mr. Pivec purchased, with his partner Gordon Boone, the franchise for the Baltimore Bayhawks, a professional lacrosse team.

“Dave was bigger than life, had a great demeanor and was well-liked, He was a man’s man who liked people who had ideas,” Mr. Boone said.

Mr. Pivec and his son became part owners of Courtney’s Restaurant on Padonia Road in Timonium and in 2001 opened Piv’s Pub on York Road, which they operated until 2015.

His wife managed the restaurant and worked with her husband at Pivec Advertising.

Mr. Pivec retired in 2019.

“I want to make money because life is not a charity affair,” he told The Sun. “But when you have lots of money what does it really mean? Comfort? Status? Security? I do what I do because I like to see children smile.”

He contributed to his former boys club in Highlandtown, now the Salvation Army Boys and Girls Club, among other causes.

Mr. Pivec enjoyed spending time at a second home on the Magothy River and winters in Florida.

Reflecting on his life, Mr. Pivec told the Sun: “It’s nice to be remembered as an athlete. … Having attended Notre Dame and having played in the NFL puts me in a very small club. But being able to contribute to the lives of others is a gift outside of athletics, a gift much more appreciated in the giving, one so much more important.”

He was a communicant of the Roman Catholic Church of the Nativity in Lutherville, where a funeral Mass was offered Saturday.

In addition to his wife of 50 years and son, Mr. Pivec is survived by another son, Todd Pivec, of Jessup; three daughters, Courtney Pivec, of Timonium, Robynne Quinn, of Jensen Beach, Florida, and Heather Pivec, of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; 13 grandchildren; and a great-grandson.