Susan Tose Spencer is remembered for her nickname: “The Wicked Witch of the Vet.”

She should be remembered for being the first woman to run an NFL team’s front office.

And for overcoming a culture that was so sexist that it’s difficult to fathom by today’s standards.

The daughter of former Eagles owner Leonard Tose played a vital role in making the Philadelphia franchise solvent and stable. She subsequently helped change the NFL by laying down tracks for steel wheels to follow for generations.

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Among those who followed those tracks were Amy Trask, who was Al Davis’ right hand with the Raiders for years; Dawn Aponte, who held high-ranking positions with the Jets, Browns and Dolphins; Catherine Raiche, the current vice president of football operations for the Eagles; and Kelly Kleine, the Broncos’ executive director of football operations.

“She was one of the first females in that kind of position, if not the very first,” former Eagles personnel director Carl Peterson said of Tose Spencer, who is 80 and suffering from dementia. “She did a lot for women who had not yet set foot in the NFL in administrative positions, maybe more than anybody until Amy Trask.”

In the early 1980s, Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski had two young daughters who he thought could be involved in sports someday. Tose Spencer, in his mind, was a potential role model for them.

“I had respect for her being a trend-setter and pace-setter in the game of football,” he said. “I saw her as a trailblazer who would give women more opportunities.”

Almost all the women in the league at the time were married to owners. Tose Spencer was different because she was a daughter. And more significantly, she was hands-on.

When she was young, Tose Spencer was told by her father to stay away from football. After completing her undergraduate work at Boston University and obtaining a master’s in education and economics from Hofstra in 1962, she worked for five years as a geography teacher at East Meadow Junior High on Long Island.

As a teacher, she showed the resolve and spunk that would become trademarks later. When one of her students acted up repeatedly, she hit him over the head with a history book, according to Briefcase Essentials, a business and leadership book she authored in 2011.

After a divorce, Tose Spencer and her daughter, Marnie Schneider, moved to South Florida, and she started Papillon, a company that designed and made tennis apparel. A disagreement with a partner and a subsequent lawsuit led to the company’s termination.

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At 35, Tose Spencer moved to Philadelphia and enrolled in Villanova’s Charles Widger School of Law. In 1979, she won the prestigious Reimel Moot Court Competition.

While in law school, she began working part-time with the Eagles, handling routine legal matters. In 1980, the year they went to the Super Bowl, she became the team’s legal counsel. Two years later, with law degree in hand, Tose Spencer — she went by Susan Fletcher in those days after taking her second husband’s name — was promoted to vice president of the Eagles.

By then, it had become apparent she would have a significant influence on the franchise.

In early 1982, the nascent Philadelphia Stars of the USFL began a pursuit of Peterson as general manager. For a while, he resisted their overtures, even though his goal was to be a general manager. Eventually, Eagles head coach Dick Vermeil leveled with Peterson.

“Susan is coming in the organization,” Vermeil told Peterson. “She is the daughter of the owner. She’s very bright. I wouldn’t be surprised if she is the next general manager of the Philadelphia Eagles. You should probably consider that in your decision. As much as I’d hate to lose you, this is a heck of an opportunity.”

As a result, Peterson says, Tose Spencer was the impetus for him to move on. He chose Tose Spencer to represent him in negotiations, and with the vice president of the Eagles facilitating the deal, Peterson became part-owner, president and general manager of the Stars.

It may not be accurate to say Tose Spencer was the general manager of the Eagles, though recent stories have called her that. News accounts from the time refer to her as vice president. She wrote that she was “acting general manager.” The Eagles listed Jim Murray as their general manager through 1984 and Harry Gamble as their general manager in 1985.

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Thirty-seven years after Tose Spencer left the NFL, the league still has not had an acknowledged female general manager. Raiche interviewed for the Vikings’ GM position earlier this year.

Tose Spencer’s title wasn’t as significant as her authority, which was far-reaching. Although Tose Spencer was not responsible for personnel — after Peterson left, Lynn Styles chose players — she clearly had abundant power.

“We all knew she was the decision-maker when it came to the direction the franchise was going,” Jaworski said. “Leonard gave her the authority to turn the thing around.”

In an interview with Las Vegas Weekly, Tose Spencer once joked about her qualifications. “(Tose) hired me because I worked cheap,” she said.

The reality? Tose never had a budget for his team before hiring his daughter. He was a reckless spender and an unrestrained gambler who lost between $30 million and $40 million over his lifetime by his daughter’s reckoning, and once reportedly lost $1 million at the tables in a single night.

What the Eagles needed was a stern leader who was unafraid to challenge the status quo. And that’s what they found in Tose Spencer.

Shortly after signing on, she warned other Eagles executives that the team was headed for bankruptcy, but nobody did anything about it. She wrote, “In hindsight, the fact that my inquiring didn’t raise concern among management is in itself curious; this is not surprising, however, as many men have a tendency to underestimate a woman’s intelligence and comprehension of business issues.”

When Tose Spencer became vice president, she didn’t care much about what others thought. She said she developed an “unemotional and distant” attitude that served the situation effectively. In more than one way, she could make people uncomfortable.

The congenial Murray had been the team’s general manager for nine years and was popular with employees, the media and fans. He was credited with being a force in starting the first Ronald McDonald House. Murray watched soap operas with Tose and poured his cocktails. Tose gifted him with 1 percent of the team, bought him a house and referred to him as “my adopted son.”

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But Murray had been part of the financial problems, so upon Tose Spencer’s recommendation, Murray was fired. She also saw to the ousters of longtime business manager Jim Borden, director of sales and marketing Sam Procopio and assistant ticket manager Bob Ellis.

A time clock went up in the team’s offices at her behest because administrators were arriving late and leaving early — unheard of in the NFL. Employees were using a rubber stamp with Tose’s signature to endorse checks. Tose Spencer put an end to it.

She had a large hole cut in the plasterboard that separated her office from the rest of the floor at Veterans Stadium and installed a window so she could see what others were doing.

“They call (the office) the fish tank because it kind of looks like one with that window,” she told Paul Domowitch in a 1984 interview that appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News. “It gives me a chance to look at some good-looking legs.”

The Eagles were traveling to away games on a luxurious jumbo jet and taking along a sizable contingent of non-employees, including many media members. Tose Spencer had the widebody replaced with a regional jet and forced the media to fly commercial, saving as much as $90,000 per trip.

The team’s pregame media buffet had featured filet mignon and lobster at the cost of about $200,000. Instead, Tose Spencer rolled out hot dogs and Philly cheesesteaks.

“My mom said, ‘Dad you have to stop these meals, they are still writing shitty stories about you and we don’t need to feed everybody anymore,’” said Schneider, Tose Spencer’s daughter.

Ticket prices also were jacked up.

“Susan’s helped a lot,” her father said, according to the Morning Call. “She takes all the (detail) stuff away from me. I’m not good at numbers. I’m only good at spending money.”

There were two results of Tose Spencer’s maneuverings. The first is the Eagles’ finances improved markedly, to the point of turning a modest profit. The second result is she became villainized, first by the media and then by fans.

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Local media personality Howard Eskin nicknamed her “The Wicked Witch of the Vet.” She also was called “Dragon Lady.” A local columnist said she was “just another worthless bimbo.” At a banquet for Philadelphia’s Maxwell Football Club, she was booed. Fans pelted her car with eggs and tomatoes.

In the 1984 interview with Domowitch, she said, “I made a lot of mistakes in terms of the tactless way I handled things. I think the decisions were right, but the methodology wasn’t too great. But I did that because I really didn’t have the luxury of time. I really felt an urgent need to get things done and get them done quickly.”

She also did not endear herself to Eagles fans by furtively negotiating to sell the team to a buyer in Phoenix. She was doing what was necessary because of the team’s dire finances. Court testimony in 1983 revealed the Eagles had $33 million in liabilities and Tose personally was in debt for $9.1 million.

The following year, Tose Spencer spent nearly a year in Arizona in negotiations, according to Schneider. The New York Times reported she came close to striking a deal to sell a minority interest of the Eagles to Phoenix real estate developer James Monaghan with the promise to move the team to Phoenix. Ultimately, Tose Spencer was the only one who wanted to sell and move the team, according to her book. Tose decided to keep the Eagles in Philadelphia, knowing he would have to sell the team outright.

In March 1985, Norman Braman purchased the club for $65 million. Braman offered to keep Tose Spencer, but she decided to move on. Her next pursuit was owning a food distribution company, Allegro Foods, and then she bought a meat company, Allied Steaks. Eventually, she purchased the Krakus Ham brand in the United States. Later, Tose Spencer became a sports talk radio host on KDWN-AM in Las Vegas.

Her contributions to the Eagles were largely ignored by the recorders of football history. She doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page.

Under her watch, the team drafted quarterback Randall Cunningham and took defensive end Reggie White in the supplemental draft. She was credited by the Daily News for signing wide receiver Kenny Jackson, the fourth pick of the 1984 draft, when the Stars were trying to steal him.

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She handled all player contracts. Agent Jim Solano, who represented a host of Eagles players in the 1980s, said Tose Spencer was a tough negotiator who did her homework.

“I enjoyed the negotiations with her,” said Jaworski, who didn’t have an agent and came to a verbal agreement with Tose Spencer on a five-year contract extension in 1985 that ultimately was not honored by Braman. “I thought she was sympathetic to my plight. To me, she was a real pro.”

Tose Spencer worked out a deal to have Eagles games simulcast on FM radio — one of the first such agreements in the league. In 1983, she hired Mimi Box, who eventually became the first woman CFO in the NFL.

Her father could be difficult, but Tose Spencer dealt with him deftly.

“She had a really good sense of humor and could laugh at her dad and roll her eyes at some of the things he did,” Peterson says. “I liked Susan.”

Tose Spencer was 5-foot-4, 100 pounds, but her personality was oversized, forceful and effective. Her daughter described her as tough but sweet. To get a feel for the fan experience at the Vet, she watched a couple of games in the 700 section — known for blue collars, beers and boos — and she did not seem out of place.

“She certainly was quick to express her opinion and usually had good facts to back it up,” Peterson says. “One of the things you look for in a head coach is can they command the room? She did a good job with that in front of all-male audiences — very self-assured in what she said and how she said it.”

In a 1983 Sports Illustrated article, Paul Zimmerman wrote, “(Tose Spencer) is vivacious. She smiles a lot and answers all questions, sometimes with a question of her own. ‘What would you do?’ is a favorite expression.”

Clearly, Tose Spencer was viewed differently because of her gender.

She raised the point that the history of the Eagles might have changed had she been male. Instead of selling the team in the early 1980s, she sought refinancing. Multiple banks told her that could only happen if Tose turned over control of the Eagles to her, his only child.

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“After all, passing the baton from father to child would be a natural progression in a family business,” she wrote. “Ah, but there was the rub! The child in question was not a son: I was my father’s daughter. In my dad’s eyes, having a woman in control of his finances would be an embarrassment and totally unacceptable.”

Chauvinism came at her in fastballs, curves and knucklers. She had a bead on every pitch.

Tose Spencer said she was never acknowledged as general manager because her father was uncomfortable with a woman in that position. “To him, and many men of his generation, women belonged at home taking care of the house and children,” she wrote in her book.

At NFL meetings, she said, owners of other teams, including married ones, took her by surprise with night-time knocks and notes under her hotel room door.

Tose Spencer once was called to the equipment room at Veterans Stadium. To get there, she had to pass through the locker room. She thought no one was there, so she was startled to find five naked players. The players covered up, but then linebacker Jerry Robinson told the others to drop their towels on the count of three.

“On three, down went the towels, and there they stood, naked as the day they were born, and smiling proudly,” she wrote. “Naked as they were, they couldn’t have possibly felt as exposed as I did at that moment. I knew I was being baited, and although I was trembling inside, I refused to be intimidated and was determined not to show my embarrassment. Gathering my wits, I moved closer to (Robinson) until we were almost toe-to-toe. Slowly, deliberately, I looked him up and down, lingering on the important parts of his anatomy. Then I turned and started toward (the equipment) office … but looked back briefly, shrugged my shoulders and shouted, “Big deal!”

It became a nickname in the locker room — Jerry “Big Deal” Robinson.

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If history were honest, that would have been Tose Spencer’s nickname — not “The Wicked Witch of the Vet.”

In conversations with her mother about five years ago, Schneider noticed a change. Tose Spencer was struggling to make decisions and prone to confusion.

In 2018, she was diagnosed with dementia. She declined quickly and moved from California to North Carolina to live with her daughter.

Tose Spencer is now in dementia’s seventh and final stage.

“She is not functional on her own,” Schneider said. “She can say some words that don’t mean anything. If I say, ‘Mom, how about a kiss?’ She will give me a kiss on the cheek.”

Schneider, who was Steve Sabol’s assistant at NFL Films in the early 1990s, is her mother’s primary caregiver and was the Alzheimer’s Association person of the year in 2020. She is a mother of three and the author of eight children’s books that follow the adventures of Football Freddie and Fumble the dog as they visit NFL cities on game days. The series is based on Schneider’s childhood experiences traveling with her mom and the Eagles. Her mother, who encouraged her to take notes during road trips, was the inspiration for the books.

Other than love her, there isn’t much Schneider can do for Tose Spencer anymore. One of their shared pleasures is looking at illustrations in the books together and talking about places they visited, as well as what Tose Spencer accomplished.

The hope is she can appreciate that the tracks she laid are all over the NFL.

(Top photo of Susan Tose Spencer with her father, Leonard Tose: Courtesy of Marnie Schneider)