John Mackey

John Mackey made a difference – in football, in business, and in life. A star tight end at Syracuse University, his impact was so significant that the university retired his jersey number – 88 – in his honor in 2007. While at Syracuse, he quietly and peacefully made inroads into the discrimination that permeated society, building lifelong friendships that transcended ethnicity and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Selected by the Baltimore Colts in the second round of the 1963 draft, John played nine seasons with the Colts before finishing his playing career with the San Diego Chargers in 1972. In 10 seasons in the NFL, he earned Pro Bowl honors five times, including his rookie season. In 1992, he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, only the second at his “revolutionized” tight end position to be so recognized. To this day, Mike Ditka – the first tight end to be inducted in the Hall of Fame – describes John as the greatest to ever play the game.

In 1970, John became the first president of the National Football League Players Association following the merger of the NFL and AFL. He spent the next three years leading the union through turbulent times, fighting for better pension and disability benefits for players, and gaining free agency that today’s NFL players still enjoy. It was a battle that some contend kept him out of the Pro Football Hall of Fame for 15 years.

Off the field – and for nearly three decades after his football career ended – John was as committed to advocating for those in need as he was to football – and in particular, Syracuse University and the Syracuse Orange, and Baltimore and the Baltimore Colts. Although he and former U.S. Congressman Jack Kemp (an NFL veteran himself) had different political perspectives, they partnered to launch a non-profit to give an educational advantage to disadvantaged children. He actively supported the civil rights movement that changed the course of history. He reached out to others, whether it was to offer guidance on career choices or to advocate for recognition of an under-appreciated teammate. At John’s funeral in 2011, in fact, his Syracuse teammate, former Denver Bronco Floyd Little, told mourners what John wrote to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in support of Floyd’s candidacy: “If there’s no room for Floyd Little in the Hall of Fame, please take me out and put him in.”

That’s the kind of person John Mackey was.

He was also my college sweetheart. We started dating as freshmen at Syracuse, thanks in part to our friend Ernie Davis, a teammate of John’s who loaned him the money to pay for our first date. John and I married in 1964, raised a son and two daughters together, and had just begun to enjoy our grandchildren when John was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia. He was just 59 years old.

Until then, I thought we would grow old together. I thought we would watch our children’s children grow up. Instead, over the last 11 of our 47-year marriage, I watched the love of my life lose every memory of the family, the friends, and the game he treasured. Over those 11 years between his diagnosis and death, the compassionate person who cared so much for others, the man who stood up for the underdog, the mentor who provided guidance to so many young people, the citizen who gave back to the community – the loving husband, father, and grandfather – slowly regressed to a childlike adult.

Despite the ravages of the disease, there was one constant in John’s mind – he was a Baltimore Colt. When his disease progressed to the point where hygiene became an issue, a fake message from the NFL’s then-commissioner Paul Tagliabue convinced John to brush his teeth. He proudly wore his Super Bowl V and Pro Football Hall of Fame rings, yet it was absolutely heartbreaking to hear him ask friends and fans alike, “Do you want to see my rings?” Even in the fog of dementia, the Baltimore Colts and the National Football League broke through.

Although dementia robbed John of his powerful voice, the disease gave him the ability to influence the discussion about head trauma, to inform active and former players about the dangers, and to impact the future of sports medicine and player safety. His private battle with dementia became the public face of the link between head trauma, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and related ailments. He was the catalyst for the 88 Plan that provides financial assistance for those affected, for the advocacy and fundraising efforts of his Baltimore Colt teammates that changed the conversation from blaming the player to protecting the future, and for my own involvement in the Concussion Legacy Foundation. When John died on July 6, 2011, a few months shy of his 70th birthday, the widespread media coverage focused as much on these and other post-diagnosis accomplishments as on any of his other achievements in life. Even in illness and in death, he changed the world.

That, I believe, is John Mackey’s greatest legacy. What will your legacy be?

Sylvia Mackey
Mrs. #88

Ollie Matson

 

Most athletes can only dream of reaching the pinnacle in just one sport, let alone two. Ollie Matson was not like most athletes, however. Not only is he a member of both the College Football Hall of Fame and the Pro Football Hall of Fame, he also won two Olympic medals with the U.S. Olympic track and field team in 1952.

Matson started playing football as a freshman at George Washington High School in San Francisco before joining the University of San Francisco Dons as a star two-way player. He was a 1951 Heisman Trophy finalist following his senior season, when he led the country in both rushing yards and touchdowns.  While Matson finished ninth in Heisman voting, his performance led the Chicago Cardinals to select him third overall in the 1952 NFL Draft. Matson went on to play 14 seasons for the Cardinals, Rams, Lions, and Eagles. Throughout his career, Matson was a six-time Pro Bowler, and his 12,799 career all-purpose yards at the time of his retirement ranked second all-time only to Jim Brown. Matson is a member of the NFL 1950s All-Decade Team and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1972 and the College Football Hall of Fame in 1976.

Upon retiring from football, Matson joined the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum as its director of special events, where he remained until retirement in 1989. Outside of work, Matson dedicated his life to others. He was a passionate volunteer who spent much of his free time mentoring children, especially those in juvenile hall and corrections. Matson also served as a football coach for nearby Los Angeles High School.

But family always came first and foremost.

“My grandfather was a gentle giant, soft-spoken and disciplined,” said Matson’s granddaughter Lara Parker. “He made sure to spend time with all of his children and grandchildren, even though they were scattered throughout the country.”

In addition to being with family, Matson followed a strict daily routine of his favorite activities, including cooking and gardening. He stayed active by walking every day from his home to L.A. High School and back. He also loved watching horse racing but had to stop when his memory began to worsen, as he would forget how to return home from the track.

Once Lara graduated from college, she moved back to Los Angeles to help take care of her grandfather, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. As the only person around him full-time, Lara was able to see his changes firsthand. Though Matson never talked about the injuries he sustained while playing football, his wife and twin sister often commented on the amount of hits he took. There were occasions he stayed in bed for days with a headache, only to take the field again as if nothing happened. One particular college game comes to mind: a 1951 matchup against the University of Tulsa. Matson was specifically targeted and hit by the other team for being a Black player.

The always determined Matson slowly started acting in unrecognizable ways, becoming almost childlike at times. Once he reached his 70s, he could no longer drive and did not have the capacity to stay active. There were moments he would forget how to do simple tasks like taking a shower. Matson would get down to play with his grandchildren, but not have the strength to get back up. And though he remained stubborn, he fortunately was never aggressive or physical around people. While Matson’s family originally attributed his decline to Alzheimer’s and old age, they sensed something else more serious might be in play, as news about former football players diagnosed with CTE became widespread.

After Matson’s death in February 2011 at the age of 80, his family made the decision to donate his brain to the UNITE Brain Bank. Researchers diagnosed him with stage 4 (of 4) CTE and noted it was one of the most severe cases they had seen at that time. In fact, they were shocked he was able to survive so long in his condition.

“We discussed the donation before his death, suspecting he was in the end stage of CTE,” said Lara. “The hope was to help future families from suffering like we did.”

Though the Matson family wasn’t surprised by the diagnosis, they were startled by the severity. Because Matson mostly kept everything to himself, they didn’t know how much he was struggling.

“He must have known something was wrong but couldn’t express it,” said Lara. “Was he depressed? Sad? Frustrated? It’s painful to know the strongest person you know was suffering internally and we couldn’t help.”

Lara and the rest of the Matson family want other families who may be in a similar situation to learn from their experience. They are strong supporters of CLF’s Stop Hitting Kids in the Head campaign, which aims to convince sports to eliminate repetitive head impacts under the age of 14 to prevent future cases of CTE. She urges other parents to reevaluate their young children’s involvement in contact sports and the potential risks of pursuing this path.

“Ultimately, we want Ollie’s donation to help further this crucial research so we can truly understand the impact of concussions and related traumatic brain injuries,” said Lara. “We also want others to know no matter how bad something may seem, you’re not alone, and there is a strong network of other families like ours who understand.”

R. Wayne McDaniel

Long before he succumbed to stage 4 CTE, Wayne McDaniel was an extremely talented athlete, lettering each year of high school in baseball, basketball, and football. It was his football prowess that earned him a four-year scholarship to the University of Florida. Upon graduation from UF, he coached football and baseball before joining the UF Office of Development, serving as the alumni association’s executive director for 27 years. He, like so many victims of CTE, was a highly motivated and talented individual. There was nothing he couldn’t do. But that would change.

I am Melissa, Wayne’s wife. We were together over 30 years throughout the slow, destructive path of his CTE. I write this with the hope that other spouses, sons, and daughters who are currently living with the collateral damage of this disease might at least have a sense of what may lie ahead.

When we first met, Wayne was at the top of his game both professionally and personally. His extraordinary good looks (what a face!) and athleticism were captivating, but what I really could not live without were his sharp wit and talent for making absolutely everything fun. Only now, as I look back on our first 10 years together, am I able to recognize the first harbingers of what was to come. Two of those signs still burn in my brain. The first was a noticeable decrease in financial aptitude. It concerned me so much that I chose to keep my name and finances separate when we married, which turned out to be a godsend. I strongly encourage anyone noticing even a hint of change in financial habits to act immediately to protect what you have.

The second sign something was off was Wayne’s sudden desire to withdraw from social interactions with longtime buddies. He didn’t seem to have the energy to spend a full weekend with friends at their lake house or attend a reunion with his old teammates. Around this time, I became both protective and defensive. To save face for Wayne, I publicly blamed myself as the reason for his refusal. I didn’t realize what I was doing to protect my husband caused others to perceive me as a selfish snob and a recluse. This added to us becoming increasingly isolated at a time we needed companionship most.

The second decade of Wayne’s life with CTE brought edginess, distrust, and impatience. I remember stressing about the “why” of it all. This man — who had been so loving and warmhearted — was now quick to anger and to criticize the smallest things. He could keep it together with others outside, but inside our home, a new, sometimes frightening persona might appear. Was this male menopause? Grumpy old men’s disease? Too much stress at work? Too much self-medication with booze? CTE was still unknown to me; I needed answers but was too protective of my husband’s privacy to go public with my concerns.

Fortunately, around this time we accepted an invitation to visit the North Carolina mountains. This completely different environment with new people and experiences improved Wayne’s demeanor so much, it was like a welcome prescription from the doctor. Our impulsive decision to invest in mountain property improved our quality of life, and “quality of life” became my mantra, a goal which would help me focus in the years to come.

As I witnessed Wayne’s escape into a simpler mindset, I realized he was sicker than anyone knew. Shock, anger, and bargaining, the early parts of the five stages of grief, had already been happening for some time. I was fearful and depressed, but still ready to fight. Fortunately, the backdrop of my new mountain home in Asheville, N.C., was a mecca for alternative naturopathic and herbal medicine. In the years that followed, I devoured hundreds of hours of continuing education classes, sitting beside doctors and nurses with a medical mindset I didn’t know existed. It was in those courses I learned about foods, herbs, and natural compounds which might at least relieve some of my husband’s infirmities.

By the third decade of Wayne’s life with CTE, I finally became aware of the disease after watching the movie Concussion and the publicity surrounding Aaron Hernandez’s murder conviction and suicide. Almost certain my husband had it, I approached brain and memory doctors in our primary residence of Gainesville, Fla. However, Wayne’s denial that anything was wrong cast me in the light of a hypervigilant wife, and his refusal to have an MRI or submit to a psych test stopped further analysis.

We found the amino acid theanine (think green tea or matcha) helped calm Wayne to the point he could actually relax. Tyrosine is another amino acid often used by Alzheimer’s patients to achieve similar mood-lifting results. The Ayurvedic herb bacopa was also calming, and when Wayne took it regularly, his focus improved. These natural alternatives helped greatly as we maneuvered the last five years of my husband’s life. Not only did they calm him, but they also made him not hostile.

Toward the end of Wayne’s life, however, his primary doctor made me stop giving him anything natural. I had fought hard not to do that, but by that point, I was ready to give up. Soon after stopping the natural alternatives, my husband became violent, biting, kicking, and hitting anyone who came near him. By then, he was in the hospital, so I explained what was happening to the doctor on call. She researched tyrosine, the supplement I thought he was missing most, and she approved it. Shortly after I gave it to Wayne, he started to calm down. I’m not saying this works for everyone, but it did prove the viability of tyrosine to me and that particular doctor. Unfortunately, Wayne’s stage 4 CTE won the fight, and his organs failed him. He died on May 3, 2022. His death certificate lists five organ-related causes and the additional diagnosis of stage 4 CTE and Alzheimer’s disease from the UNITE Brain Bank.

Now, one year later, I dwell on the reality that there may be thousands, even tens of thousands of middle-aged men who have tau plaque growing in their brains. This is happening to them because they were dynamic, motivated athletes who did not know they were sacrificing their brains for sports. In doing what it took to earn scholarships or for the sheer joy of competing and gaining respect, they may have sacrificed their capacity to love, to learn new things, to manage their finances, even to manage their lives.

These men strive to seem as functional as possible to the outside world. But inside, they are sick. In their own homes, their spouses and children are also hurt by collateral damage from this disease. Something must be done to recognize there is a plague of CTE out there, and many victims and their loved ones may not even be aware of it.

I wish the naturopathic community would be more vocal about herbs and natural, nonpharmaceutical compounds that might help at least some of those suffering from CTE and their loved ones get through the bad days and long years. Raising awareness of the suffering from CTE is also a worthy cause. We all should do whatever we can to help the Concussion Legacy Foundation make that happen.

Tommy McDonald

Tommy McDonald told anyone he could to follow their dreams – that anything was possible. He said it because he lived it.

McDonald was born in Roy, New Mexico in 1934. As a kid, McDonald was small but extremely quick. He would give his dad cash he won in footraces. Knowing his son had considerable talent but very little chance of getting noticed by college coaches in Roy, McDonald’s father moved the family to the bigger city of Albuquerque when McDonald late in his sophomore year of high school.

In an era without the assistance of high-tech receiver gloves, many pundits stated McDonald had the best hands in the NFL. McDonald appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated in October 1962 with the caption “Football’s Best Hands.” But the statement applied to McDonald’s ability to catch footballs, not to the literal shape of his hands. In Albuquerque, McDonald’s father held Tommy back a grade to allow him to grow. In exchange for delaying his schooling, McDonald’s father supped up a motorbike for Tommy to ride around town with. One day, a car cut McDonald off while he was riding, leading his bike’s clutch to snap and completely sever a third of McDonald’s left thumb off.

Despite that, McDonald dominated New Mexico athletics. He won five gold medals in the state track meet, set his city scoring record for basketball, and set the state scoring record for football as a running back. His exploits earned him a scholarship to play running back for Oklahoma University.

One could argue his career at Oklahoma was one of the best in college football history. In McDonald’s three seasons of varsity play in Norman, the Sooners never lost a game, winning two National Championships over the span. In 1956, McDonald finished third in Heisman voting and won the Maxwell Award, given to the best all-around player in the country.

In 1957, the Philadelphia Eagles drafted McDonald 31st overall in the NFL Draft. McDonald’s exuberance, grit, and production instantly connected him with the city of Philadelphia. When McDonald scored the first touchdown in the 1960 NFL Championship at a snowy Franklin Field, Eagles fans mobbed him in the corner of the endzone.

The Eagles beat the Green Bay Packers 17-13 that day. After the game, legendary Packers coach Vince Lombardi said, “If I had 11 Tommy McDonalds, I’d win a championship every year.”

One of McDonald’s trademarks was springing up quickly from the turf after big hits. Teammate Chuck Bednarik once accused McDonald of getting up too quickly after such hits. But at 5’9,” 175 pounds, McDonald used every tactic he could to convince opponents they could not get the best of him.

McDonald’s son Chris estimates his dad bounced up after a big hit and went back to the huddle following a concussion dozens of times.

There were some hits McDonald could not downplay. He told a story of getting knocked out cold in San Francisco and waking nearly 10 hours later in Philadelphia. Another time, a Dick Butkus hit left McDonald unconscious for more than a minute. He missed only two plays before returning to the game.

“If you looked like you were OK and your cobwebs were clearing, they sent you back in,” said Chris.

McDonald finished a decorated NFL career in 1968 as a member of the Cleveland Browns. He missed only three games in 12 seasons. At the time, a decade in the NFL still meant you would need to find a day job after retiring. His requited love for the people of Philadelphia led him to make the city of brotherly love his permanent home.

He lived outside of Philadelphia and ran an oil painting and plaque business. He and his wife Patricia had four children together. His boundless energy could have powered the stadium’s lights, leading Eagles’ brass to invite McDonald to countless games, team events, golf tournaments, and autograph signings. But after days full of smiling and posing for pictures, he loved nothing more than loading up the family car and going out to Chinese food in Philadelphia’s center city.

“He never bragged about his stats,” said McDonald’s daughter Tish. “He was just dad.”

Just dad became just grandpa. He loved attending his five grandchildren’s games, where he was famous for providing tips to the young players and infamous for pulling pranks on his fellow spectators.

In the 1950s, a young Eagles superfan named Ray Didinger frequented Eagles’ training camp in Hershey, Pennsylvania with his family each summer. He delighted in getting to hold Tommy McDonald’s helmet and interact with his hero as the team walked on to the practice field. 40 years later, Didinger, then a decorated Philadelphia sportswriter, led a campaign to get McDonald inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. In 1998, McDonald got a call he wondered if he would ever receive. He was to be enshrined in the Hall of Fame that summer.

After Didinger introduced McDonald to the audience in Canton, Chris and many of the family members expected McDonald to share his story of overcoming a small stature and a small town to inspire kids across the country to never give up on their dreams. McDonald went in a different direction. He cracked jokes, tossed his 35-pound Hall of Fame bust up in the air, played the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” from a boombox, and chest-bumped all his fellow inductees.

Some members of McDonald’s family were surprised by Tommy’s speech. But for the same reasons he flung himself up from big hits as a player, McDonald explained to his family that his on-stage antics were a way to hide his pain.

By then, McDonald became emotional very easily. His father had passed away four years earlier and his mother was too ill to attend the ceremony. Having been extremely close with both parents, McDonald guessed he would unravel if he started talking about them in a conventional speech. He chose to keep it light instead.

McDonald’s emotionality was one of the first signs of change in his later years. His memory came next.

McDonald had driven the same route from his home in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania to Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia dozens of times a year for the past six decades.
But on his way back from a Philadelphia Eagles event in 2008, Tommy McDonald called his wife.

“The car could have been on autopilot, he’s been there for 50 plus years,” said Chris. “But he was totally lost.”

Whenever his memory failed him, McDonald, who never cursed, lamented about “these dang concussions.”

For most of his senior years, McDonald stayed active by playing tennis and racquetball. But McDonald’s cognitive issues escalated when he became more sedentary.

After his induction, McDonald eagerly returned to the Hall of Fame every summer. He loved the honor of being in football’s elite fraternity and enjoyed celebrating each year’s new class of honorees. But McDonald’s memory regressed to the point where returning to Canton provided too many opportunities where he could fail to remember someone’s name. He stopped going entirely.

“He didn’t trust his mind,” said Chris.

Outside of the bursts of emotion, the memory loss and the associated frustration, the McDonald family says Tommy maintained a positive spirit throughout his life. Chris and Tish remember him often saying, “I’m above the grass,” through a giant grin.

In 2015, Didinger produced a play, titled Tommy and Me. The play celebrated the odds McDonald overcame throughout his life and showed how McDonald made an indelible impact on Didinger’s life. The entire McDonald family attended the first reading of Tommy and Me. McDonald was delighted throughout the reading.

“That was my way of repaying him a little bit,” said Didinger in 2016.

As McDonald aged and his cognitive problems first emerged, Tish, Chris, and their siblings Sherry and Tom assisted with his care. Chris read news of other former NFL players suffering from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). The family heard from other football families about former players struggling in similar and different ways as Tommy. It led Chris to decide to donate his father’s brain to research after he died.

“If he could help another player out and make the game better and safer for today’s player,” said Chris. “Then he’s all for it.”

In the mid-2010’s, McDonald’s wife Patricia suddenly contracted Lewy bodies with dementia. She died on January 1, 2018. On the way back from her funeral, Tish remembers her father staring back at him, eyes agape. It was only then that he realized his wife of 55 years was gone.

“That was how bad it got,” said Chris. “He was really out of it.”

Eight months later, on September 24, 2018, Tommy McDonald passed away at age 84.

Chris followed through on brain donation and McDonald’s brain was studied first at the University of Pennsylvania then at the UNITE Brain Bank in Boston.

Tommy McDonald holds several amazing distinctions. He is the shortest player in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He is one of the last players to play without a facemask. His Oklahoma Sooners’ winning streak of 31 games seems immortal. He holds the Eagles’ record for receiving yards in a game. Now, he is one of the many former NFL players to be diagnosed with CTE.

Dr. McKee, Director of the Brain Bank, diagnosed McDonald with Stage 4 (of 4) of the degenerative brain disease. She said McDonald’s brain pathology explained the massive memory loss he experienced in the last decade of life.

“What I found was classic for long-standing CTE,” Dr. McKee said in a 2021 interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer. “It had all the characteristic lesions around vessels involving a considerable extent of the brain.

For the McDonald family, the diagnosis confirmed what they had already come to realize: more than 20 seasons of football filled with dozens of concussions had done severe damage to Tommy’s brain. Just as proud as McDonald was each year to return to Canton, they are proud to help Tommy give back to the game he loved through CTE research.

Chris and Tish believe their dad’s story of overcoming his size and circumstances, the story he didn’t tell at his Hall of Fame induction, is one anyone can take to heart.

“His number one thing would be to not let anybody tell you, ‘You can’t do it,’” said Chris of his father. “If you have a goal in life, stay determined and persevere.”

For other children of CTE, their message is to relish every moment you get with your parent.

“Enjoy every single day that he’s here, even if it’s a small percentage of him,” said Tish. “Because when they’re gone, they’re gone. You never get to hug them again, give them a simple ‘hello’, or tell them you love them.”

John Stephen McGuire

I’ll never know the level of pain and suffering our dad endured in his life, but receiving a possible explanation for his tragic story has softened the raw edges of our family’s complicated journey.

Growing up, I heard stories about this mythical version of our dad. The one who was a small-town football hero, a rising star at West Point, a brilliant attorney with multiple degrees, and a beloved leader in all the spaces he occupied. My older sister remembers the fun-loving and attentive father who had started to fade away by the time me and my younger siblings arrived. He was at the start of losing everything.

He was likely in the throes of a CTE nightmare he couldn’t identify and no one around him understood.

We blamed alcoholism for his behavior. The contents of basement-stored alcohol would simply vanish. He’d spend hours tucked away around the house in places we all knew never to visit. He’d have bursts of rage, drunken verbal altercations when attending our sporting events, and DUIs for which he eventually served jail time. Just when we thought he might be able to move away from his behaviors, he would find a way to slip further away from us.

Our parents ultimately separated and then divorced. For a while, our dad managed in a different marriage. That too fell apart, as did his professional life and ability to care for himself.

Three separate times the courts ordered guardianship be put in place. The first time, his younger brother agreed to that responsibility and worked to get him admitted to a veteran hospital. Dad got sober, received regular meals, and improved in many ways. He became competent enough to employ his skills as an attorney to sue his brother and have the guardianship revoked.

A little over a year after winning his freedom in court, he went down another spiral. He went missing several times, required nine ambulance rides in the span of nine months, leading social services to once again request the help of a guardian. This time, it was a cooperative effort between three of his younger brothers and me. Once again, he wasted no time putting the wheels of justice in motion. He sued the four of us, and the court agreed with my dad’s assertion that he had a right to his own life. That guardianship was also dissolved.

He was putting up an impressive fight against his family — and sometimes his addiction — but we know now he was battling much more than that.

My dad’s executive function continued to weaken, and he spent nearly a decade in and out of care facilities, homeless shelters, rundown apartments, and sketchy motels. His siblings and my brother continued to help in any way they could. They collected him from the hospitals, checked up on him regularly, bailed him out of police detox, and kept him alive a lot longer than he might have all on his own.

For a while, a state-appointed guardian assigned him to care facilities, where he would manage to get kicked out. My dad ignored facility rules and acquired prohibited alcohol regularly. The battle continued.

A fall he took in 2014 left him with a broken neck and an assignment to a care facility for rehabilitation. He eventually healed, but was never able to live on his own again. He lived the last eight years of his life in the care of wonderful nurses and staff. By the time he died, he had suffered a couple strokes, and his dementia was quite advanced.

It was during his “quiet” years as a nursing home resident that I attended a concussion symposium and learned about the various behaviors present in people suffering with suspected CTE. I began to wonder whether any of our dad’s story could be tied to his time playing football, sparring and boxing with his brothers and West Point classmates, or playing catcher on his baseball team. My suspicions only grew as I learned more about the disease.

Our dad was a small “running quarterback” for his high school and college teams. In several articles about his team, he is pictured carrying the ball and leading with his head. He likely ran into many bigger bodies each time he was the ball carrier, which was often. He played for nine years, including three at West Point. He was an active oldest brother of five boys from a farming community in Nebraska, and there are plenty of family stories about McGuire sparring matches. Well before concussions and head injuries were a concern, our dad was likely rattling his brain with regularity.

The results confirm what we suspected. The pathology identified that by the time he passed away at age 79, our dad had stage 3 (of 4) CTE. Dr. Thor Stein of the BU CTE Center wrote in his conclusion, “Overall, it is likely a combination of CTE, neuropathological changes of AD (Alzheimer’s Disease), and vascular disease that contributed to his cognitive decline and dementia. His long-standing alcohol use likely also contributed to cognitive and behavioral symptoms.”

Our dad was a gifted and brilliant man. His brain provided opportunities for him at the start of his promising life. He used that brain to battle many challenges along the way, not knowing his own neurological ailments were the reason he felt the need to fight in the first place. It seems appropriate his brain is now part of the ongoing research to combat the destructive and debilitating effects of CTE. It’s the sort of impactful Legacy his story deserves.

Our Dad’s Obituary

John Stephen (Steve) McGuire, 79, raised in Fremont, Nebraska, died on October 20th, 2022, at Cherrelyn Healthcare Center in Littleton, Colorado. He had been a resident of the facility for eight years.

Steve was born on June 16th, 1943 in Salt Lake City, Utah where his father was stationed before his deployment to Okinawa during WWII. Steve was the oldest of five boys born in the span of six years and the first of what would eventually become 89 first cousins for the large farming family of McGuires from Wisner, Nebraska.

A successful high school athlete, Steve earned Hall of Fame recognition from St. Patrick’s/Archbishop Bergan High School for his successes competing in football, basketball, baseball, and track.

He attended Creighton University for one year before accepting his appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He graduated in 1966 and, upon graduation, was commissioned in the Signal Corp (Communications). He was assigned to the 1st Signal Brigade in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for meritorious service in combat and the Army Commendation medal for exceptional performance. He was a Captain when he resigned in 1970.

Post-military service, Steve attended the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he earned a law degree and an MBA. He practiced as a patent attorney in the Denver law firm of Roath and Brega for several years.

By his late forties, Steve struggled personally and with health issues that significantly impacted the rest of his life.

After admittance to Cherrelyn Health Center in 2014, he enjoyed lucid and positive moments before dementia became his last battleground. Despite all the challenges endured by those who cared for him, Steve was a well-loved man who took up a lot of space in the hearts of those he touched. He was blessed with an incredibly caring staff at Cherrelyn who journeyed with him in his final years, as well as a large family who loved him his entire life.

Michael McGuirk

Michael George McGuirk was born on July 19, 1948, to Myrtle and George McGuirk of Arlington, Virginia. He attended St. Thomas Moore Elementary and played on the Arlington County Black Nights football team through his grade school years. He then went to O’Connell Catholic High School where he became a star football player and captain of the team. In his senior year, he transferred to and played football for Flynt Hill Preparatory School where he graduated in 1966. Mike then received a football scholarship to play for East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, and received his business degree in 1970. Mike was on the 1970 ECU team that played Marshall University, in which ECU won the game. But Mike’s exhilaration of victory was short-lived. The flight returning the Marshall players and coaches to Huntington, West Virginia crashed with all 75 souls onboard. This event at such a young age cemented Mike’s instincts to make a positive contribution to the community while you can.

Throughout his college career, Mike spent his summers in Ocean City, Maryland. He started as a lifeguard on 7th Street Beach and finished his beach patrol career five years later as a crew chief. Skiing was another passion of Mike’s. After graduating from college, he spent his winters with some of his Ocean City friends working at New England ski resorts.

In 1974, Mike married his sweetheart Victoria, a Phillips Crab House girl. They moved to Port Orange, Florida to open and manage a Pappy’s restaurant with another Ocean City friend. Not satisfied with his career, Mike took postgraduate courses in computer science and applied for a job with Computer Science Corporation at the Kennedy Space Center in 1981. Over the course of a 31-year career, he rose to be a manager for Firing Rooms 1 and 2 of the Space Shuttle Program. He liked to joke that on launch day, he was the one to “light the fuse” and run. He also worked for Grumman and United Space Alliance before retiring in 2012. For several years after he retired, Mike coached football at Spruce Creek High School and then Father Lopez Catholic High School.

In 1977 and 1980 respectively, Mike and Victoria’s daughter Kristine and son Matthew were born. During this period, the couple became very involved in the community. They were co-founders of the Port Orange Pop Warner football league. Mike was a coach and Football Commissioner for years and watched the Pop Warner Program grow and flourish. Mike and Victoria’s biggest joy in their later years was Kristine’s marriage to Jon Reed in 2010 and then the birth of their granddaughter, Mia Mattison in 2012 and grandson, Clyde Michael in 2014!

Throughout his life, Mike was always a positive force in his community. Whether in football or Beach Patrol, he stayed in contact and participated in reunions and events. He always took the initiative to keep his Ocean City friends and East Carolina friends close. He found a legendary lifeguard from the ’50s, living in Titusville – Lucky Jordan, and brought him back to Ocean City for reunions. Mike also belonged to the Port Orange Ship Modelers Club for years.

Mike and Victoria also dealt with personal tragedy. Their son Matt struggled with addiction after being sexually abused as a young boy by his teacher. He testified in 1989 to put his predator in prison for 150 years. Sadly, Matt passed away from an accidental drug overdose in 2011. Mike and Victoria overcame their grief by starting the Straight Up SolGier Foundation to help others in situations like Matt’s. Straight Up SolGier Foundation has helped hundreds of local kids and adults get FREE counseling. Recently, Mike and Victoria handed the reins over to a new board of directors who will continue the amazing work the McGuirk family started.

Along with the posthumous contribution to the community through the SolGier foundation, Mike is still contributing to the football community as well. His brain was studied at the UNITE Brain Bank where researchers diagnosed him with stage 4 (of 4) CTE. Although Mike loved football, it probably contributed to his mental decline about a decade ago. He is survived by his wife, Victoria, daughter Kristine Reed, her husband Jon Reed, and their children Mia and Clyde Reed.

Tom McHale

 

Beloved husband, father, son, and brother 

When he died in May, 2008, at the age of 45, Tom McHale became the second former NFL player diagnosed with CTE by the research team at the CSTE at Boston University School of Medicine. Tom was my husband, the father of my children, brother to four siblings, and my very best friend. I hope that sharing Tom’s story will bring attention to the very misunderstood and unappreciated danger of concussions. I hope to help others understand just how devastating the long-term impact of repetitive sports-related head trauma can potentially be. I would hope that the awareness of these consequences will lead to a profound cultural change in how we perceive and respond to sports-related, and other, head trauma.

Tom and I met in August, 1986, as I was entering my sophomore year at Cornell University. I was just 19 years old; he was 23. I was a manager in charge of the defensive line for the Cornell Big Red and Tom was a defensive lineman.

Tom was kind of “larger than life” on the Cornell team. He had given up a full scholarship and a starting position on the defensive line at the University of Maryland to transfer to the Ivy League university to attend Cornell’s top-rated School of Hotel Administration. He’s been described by many to have been in a class all his own, breaking school records and earning All-American honors. When his years of eligibility were up at Cornell, Tom went on to play nine years in the NFL with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Philadelphia Eagles, and the Miami Dolphins.

Tom loved football; but it, by no means, defined him. It was his character that made Tom stand out. I never saw in him even the hint of a suggestion that he thought himself better than another. He filled a room with his presence and always drew a crowd around him. Yet he left so many who met him with the feeling that they had been the most important person in the room and that Tom had been riveted by whatever they had to say.

It always seemed that Tom had goals for his life, and he expected to succeed. He had a great deal of confidence in his abilities and he was proud of his accomplishments; but he never allowed success to go to his head. He always maintained that the ability to play football at its highest level is a God-given gift and he was grateful for the opportunity.

He was passionate about life. He had a beautiful smile and he smiled often. He loved music. He was fascinated by world history. He was enamored by, and gifted in the art, of cooking. But most of all, he was passionate about his faith, unswerving in his desire to do what is right, extremely devoted to his family, and incredibly loyal to his friends.

Tom and I were married on February 3, 1990. We were married for eighteen years and I truly believe that Tom brought me more happiness during those eighteen years than most people will experience in a lifetime.

We had three sons over the years. TJ was born in 1994, Michael in 1998; and Matthew followed in 1999. Tom was devoted to his boys and they adored their father, their coach, their hero.

The fairy tale ended on May 25, 2008 when Tom died from an accidental overdose. It’s still hard to believe it could have ended so tragically. And I still cannot revisit the memory of that day without experiencing physical pain. But truly, looking back, I realize that Tom had been slipping away from us for some time. It just became official and final on May 25th.

There is no way to adequately describe the change in Tom over the years except to say that it was so gradual that I’m not sure when I actually became aware of it. I just know that there came a day several years before he died that I could no longer deny that there was something terribly wrong with my husband. The man that I so admired had become like a shell of his former self, almost as if the spark was slowly being extinguished. And the man that remained made me feel at times that I was living with a stranger.

It wasn’t as though this stranger was a bad guy. He wasn’t. He just wasn’t my Tom. The man who once loved to get up and watch the sun rise had trouble getting out of bed at all. The eternal optimist who approached goals with great confidence had difficulty following through on his intentions.

The man who relished his friends and his family picked up the phone less and less frequently. The man who used to plan lunch while eating breakfast and plan dinner while eating lunch even began, more often than not, leaving the cooking to me.

What appeared to be symptoms of depression may have first come to my attention when Tom complained one night that the pain that he lived with as a result of so many years of pro ball had become too great to be on his feet all day.

He said that owning and operating restaurants, that which he had dreamed of since he had been a boy, was no longer enjoyable. He got out of the business. But that didn’t help. Eventually, he got help for his depression and we hoped that that would be the answer. It wasn’t.

Then one day, Tom confided that he was physically dependent on doctor prescribed pain meds. And so began a terrifying and difficult battle against opiate addiction. And as crazy as it may sound, I was relieved because I now had an explanation for what had happened to my husband and that brought me hope that I would one day have him back.

I believe that Tom fought with everything he had left in him to win that battle. But even in the absence of the drugs, I didn’t see my old Tom return. Though there were glimpses, they didn’t last. And I became increasingly concerned that there was something else going on and more and more afraid that I would never have back the incredible man I married.

When Tom died, I had never heard of CTE, nor did I have the slightest suspicion that the changes I had been seeing in my husband had anything to do with his lifetime of participating in contact sports. And yet when I learned of his diagnosis and saw images of his brain, when I heard Dr. McKee’s explanation of the pathological findings…that Tom’s brain exhibited significant pathology in areas that control inhibitions, impulsivity, insight, judgment, memory, and emotional lability,…my heart ached. But, for the first time in a long time, I felt I was beginning to understand.

I often wonder what Tom would have thought if he had heard of CTE. I wonder whether it would have made a difference for him to know that his inability to live up to the expectations he set for himself might actually have had a neurological cause.

I know that for me, for our boys, and for the many loved ones he left behind, knowing had made a tremendous difference. I have no doubt that I would have agonized over the years, wondering whether it was possible that CTE had been a factor in my husband’s struggles and ultimately in his death.

I’m extremely grateful for the insight that his diagnosis provides. I’m even more grateful to the researchers at the CSTE for their dedication and determination to discover how to diagnose, treat, and prevent this devastating disease so that future athletes need not experience the kind of turmoil that Tom experienced and that their families need not endure the agony of watching helplessly from the sideline.

I know that everyone who had the pleasure of knowing Tom during his lifetime would agree what a tremendous loss was brought about by his death. It is my fervent hope and prayer that all who knew and loved Tom will help me keep the memory of him alive for our boys so that they will remember him as he had been and will grow up to proudly be just like their dad.

Click here to read the New York Times article.

Click here to watch a video about Tom McHale.