In the postgame frenzy of the 1960 NFL Championship at Franklin Field in Philadelphia, Gerald “Gerry” Huth found his old coach, Vince Lombardi.

“Hey coach!” Huth joked to the notoriously dour Lombardi. “Thanks for teaching me how to block!”

Minutes earlier, Huth’s block sprung Philadelphia Eagles’ fullback Ted Dean open for the game-winning touchdown against Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers. Five years earlier, Lombardi was Huth’s offensive coordinator for the NFL Champion New York Giants.

The defender wearing 47 in white whom Huth displaced on the play was Jesse Whittenton, a star defensive back for the Packers. 60 years later, Huth and Whittenton are connected in another way. Both of their brains have been diagnosed with CTE by researchers at the UNITE Brain Bank.

Humble beginnings

Gerald Huth was born in July 1933 in the small town of Floyds Knobs, Indiana, six miles outside of Louisville. He was the second oldest of seven children in a devout Catholic family. Huth always aspired to ascend out of his circumstances.

Tragedy struck when Gerald’s father passed when Gerald was just 16 years old. He was quickly thrust into the provider role, a role he would take on for the rest of his life.

Huth turned out for the New Albany High School football team and played well enough to earn a scholarship at Wake Forest University in 1952. In three consecutive seasons, Huth earned a spot on the Carolina College’s All-Star team in 1952, was named 2nd Team All-ACC in 1953, and Honorable Mention All-ACC in 1954.

The New York Giants selected Huth with the 285th overall selection in the 1956 NFL Draft. Football had taken Huth from a county of less than 45,000 people to a city of nearly eight million.

“He tried to help everybody.”

Diane Huth was on vacation from Pittsburgh to South Florida. She missed her flight home and lost her job. Her search for a new job led to a position with an airline. She accepted without quite reading all the fine print. The job required relocation to New York City.

She stayed with a college roommate and while at a friend’s house, Gerald Huth walked in with a case of Ballantine beer. Diane was skeptical of dating a pro football player, but she soon learned Gerald was much different than the playboy pro image she had in her head.

Diane learned Huth’s primary motivation was his family at home in Indiana. He sent money from his Giants’ paychecks home to support his mother. His needs always came second to the needs of those closest to him.

“He tried to help everybody,” Diane said.

His selflessness made him a better offensive lineman. In his rookie season for the Giants he blocked for star quarterback Frank Gifford and halfback Alex Webster and was coached by the legendary Vince Lombardi. The Giants beat the Bears 47-7 in the 1956 NFL Championship. Gifford would later personally thank Huth’s family for Huth’s efforts to keep him safe on the field.

Huth and Diane had started dating that season and quickly fell in love. Gerald hesitated at the idea of marriage because his responsibility to his family in Indiana was too great. Diane said she was willing to accept a share of that responsibility if it meant she could spend her life with him. The two were married in 1958.

Leading headfirst

After Gerald’s championship season with the Giants he was drafted into the U.S. Army and was deployed in Germany for 18 months. There, he coached the Third Division, Fourth Infantry team to a European Championship.

Upon his return in 1959, the Giants traded him to the Philadelphia Eagles. After he won his second championship with the Eagles in 1960, Huth was selected by the Minnesota Vikings in the 1961 NFL Expansion Draft. In Minnesota, the tricks of Huth’s trade were on full display.

In May 2010, the Philadelphia Eagles celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the 1960 Championship team. Huth and several of his old teammates returned to Franklin Field to commemorate the championship.

At 5’11”, Huth had to use every advantage he could to move defenders. On the first block of each game, Huth liked to aggressively use his head to make his defender think twice about messing with him the rest of the game. This style of play led Huth to acquire a whopping eight cracked purple Vikings helmets.

Huth had plenty of concussion stories to accompany the plastic shrapnel. He wrote Diane letters sharing how he was knocked unconscious on a play and returned shortly afterwards. Teammates would later share how he would frequently ask, “What’s the next play?” or “What am I supposed to do?”

Huth retired from football in 1964 at age 30. By then, Gerald and Diane had four children: Sharon, Gerald II, Carol, and Kathleen. The family moved out to Garden Grove, California and Huth began a career with State Farm insurance. The new Huth household resembled the farms of Huth’s youth with animals abound.

“He was, pardon my expression, a real hardass when it came to playing football,” Kathleen said. “But when it came to family and friends, he had a heart of gold. He would give you the shirt off his back.”

Kathleen remembers her father driving the family car after a skiing trip in Mammoth when a horrible snowstorm hit and caused a huge backup of cars. Huth took out a shovel and dug the family car out and then proceeded to dig other cars out as well. The Huth family even had to urge Gerald to stop shoveling others and start driving home.

Huth had strict rules for his children, all born out of the virtues he internalized along the way of his success story. He valued hard work, honesty, and education. Huth went back to school to finish his Wake Forest degree in 1960 and saw what it had done for him. He encouraged Diane to get her accounting degree once they were established in Southern California. His support of Diane’s education led her to become CFO for an international company.

He very much had a lighter side as well and his family says he loved to laugh, even if he was the butt of the joke.

“Not my father”

Throughout life Huth possessed a great intelligence hidden by his characteristic humility. But suddenly, he was slipping.

In his late 40’s, Huth often found himself in the family’s garage unsure why he entered in the first place.

Violent outbursts came next.

“One moment you would be talking to him,” said Kat Willis, Huth’s daughter. “The next moment, he’d be yelling at you for something in your life going on and then you’d start taking it personally and it would get you upset.”

Huth’s problems only grew more intense. Once, he stepped out of the house to visit the mall near the family’s home. Hours later, he called Diane in a panic. He could not find where he parked the car.

When Diane arrived at the mall, she found the car right where Huth would have always parked it. Driving was no longer an option.

Diane felt immense pain as she slowly lost the man who walked in with the Ballantine beer all those years ago. She was heartbroken but took it upon herself to do the best she could for Huth.

“He needed me,” Diane said.

Huth usually called Kat “Kathy.” By his mid-50’s, he started calling her “Carol,” confusing her for her sister.

Huth’s memory problems began to infiltrate his work life. He struggled to remember appointments or keep any of his files straight. He was put on permanent disability from State Farm and retired at age 57. He and Diane moved to Las Vegas when she retired in 1999.

The family enrolled Huth in neurological testing to determine what was causing his decline. Huth’s problems were atypical of an Alzheimer’s case. The best doctors could assume was that he was suffering from advanced dementia. In the mid-2000’s, CTE from Huth’s football career was never discussed.

Football helped lead to fleeting moments where the family had the Huth of old back. Kat’s second husband was a football junkie and was excited to meet his former champ of a father-in-law.  At their Big Bear vacation home, her husband watched clips of the 1960 NFL Championship. Huth could still give a thorough play-by-play of the game and rejoiced after big plays just as he had when the plays happened live.

“My second husband didn’t really know the father that my father was,” said Kat. “He was a different person. And it makes me sad because my husband’s very much like my dad. It was sad that he couldn’t have that connection.”

Glimpses of the old Gerald also came through when he was with his pets. He had dogs all his life, including three different miniature dachshund named Heidi. Diane gave Heidi III to Huth for his 50th wedding anniversary, a gift he would repeatedly say was the best he ever received.

On November 20, 2010, Huth was inducted into the Wake Forest University Sports Hall of Fame during a halftime ceremony of a game against Clemson. Upon returning home from the ceremony, Huth fell off a curb at his Las Vegas home and fractured his tibia. He was taken to the emergency room and later sent to the hospital for rehabilitation.

While Huth was in the hospital Diane received a phone call. Four attendants were required to hold Huth down in the facility. He was too violent to come home and was moved to a memory care facility.

Huth’s months in memory care were demoralizing for him and his family. When his children visited, Huth told them his presence in the facility meant he was “at the end of the line”. Diane continued visiting him daily, and each time she had to leave alone. Huth could not grasp how his violence precluded him from living with Diane.

On her last visit, an incensed Huth said, “You’re always leaving me. Why don’t you get a [expletive] divorce?”

On February 11, 2011, Huth died of a blood clot in his lung. He was 77 years old.

“It was difficult to see him go the way he did. I just loved the guy,” Diane said. “I still do. I tell him that every day. He was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Relief

After death, Huth’s brain was sent for study to the UNITE Brain Bank. Huth agreed to donate his brain before his death in hopes research could explain why he had such problems in the last decades of his life. Huth’s posthumous brain donation was his last act in a lifetime of generosity.

“He was such a generous man,” Kat said. “And I know that if he knew the effect that his legacy could have and the changes that they could make with football based on him and all of the other Legacy Donors, I know that he would want to be a part of that very special group.”

Kat and her family were touched by the care and delicacy the Brain Bank team took with Huth’s brain. Researchers at the Brain Bank diagnosed Huth with Stage 4 (of 4) CTE. The diagnosis brought relief and the gift of knowledge to the family. There was a reason for Huth’s changes.

“My dad was such a kind and loving person,” Kat said. “But he could be so mean. And that wasn’t my dad, but I didn’t know what was wrong with him. Knowing that he had CTE was a relief because I knew it wasn’t his fault.”

Diane profoundly misses her husband of 53 years and the countless memories the two made together. She still has Heidi III as a living symbol of her and Gerald’s union together.

For other partners in her shoes, Diane preaches patience.

“I would tell them to be very, very patient,” Diane said. “Try to understand that what you’re dealing with truly isn’t them. It is their brain and their brain is not functioning properly.”

Kat has given to CLF every month since 2012 and has all her gifts matched by her employer. She is proud to have her father in the group of hundreds of Legacy Donors who have contributed to CTE research and awareness.

“CTE is a real thing,” Kat said. “And all of these legacy donors that have donated their brains have paved the way to help the future and to help people understand how devastating this disease can be.”

John Henry Johnson’s remarkable journey started in 1929, in the rural town of Waterproof, La. In the segregated South, Johnson did not have the option to attend high school near his hometown, so he moved to the Bay Area to live with an older brother at the age of 16. At Pittsburg High School, Johnson played organized sports for the first time, putting together a dominant prep career as a football, basketball, and track and field athlete.

Upon graduation in 1949, Johnson chose to play football at nearby St. Mary’s College, where he made history a year later as the first Black player in program history. He was the first Black student-athlete to compete against a University of Georgia team and was carried off the field by the home fans following a standout performance in a stunning 7-7 tie against the visiting Bulldogs.

St. Mary’s discontinued its football program after the 1950 season, prompting Johnson to follow several teammates transferring to Arizona State, where he continued to play on both sides of the ball in addition to returning kicks. The San Francisco 49ers selected Johnson in the second round of the 1953 NFL Draft, and after one season in the Canadian Football League, the fullback embarked on a legendary NFL career.

In San Francisco, Johnson joined quarterback Y.A. Tittle and running backs Joe Perry and Hugh McElhenny to form the “Million Dollar Backfield.” The four backfield mates captivated Niners fans for three seasons and are the only “T formation” fully enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

John Henry Johnson was one of four Hall of Famers making up San Francisco’s “Million Dollar Backfield.”

As his on-field success raised his nationwide profile, Johnson enjoyed raising his family when he had time away from football. John Henry’s daughter Kathy Moppin said her father loved to dance and always had a joke for his six children. She said he was proud of his place in the Bay Area community and enjoyed visiting schools with his 49ers teammates.

Kathy said because of her father’s playful demeanor off the field, she did not realize until late in his career he developed a reputation as one of the toughest players in the NFL, frequently sacrificing his body on crushing blocks and bruising runs between the tackles.

“He got hurt quite a bit,” Kathy said. “I can remember he had teeth knocked out and shoulders dislocated, and back then, they used smelling salts when they got lightheaded on the field. He went through a lot of trauma to his body.”

The 49ers traded Johnson to Detroit before the 1957 season, and that year he helped lead the Lions to their most recent NFL championship. Johnson joined the Pittsburgh Steelers ahead of the 1960 season. Though he was 31, Johnson still had his best individual seasons ahead of him. He earned the final three of his four Pro Bowl honors in his mid-30s. In 1964, at 35, Johnson became at the time the oldest NFL player to rush for 1,000 yards in a season.

When Johnson retired at 37 following the 1966 season, he ranked fourth on the all-time rushing list. He finished his career with the Houston Oilers but returned to Pittsburgh to start a new career with Columbia Gas of Pennsylvania and later with Warner Communications. Year after year, the Pro Football Hall of Fame overlooked Johnson, who was considered by peers to be one of the best all-around running backs in NFL history.

Finally, in 1987, Johnson got the call to Canton, joining his “Million Dollar Backfield” teammates in the Hall of Fame. He joked at the time that the nickname was far from literal, as he never earned more than $40,000 in an NFL season.

Back in the Bay Area, Kathy said she would speak with her father on the phone two to three times per week. However, when John Henry reached his 50s, Kathy and others close to John Henry noticed changes in his willingness and ability to communicate, on the phone and face to face. A friend in Pittsburgh called Kathy and encouraged her to check on her dad, which she did with the help of John Henry’s wife Leona.

“He still had a good sense of humor, but he was just a lot slower,” Kathy said. “It took him a while to answer if you asked him something. I noticed early on he was having some symptoms of something. I didn’t know what it was.”

In 1989, with Johnson’s cognitive issues affecting his daily life, Leona enrolled Johnson in an Alzheimer’s disease study in Cleveland. This led to a formal diagnosis, and Johnson retired from his post-playing career. Kathy said it was a difficult time for their family, with most of them more than 2,000 miles away from their dad.

“I was very sad, and my siblings were sad, too,” Kathy said. “My dad, at that point, didn’t really get a sense for how serious things were.”

Kathy said despite his struggles at home, John Henry looked forward to annual trips to Canton, Ohio for Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. Clad in their gold jackets, Johnson and his fellow Hall of Famers cherished the opportunity to reminisce about the glory days of decades past.

As the years went on, Kathy said, the late-summer tradition became an eye-opening experience for her family and other relatives of NFL alumni. In Canton, she recalled more wives, sons, and daughters privately sharing concerns about their loved ones’ health years after their football careers ended.

“Every year when I went back, there was more and more guys having symptoms like my dad,” Kathy said. “That’s what got me. Every few years, I could see the next husband with symptoms and the wife having to push him in a wheelchair.”

John Henry returned to California after his wife passed away in 2002. Kathy became his primary caretaker, which presented challenges she could only face with help from her husband and siblings.

“When you sign up for that, you don’t know how hard it’s going to be and how it changes your life,” Kathy said.

Then in his 70s, John Henry struggled further with memory and communication. Though it had been 50 years since he played for the 49ers, he still received fan mail from fans in the Bay Area. When he signed autographs, Kathy said she had to remind him which year to write under his signature when he mistakenly wrote the incorrect year of his “HOF” induction.

Johnson’s struggles with Alzheimer’s included a few instances of wandering from home, which only added stress to Kathy as a caretaker. She said she installed a bell on her front door after police returned her father, finding him waiting at a nearby bus stop. He told her he was on his way to join his Niners teammates for practice that afternoon.

“It was hard for me,” Kathy said. “It was sad to see him decline like that. I cried many a night. But all my siblings helped out, and I was able to get through it. It was sad to see.”

John Henry Johnson died in 2011 at the age of 81. At the time, the NFL’s concussion crisis and the growing understanding of CTE led Kathy to consider donating her father’s brain for study. His San Francisco teammate Joe Perry had died five weeks earlier, and with encouragement from Joe’s widow Donna, Kathy elected to donate her father’s brain to the UNITE Brain Bank.

Boston University researchers diagnosed Johnson with stage 4 CTE, the most advanced stage of the neurodegenerative disease.

“It kind of gave me some closure,” Kathy said. “I was very shocked and sad to hear that, but then I understood more why my dad acted like he did.”

Kathy shares her father’s Legacy Story to celebrate his life while raising awareness about the potential long-term consequences associated with tackle football’s repetitive head impacts. While helmet technology has improved, Kathy said today’s players face most of the same risks as her father, and she hopes more parents and coaches educate themselves about CTE to help prevent similar outcomes to what her family experienced.

She hopes her father’s story leads coaches and administrators to consider policies and rule changes with long-term brain health in mind. Kathy and her family remember John Henry Johnson as a “loving, kind, funny guy,” a man who put smiles on the faces of fans from coast to coast.

“I was shocked to see so many people still remembered my father, and they remembered him as a hard player, a tough player,” Kathy said. “He loved football, and he was loved by his family.”