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.”

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.