Scott Heisler

Warning: This story contains mentions of suicide and may be triggering to some readers.

Tenacious: not readily relinquishing a position, principle, or course of action; determined.

My brother Scott was nothing if not tenacious. It’s the word my mom used most, when describing his personality. Determined for sure, and always with an ornery little twinkle in his eye!

As a small child Scott was an early walker and then an early climber – of all things. When he was only two years old, he was caught halfway up a light pole during one of our dad’s slow-pitch softball games. The umpire stopped the game and asked whose kid was up there. Can you even imagine?

He also learned to ride his bike early, at just three and a half. He could ride it but couldn’t stop. A problem he solved by simply putting his feet down, which is why he always had bruises on the back of his calves… from the bike pedals hitting them each time he “stopped.”

Scott had lots of energy as a child. Our mom had him tested for ADHD because of his hyperactivity, impulsivity, and inattention. During his testing though, he was perfectly behaved and played nicely with his toy cars the entire time. Almost as if he knew exactly what to do to get out of the appointment. Since we didn’t have the information or help back then that we now have for these types of disorders, my brother was never officially diagnosed.

Scott was also very athletic, involved in several sports growing up. He started out playing baseball, like most young boys at that time. We moved from our small town of Oskaloosa, IA, to Des Moines, IA, before Scott’s 4th grade year. That fall he started flag football with our dad as his coach. He found his sport of choice! He would also try out wrestling and track along the way, but football was his constant, his passion.

He progressed to playing tackle football in 6th grade. We just didn’t know then; all we know now.

Scott played tackle football for the Des Moines Catholic League from grades 6-8. He then played four years for his high school team, the West Des Moines Valley Tigers. He made varsity from grades 10-12, making 1st Team All-State Defense as a senior. There were never any reported concussions during those years, but Scott played hard, giving 100 percent on the field and at practice. He loved the sound of helmets cracking, loved “hitting hard.” Again, we simply didn’t have the knowledge in the early ‘90s that we have now. If only we’d known.

After giving college a try for one semester, Scott decided to enlist in the Marine Corps. He did so without much discussion with our parents, typical of him because he could be very impulsive. I think he also liked the idea of being a Marine and what they stand for: honor, courage, and commitment. He saw them as the best and the strongest of all the lines of service.

Our dad recalls Scott’s four years in the Marines:

“Scott enlisted in the Marine Corps in December of 1994. He went to basic training in San Diego at the MCRD for three months. While in bootcamp he was exposed to many instances of blows to the head and entire body during self-defense and combat training.”

His permanent station was at Camp Pendleton in California. His MOS was a TOW rocket operator (tank assault team) which obviously included being around explosions, concussive blasts, and other explosives.

Scott was recruited to be a member of the Marine Regiment football team. He played three years and made All Base team twice. I would compare the level of competition to be similar to NCAA Division II but in much more “aggressive manner.”

I know for a brief period he and some teammates were using PEDs, obtained from across the border in Mexico.

Scott was the victim of an attack by another Marine while on duty in Arizona, patrolling the border. The fellow Marine struck Scott in the back of the head with a lead pipe. He spent at least one night in the hospital after this attack.

My brother completed his four years in the Marines and returned home to Des Moines in late 1998.

He returned to school at our local community college the following spring, then got married a year later. It was during this time Scott started to struggle with alcohol. He had been drinking since high school, but this is when we all saw the abuse begin. In hindsight, I think this might also be when he started to “self-medicate” with drinking, for reasons we still didn’t understand.

Scott was larger than life, a big personality who loved to have a good time. But he could be having fun and suddenly get pretty loud and opinionated, which sometimes got him into trouble.

One of those times was in the spring of 2001. He was out with friends and had had way too much to drink. He ended up in an altercation when leaving the bar. He was pulled out of his car and beat over the head with a Maglite by three attackers. He was beaten to the point where he was unconscious. The first responders on the scene told police that they didn’t expect him to make it. Scott spent two nights in the hospital, the first in the ICU with severe brain swelling. He clearly had a concussion from this incident, but to all of our recollections he didn’t do any sort of therapy to help with his recovery. Another example of, “if only we had known…”

Scott got divorced shortly after. Fast forward to the summer of 2004 and he was still struggling with alcohol, having also gotten at least two DUIs by this point. He was working as a bartender at a popular neighborhood bar and attending classes at Grand View College to complete his degree. Despite the setbacks he experienced with his excessive drinking, life was good, and he was having a great time.

Scott also met who would become his second wife that summer. They had a lot of fun together and dated intermittently for several years, before marrying in 2010.

His ex-wife has said, “His goal was always to make others laugh.” When they were first dating though, my brother was convicted of yet another DUI which resulted in him being sentenced to a work release facility for almost a year. It was during this time he picked up running, to pass the time. His ex-wife remembers:

“He was incredibly determined and needed something positive to pour his energy into. Given his athletic abilities, he was a natural runner. He started signing up for half marathons, marathons and eventually took on triathlons and then an Ironman. Scott’s desire to beat others and his own personal times kept him motivated throughout the years. He always needed a goal. His race accomplishments made him seem supernatural!”

She also said, “Scott’s competitive drive is the reason I also started running and eventually signed up for my first half marathon. He helped me realize I could do it. He saw a drive in me I never knew existed.”

I love that memory of Scott – of him being able to inspire his ex-wife to become something greater than she even realized she could be. One of his longtime high school friends shared a similar feeling about him:

“Scott was an encourager. Sometimes bad, but I would never have started running without him. I still hear his voice late in a workout or when things get physically hard saying, ’Don’t give up, let’s go!’ A lot of my best finish times came from fear of being chased down by Scott late in a race. Once I could get out in front of him, I did not want to hear him say something as he was passing me. And you know he would always have a smart remark!”

Scott and his ex-wife had a daughter in 2014, then divorced a little over a year later in 2015. She said, “During our time together, Scott drank too much. He hid bottles throughout our house. He said he had a hard time falling asleep, so he’d take Benadryl late at night to help. We fought about that, and the drinking, a lot. Eventually, I couldn’t live with it anymore.”

Over the next five years, they tried to be a family again a couple different times but just could never make it work. It often had to do with his alcohol addiction and major mood swings.

My brother, my beautiful, beautiful brother. He was struggling more than any of us knew. Again, if only…

During the summer of 2016, I remember my parents threw out the idea that Scott was possibly suffering from CTE, in response to some erratic behavior he was exhibiting. I completely blew it off, scoffed even, that they were simply making excuses for his bad behavior. After all, he hadn’t played football in 20 years! I wrongly assumed (did not take the time to inform myself) CTE could only happen to football players, and it showed up shortly after they were done playing. I could not have been more wrong.

From 2015-2020, Scott competed in countless races. Running was his other addiction. He loved the challenge that triathlons gave him but running was his passion. He was an incredible runner. So fast. He participated in our local IMT Des Moines Marathon every fall and was able to qualify for the Boston Marathon with a qualifying time of 3:07. He then ran Boston in 2015, finishing in 3:30. That year, the weather was especially bad. It was cold, rainy, and windy. Brutal conditions for my brother, who was an absolute lover of the heat.

Something I haven’t mentioned is that Scott was also an avid smoker. I know, an incredible athlete who treated his body like a temple when it came to exercising and the food and supplements he put into it, but yet he could drink like a fish and smoked too! One of the things that drove me crazy about him was how, after a race, he would immediately pull out a cigarette and light it up. Right in the middle of the crowd of runners who were likely not interested in inhaling his secondhand smoke. Back to his run in Boston; I was scrolling through his race pictures online, after he passed, which was a very bittersweet experience. I came across a string of three or four and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. He had stopped during the race, lit a cigarette, and then was running while smoking. Clearly, he had had it with the weather and the race! Such a funny moment, one I wished I’d known about prior to him dying, so I could razz him about it.

Scott’s biggest race accomplishment would undoubtedly be his Ironman. He did Ironman Wisconsin in September of 2018. Scott got his last DUI in April of 2017. Long story short, he ended up with an ankle device for a year, was not allowed to drink for that next year or he would go to jail. Scott poured all his energy into getting healthy and training for and then completing that Ironman.

Sadly, once the ankle device came off, he started drinking again. He thought he could handle it, control it. A game so many addicts play.

He continued to run in races, up until the world shut down in March of 2020. I think he was supposed to participate in our local St. Patrick’s Day run that March, but was unable to after its cancellation.

Scott’s drinking was getting out of control, though none of us fully understood how bad it was. So many who knew him, who loved him, have said, “if only he could have had his races, maybe they would have provided the focus he needed…”

In 2020, Scott would have done the following races, because he had done them for countless years before: Drake full or half marathon in April, DAM to DSM in June, then he would have been training for the IMT Marathon in October.

The world had shut down though and all runs had become virtual. He didn’t have his running community, the connection he desperately needed.

Another one of his longtime high school friends wrote this:

“Scott was a true friend. I thought I knew most of what was going on in his life. There were certainly a few flaws (which we all have), but things on the outside seemed to be just fine. His story is a good reminder to dig deeper to make sure your friends are okay, and to make sure they know to call if they need someone. Scott’s one of a kind, a hilarious super athlete who was always down for a great time. I think about him every day, and am really sad we could not give him what he needed in the end.”

I wish more than anything that we could go back, help Scott, save him. If only we had known then, what we know now.

When I look back, things really started to unravel for Scott the last eight weeks of his life. But in actuality, it probably started happening many months before that. Our dad’s thoughts on this:

“Scott’s patience and mood changed slowly the last year or so leading up to his death. He dramatically became more negative and there were many incidences of Scott quickly losing his temper, having seemingly unprovoked outbursts. He knew something was wrong with his thinking and ability to control his temper. We talked about it, and he decided to see what could be determined by seeking medical help. Unfortunately, he never made it to that appointment.”

The appointment our dad refers to was one at our local VA. It was an appointment to see if Scott was suffering from a TBI, or traumatic brain injury. His appointment was scheduled for October 7, 2020. He never made it because he died by suicide on September 18, 2020.

Some of my recollections during those last several weeks: My brother was upset about his ex-wife  meeting someone new. He apparently thought they still had a chance at getting back together, becoming a family again. He started calling her incessantly, made a verbal threat of harm towards her new boyfriend, just a couple examples of his erratic behavior. She took legal action and had a no contact order, and then a restraining order, filed against Scott. We fully supported her. All of this, along with the fact we didn’t fully understand how depressed Scott was, how out of control his drinking had become, or how to get him the help he desperately needed, led to his first suicide attempt on September 7, 2020.

As I sat with him in the hospital that night, he told me he was tired of being a burden. It broke my heart. He was absolutely not a burden to anyone. Was he scaring all of us? Yes, absolutely. His behavior was out of control. He was out of control. He also told me something was wrong with his head and he was going to have a TBI study done soon. At the time, I had never heard of a TBI. When he explained to me what it meant, I told him he just needed to stop drinking and get on the right antidepressant. He had a brain injury, was literally losing his mind, but I simplified it as, “just stop drinking and get on the right meds…” If I’d only had the information then that I have now.

My brother was released from the hospital the next morning and then arrested the same afternoon for breaking the no contact order. When he attempted that first suicide, he had done it on his ex-wife’s front steps. How much that scared her, I will never know. I am certain Scott’s intention wasn’t to scare or hurt anyone. Yet, that’s exactly what he was doing, scaring all of us.

He spent four nights in jail. Our dad bailed him out on Saturday morning. He came over to my house and had dinner with us. There were lots of tears and honest conversations, lots of hugs too. He felt so bad about what he had done, how he might not get to see his little girl for a long time due to his actions. He seemed to be in the right head space though, seemed to “get it” and wanted to take the steps to be better, and get better.

As the week went on, he started to get more and more agitated. We were texting a lot throughout the day each day. He came over for dinner again on Wednesday night. Looking back, he had been drinking. He wasn’t supposed to be drinking and I didn’t think (at the time) he was. As he was leaving we stood outside and talked for probably 30 minutes. The conversation was one I had a hard time following. Scott was so upset again, angry, and not making a lot of sense. At one point he was tapping the back of his head, saying, “I know there’s something wrong with my brain!” I was trying to talk him down, but he left mad. I wish so much I could go back to that night and just hug him, hold him, and tell him I love him, that it would all be OK.

I talked to our dad the following evening, explaining how I didn’t think Scott was doing very well, and seemed really agitated again. We agreed we needed to take steps to help him. The next morning our dad called and spoke to Scott’s therapist about our concerns. Scott then had a virtual appointment with her, where she shared our worries with him. He texted me after saying he shouldn’t have shared so much. I said no, he should definitely share, just not threaten harm. I explained we were all so worried because of how erratic his behavior had been lately, and if he hurt the boyfriend, he would effectively end his life as he knew it, meaning he would go back to jail. His response was, “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt him.” I will forever regret not responding with, “Don’t hurt yourself either,” but I didn’t. We texted a bit more, about how he was going to come over in the morning to go on a 50-mile bike ride with my husband. My husband was training for his first half Ironman and Scott was going to ride with him. A ride that never happened.

Approximately three hours after our last text, my brother would die by suicide. He had driven by his ex-wife’s house, breaking the restraining order. The police came to arrest him again. My dad called Scott, explained they were on their way and told him to comply. Scott pulled a pellet gun on the officers. It wasn’t a gun that could do real harm, but it looked like a real gun. Scott purchased it during quarantine for target practice to get him out of the house. Having been a Marine, he had a lot of respect for authority and would never hurt a police officer. They had no choice but to shoot him though. It’s what my brother was counting on, for them to end his suffering.

The morning after Scott died, our dad called the medical examiner, asking him to please have Scott’s brain tested for CTE. Due to the manner of his death, we were only able to send the UNITE Brain Bank small samples of tissue from Scott’s brain. It often takes close to a year to get the test results back. We got the results back on October 11, 2021. It was confirmed, tau protein was found, which is consistent with early-stage CTE, but the researchers needed the whole brain to get an official diagnosis. Still, the study provided so much validation because Scott knew something was wrong with his brain.

I am sharing Scott’s story, so many details of his story, because I hope (we hope) it will help someone. If someone can read this, recognize these symptoms in their loved one, and help them, then his death won’t be in vain. I urge all parents to consider programs like Flag Football Under 14 to prevent unnecessary repetitive head impacts when children are too young. I don’t want another family to have to live with the “what if” and “if only” we live with. If only I had known what CTE really was, if only I had seen CLF’s website and social media page sooner, where you can read about the signs and symptoms of CTE.

On October 28, about six weeks after Scott died, I came across a post a friend had made on Instagram. It was a post about a charity event for CLF, the Concussion Legacy Foundation. I clicked the link and started reading, then started crying. I saw the post which listed the signs and symptoms of CTE. It was all there, and it was all so clear: THIS is what my brother had been suffering from. And there was a Helpline. A Helpline?! What if I had seen that Helpline?

What if I had seen it six weeks before Scott died, instead of six weeks after? What if? If only..

To my beautiful, beautiful brother: You were loved. Loved SO much. You were worthy. Worthy of a GOOD life, free of the pain you were suffering from. And you were never, EVER, a burden.

Suicide is preventable and help is available. If you are concerned that someone in your life may be suicidal, the five #BeThe1To steps are simple actions anyone can take to help someone in crisis. If you are struggling to cope and would like some emotional support, call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 to connect with a trained counselor. It’s free, confidential, and available to everyone in the United States. You do not have to be suicidal to call.

Are you or someone you know struggling with lingering concussion symptoms? We support patients and families through the CLF HelpLine, providing personalized help to those struggling with the outcomes of brain injury. Submit your request today and a dedicated member of the Concussion Legacy Foundation team will be happy to assist you.

 

Glen Ray Hines

My father Glen Ray Hines was born October 26, 1943, in El Dorado, Arkansas. He graduated from El Dorado High School in 1961, and attended the University of Arkansas from 1961-1965. He and his family lived primarily in the Houston, Texas area, where myself, my brother Wes and sister Sheila were born, before he and our mother moved to the northwest Arkansas area.

Above all things in his life, Dad loved his wife, children, and grandchildren. He met our mother Jody, his high school sweetheart, in their teens and they married in 1965. Dad was first and foremost a family man. He took an avid interest in his children’s education and extracurricular activities, but the event he was most proud of in our lives was our individual acceptance of Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior.

I’ve often told people that Dad was a big man, but he cast a very small shadow. He was a quiet man who preferred action over words. The most humble man his children ever knew, he would much rather speak with you about the latest accomplishments of his children or grandchildren than anything he had accomplished himself. I’ve never known another man to spend more time, quality and quantity, with his children. During our formative years, he was completely and totally invested in everything in our lives, and if you asked him, he – in a rare moment of being prideful – would tell you this investment paid off. After his children were grown with families of their own, he took a keen interest in his grandchildren’s lives, always asking about their education and activities, and in his later years, he enjoyed nothing more than attending their athletic and scholastic events.

Indeed, our father was his children’s hero, but not because of anything he did on an athletic field. That was a small, finite period of his life. He played football for only 15 years. He lived for another 60. It was what he did during the other 60 that mattered, at least to his family. It was what he did in those other 60 years that bore fruit. It was an investment that paid off.

As much as I might want to overlook it, we must admit football was, without question, a significant part of his life. It affected his life as well as ours, in many different and conflicting ways. As much as football impacted his life, he in turn, left his own, influential mark on the history of Arkansas Razorback and Houston Oiler football.

A two-sport standout at El Dorado High School in Arkansas, he played collegiately for the University of Arkansas Razorbacks from 1961 to 1965. In 1964, he was the anchor of an offensive line that helped Arkansas win its only National Championship in football, and in 1965, he was a consensus All-American. The Houston Post named him the Southwest Conference’s Most Outstanding Player for the 1965 season, a rare honor for a lineman. In 1989, Dad was named as one of the best two offensive tackles of all-time in the 82-year history of the Southwest Conference when he was named a member of the Express News San Antonio, All-Time Southwest Conference Football First-Team Offense. In 1994, he was selected as a member of the Arkansas Razorback All-Century team. He was inducted into the Razorback Sports Hall of Honor in 2001 and the Union County (Arkansas) Sports Hall of Fame in 2012. In October 2018, he was inducted into the Southwest Conference (SWC) Sports Hall of Fame.

In 1965, there were two professional football leagues, the NFL and the AFL, and Dad was drafted by both; the NFL’s St. Louis Cardinals, and the AFL’s Houston Oilers. In 1966, he signed with the Oilers and played for Houston until 1970. He played the 1971-72 seasons with the New Orleans Saints, and retired after his final season with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1973.

Dad was an accomplished pass blocker at a time when offensive linemen were severely restricted in the use of their hands to block pass rushers. He was an AFL All-Star game selection, the AFL version of the Pro Bowl, in 1968 and 1969. A model of durability, from his first season in 1966 through his final season in 1973, he started and played in 115 consecutive NFL games, including three playoff games. In December 2005, the Football Digest named him to the All-Time Houston Oilers Team.

But all this achievement and recognition that American society places so much value on, at least while football players are in the public eye, eventually came at a big price to my father and our family.

Shortly after he retired from the NFL in 1975 at the age of 32, Dad began to show some early symptoms that have become all too familiar to other football players and their families. When he was diagnosed many years later with serious neurological disease and probable Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), these symptoms started to make sense in hindsight, but at the time our family had no idea what to make of them. He was reclusive. He was always writing things down in notebooks, which he had countless numbers of around the house that he would keep long after they were completely filled. We didn’t know why. He experienced sudden fits of anger that seemed to be way out of proportion to the precipitating cause. He would close himself off from people. He went through dark moods that made him unapproachable. He had difficulty maintaining a job, although he was offered numerous opportunities. His explanation at the time was that the jobs took too much time away from being able to spend time with his family. But we suspected there were other issues at play that made it very difficult for him to maintain steady employment. He avoided attending any functions that required him to speak publicly and did not often attend reunions of his football teams. People concluded he was aloof, standoffish, and even arrogant. But they had no idea what was really going on.

He also suffered from an acute, palpable depression that no one could understand, least of all him. It debilitated him, and in turn, it debilitated our family. Our fellow “football families” who have been through these same experiences can understand this and how this insidious affliction affects not only our loved one – our father, our brother, our son – who played the game, but it also leaves a wide path of damage in its wake that impacts everyone who loves and cares about them.

When it started to manifest itself, Dad even wrote letters to his children attempting to explain what he was going through.

“I can’t explain what exactly happened to me,” he wrote. “Lately I’ve been having more and more doubts of whether I will ever get back on track. It seems like nothing ever works out for me, though I still consider myself the luckiest man in the world and I have much guilt about letting myself get down after I have been blessed with so much in life. However, I haven’t given up, and I will continue to try and make something positive happen with my life. As long as I can breathe, I have a chance.”

He was still a relatively young man when he wrote this, but he knew there was something wrong. The real miracle of our father during these years was the fact that he was so strong, he was somehow able to hide much of this and keep it under control for the most part; to live with it while at the same time knowing he had some kind of strange affliction that he couldn’t understand. This is why during his last days, most of his friends expressed shock that he had taken such a rapid physical and mental crash that he was in hospice care within the span of about two weeks. No one had any idea how bad his condition was, nor how long it had existed.

Later in life, his physical and cognitive decline became more rapid and advanced, and he was eventually diagnosed with advanced dementia that his doctors found resulted from his football career. He decided to donate his brain for analysis to the Boston University CTE Center. Almost one year after his death, in January, 2020, the Boston University CTE Center diagnosed him with Stage 4 (of 4) CTE, the most advanced and severe form of CTE. There was “global spread” of the disease to every part of his brain and even in deeper parts of the brain rarely observed in other cases.

But football and his CTE diagnosis are not his legacy.

Despite what football did to him, he was still able to overcome it, until nearly the very end. With perseverance, he ran the race marked out for him, and he won.

His legacy is that he was an example. He was an outstanding role model for his children. He was the example of what a Christian husband should be. He was the example of a good Christian father and grandfather. He was the example of a humble Christian servant. And he was an example of a good and loyal friend.

This is the legacy he gifted us. And these are the things we will remember.

We are very thankful to the incredible staff at the Boston University CTE Center and the Concussion Legacy Foundation, especially Lisa McHale and Dr. Thor Stein, for their dedication and hard work, and the professionalism they exhibited from the first hours after Dad passed away through the long wait to find out the results of his testing.

 

Ryan Hoffman

Ryan’s life slipped away in the ER at Heart of Florida Hospital, Haines City, FL, on November 16, 2015. He died from massive head injuries resulting from a crash with a car in Haines City. He was visiting with his mother at the time of the accident. He was riding down the wrong way on the road into traffic on his bicycle and struck by an automobile, according to the only witness, the driver of the car that killed him. It was a tragic end to a long story of the havoc that Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) causes its victims and those closest to them. Ryan had struggled for nearly twenty years with the effects of this disease, CTE, a fact which could not be substantiated at the time to either himself, physicians, friends and family. CTE cannot be definitively assessed until a post mortem procedural autopsy is performed on the brain. Ryan’s brain was donated by his family posthumously because they felt it was what Ryan would have wanted: them to know the answers. Also, they felt he would want it for others who might have CTE. Hopefully, research will provide a cure and remedy for those who suffer from CTE, but currently that is not the reality. It wasn’t for Ryan. He could not get an accurate diagnosis for the symptoms that he suffered for years, going into stage II-III CTE, or a treatment program that was effective. To date there is no treatment available. The full extent of its effects are still not conclusively known, in entirety, but it seems that its victims have a common thread of a downward spiral of debilitating symptoms, depression and often suicidal consequences.

As a child, Ryan was always larger, stronger and more physically active. He was an outside kind of kid, either riding his bicycles, flying by on his skateboards, surf boarding when he was older. He like to ski and to swim, and he always had friends. For Ryan, outside of sports, friends were among the most important things in his life. He always had a lot of them. Ryan was very social and outgoing. Ryan was a happy child and a well-adjusted adolescent. He had no issues with negative behaviors, kept up a high grade point average in school, was highly regarded by his teachers and coaches, and was very organized in his personal habits. He kept to a schedule, and followed the rules in the home.

Ryan was heavily recruited by Division I schools his senior year in high school. When he decided on UNC and went off to college it was his dream come true, to be a Division I player and to get a scholarship to a great college. He accomplished that dream and the family was all proud and excited for him. It was a great time of his life, as he seemed to be on top of the world. He stayed on as a starter on the football team at UNC five years. He loved the school and he was well liked and highly regarded by his coaches and teammates. His senior year he was nominated MVP. He played left tackle and was a strong contributor to the successes of the team while at UNC. Ryan played in several bowl games and showed that he was a player with great heart. There are no school records showing that Ryan was diagnosed with a concussion during college or high school for that matter, no incidents of his exhibiting outwardly the symptoms of concussion. But it is now known that it isn’t necessarily the concussions that produce symptoms that contribute to CTE, but the continual head banging and shock to the brain that is the cause of CTE, one of the reasons why it’s not possible to assess the consequences so easily. It’s the repetitive jarring of the brain as it hits the skull during contact sports, and Ryan’s position was a head banger position, being a left tackle and in the snap, colliding with equally big and strong defensive linemen head to head. The family attending the games and the coaches and players had no real way perhaps to measure the damages being done, so little was widely known of this silent disease or its consequences until recently. The other factor is that not all players get CTE as a result of playing contact sports. The answer to this tragedy lies in the research now being done to both prevent and hopefully find relief and a cure for the disease. And then for the football programs to extend help to its victims, like Ryan, who often become debilitated to the point of not being able to provide for themselves necessary medical care or in some cases to even be self-sufficient ultimately.

The changes in Ryan post UNC were dramatic and notably uncharacteristic when compared to the Ryan his family knew for the first twenty-two years of his life. Ryan started showing symptoms that something was going seriously wrong within a few weeks of leaving UNC. He was then living with his father, and his sister, Kira, became aware that he was having shocks to his head that woke him out of sleep, and he complained of dizziness and headaches. He lost weight and started having sleeping problems and symptoms not unlike PTS. He started having problems with staying organized, and his sister noticed that he kept everything in his room in plastic bags, lined up in neat piles rather than in the dressers in his room. He explained he had to see everything to remember where things were, and it eliminated frustration, searching through the drawers for them. He also often seemed to lose consciousness for brief periods, like small seizures. He would fall down and jump back up sometimes and explain that he had lost consciousness. He was sent to various doctors who could find nothing wrong with him. He would forget to close doors, leaving the house wide open, and in general seemed to forget details easily, lose his keys, wallet, phones, etc. His personality changed also. He was not the happy go lucky, upbeat person everyone knew Ryan to be throughout childhood, adolescents and his college years. He was clearly struggling and frustrated.

Ryan married and had a daughter after he came home. The marriage lasted until his daughter was around three or four years of age. He and his ex-wife remained friends over the years, and Ryan maintained a close contact with his daughter and his adopted son right up the end of his life. He truly loved his kids, and did what he could do to be a good father, but over the years his overwhelming problems took an enormous toll economically, physically and psychologically. He could not maintain adequate employment, and he survived living in various homes with friends and relatives, and uncharacteristic to those who he was prior to this, he had many brushes with law enforcement, mostly minor things, but enough to ruin his chances for gainful employment. He survived by working at construction jobs, roofing, day labor and other small jobs. The common consensus, however, of bosses and co-workers was that Ryan was one of the hardest workers they’d ever met. He lost many opportunities because of his disability. He was an accomplished welder and admitted to a prestigious welding school in a marine welding program in Jacksonville FL, but ultimately the life issues that plagued him from his injuries prohibited him from participating at the last minute, another of many in a long series of crushing disappointment in his attempts to better himself. He couldn’t seem to settle in life or find traction anywhere. His life was chaotic and left no quarter for raising children. He was adrift and towards the later years showing signs of depression, self-medicating, and increasing symptoms physically characteristic of CTE. He often had seizures that rendered him unconscious. He was depressed and manic, had trouble sleeping, and the misplacement and losing of objects grew worse. His family members tried to get him on disability but his case was repeatedly denied. He had issues keeping his driver license and had no ID on him at the time of his death. He could not maintain medical care for himself, jobless as he was and without any insurance. Had Ryan lived, going into stage III and then IV CTE, it is a surety that he would have gone into a full-blown dementia. His was a gradual downward spiral that caused dramatic changes in behavior, especially in the area of cognitive things, such as good judgement, memory, impulse control and anger management that is consistent with the autopsy at the BU CTE Center as to the severity and local of Ryan’s abnormal concentrations of proteins in the brain.

This is the terrible picture of what CTE can do to someone like Ryan Hoffman, an accomplished, big hearted boy who finds himself dwindling inexplicably after returning from the glory of his college years into a void of failures and disappointments. Often, he was misunderstood, perhaps the most difficult aspect, by people who judged the person and not the disease. Is there hope for people like Ryan? Let’s pray that there is and that this disease can be, as so many others have been, eradicated, understood and prevented for future generations. Let’s hope it will also be a wake-up call for parents, coaches, educators and the public who revere the sports but do not recognize the great risk and cost that often comes of them. Let’s hope that it in the future it won’t take a post mortem diagnosis to diagnose CTE so its victims may get the help they need from state agencies and the programs they come out of who they benefited by their sacrifices.

Ryan felt that there was something not right with his brain. He confided early on that he wanted his sister to make sure that his brain was donated in the event anything happened to him. Ryan offered to give the last thing he had, showing he was a generous soul who had an open hand to those who had needs around him when he had something to give. He will always be remembered and loved by those who knew him and he is greatly missed. Ryan’s star is rising on the horizon somewhere else now, and those who knew him are left with only the memories of his short life. Sadly, perhaps he did not realize this. Hopefully, he knows so now.