Bob Waters Is Fighting a Battle for His Life : HE DIDN’T WANT TO BE A HERO

Bob Waters stands quietly near the middle of the Western Carolina University football field that bears his name and lets the gentle afternoon mist fall against his face. His right arm is in a sling now, and his left arm hangs at his side, unable to do much of anything. Earlier, his wife helped dress him. At lunch, his assistant coaches helped feed him. Someone will drive him home when practice ends.

Whoever said it was Lou Gehrig’s Disease was wrong. It is Bob Waters’ now.

Just last season, he stood here and reluctantly took part in the dedication ceremony for him at halftime of Western’s game against Virginia Military Institute. Back then, before his condition worsened, Waters still could shake a man’s hand or hold the plaque presented to him. And he could coach. Still can.

Down by 10 points entering the third quarter, Western bungled things even more and began the fourth period behind, 30-14.

“The dedication didn’t have the effect it was supposed to have had,” Waters says, smiling.

Then Western scored a touchdown. And another. And another one after that, ending up with a 35-30 victory.

“It was like a whole other football team,” Waters says.

So sentimentality had triumphed. Good guys aren’t extinct. Winning one for the Gipper isn’t such a myth, after all.

But then what? Waters wasn’t getting any better. The curse of his illness--amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)--is in its unpredictability. It adheres to few rules, has no sure cause, eludes possible cures. About the only sure thing is that ALS almost always renders the body’s muscles useless by attacking the motor nerve cells of the nervous system.

With this in mind, said some at Western, might it not be better for all concerned if Waters resigned from his duties as the school’s athletic director and head football coach?

Waters considered the suggestions and decided that, while he could no longer raise his hands above his waist or climb a steep set of stairs without laboring, he was a coach, and not a bad one at that. Let someone else become athletic director. He would remain head coach. He had lost weight, but never hope. And anyway he was alive, which, he says, is a hell of a lot better than the alternative.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited about getting a season started,” Waters says. “Whatever the reason, I’m not quite sure. Probably, it gets my mind off the illness. But the people, the family, the coaching staff, my wife, make it possible. It’s not easy to deal with. In fact, I feel bad sometimes putting people in situations where they have to work for two, dress for two.”

No one seems to mind.

“It’s tough, but dad’s probably taking it better than any of us,” says Jeff Waters, a reserve quarterback at Western. “I saw his old high school coach two weeks ago, and he said that if anybody could beat this, it was dad.”

Says senior running back Milton Beck: “Last year, I thought it was going to be his last season. He surprised us and he’s still going strong. He’s just in his prime anyway. I hope he can coach for 20 more years.”

Waters, 48, makes his way around the field in deliberate, measured strides. He watches each drill with interest, occasionally approaching a player or assistant coach with a suggestion. He seldom raises his voice, needs no shrill whistle to command attention. When a group of wide receivers continues to cut pass routes short, Waters reminds them that the play is designed for an 11-yard completion, not 9. That takes care of that.

Earlier in fall practice, the assistant coaches took time to answer players’ questions about Waters. What was ALS? What was it doing to him? Would he, could he, be their coach at the end of the season?

He would coach as long as he was physically able, they were told. “As long as I can contribute and think that I can be effective,” Waters would say.

And here he is, doing what he knows best; doing what he needs the most.

There is no timetable to this. ALS, first described in 1850, is a fickle disease, each case seemingly different than the next. As best as researchers can determine, 50% of all afflicted ALS patients will die in about three years. About 20% survive beyond five years and 10% of ALS patients can live beyond 10 years. Specialists at the University of Vermont diagnosed Waters’ condition about a year and a half ago, though Waters says he first felt the effects of ALS more than four years ago.

What makes ALS particularly cruel, in a sense, is that a patient’s intellect remains unaffected.

“You sort of have a ringside seat as your body melts away,” says Dr. Stanley Appel, chairman of the department of neurology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, where Waters takes part in an experimental treatment program.

Researchers also know that there usually is no physical pain from the disease itself. A patient retains his ability to taste, hear, smell, see and touch, and there is no impairment of the bowel and bladder functions. Sexual functions remain possible.

“It’s a tough disease,” Appel says. “It’s awfully tough to sit there and watch . . . while your physical skills waste away prematurely. It takes a hell of a lot of courage and a hell of a lot of dignity. This is a man who has both.”

Waters remembers the day he felt numbness in his right arm. At first, he thought a steel plate inserted in his forearm to correct an earlier football injury was causing the problem. He disregarded the condition until the numbness spread.

Later, Waters noticed that the muscles in his arm would twitch. Doctors call this fasciculation. Muscle cramps followed. Waters became weaker and tended to tire more easily. Something was terribly wrong, but what?

“I went everywhere, but nobody wants to say you have ALS,” Waters says.

He visited a physician in Asheville, N.C., who referred him to doctors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who then referred him to the University of Vermont. After an initial diagnosis was made, Waters traveled to Appel and the Baylor College of Medicine for further analysis and confirmation.

The tests took a week. Those patients suspected of having ALS undergo a thorough physical exam as well as an electromyogram to confirm the loss of nerve supply to the muscles. There were blood tests, muscle biopsies, X-rays, a spinal tap, urine examinations and a test of pulmonary functions that would measure the involvement of the respiratory muscles and tell doctors how far the disease had progressed.

Through it all, Waters says he remained hopeful that a mistake had been made, that maybe it wasn’t ALS, after all. Truth is, Waters wasn’t even quite sure what ALS was. He knew the disease was better known with Lou Gehrig’s name attached to it. But amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ? What was that?

It is no longer a question, but a fight where one man’s will does its best against the failings of the body’s nervous system.

“I certainly went through a sad period or a depressed period,” Waters says. “That’s when you actually find out what you have. Dealing with it was difficult. But in recent months, I don’t think of it right now. And I really don’t know why I haven’t been angry. A lot of people are. For some reason, I’ve got other things to think about.

“The main reason I want to continue coaching and be as normal as I can be, is that I think that’s the way I can last longer until somebody finds something. I keep waiting for someone to come up with a medication, a drug, whatever.”

Waters always has had this quality, this ability to wage dignified wars of sort. By all logic, he probably should have never become a college football player, or a draft choice of the San Francisco 49ers, or an assistant coach at Presbyterian College and Stanford or a head coach at Western. But Waters didn’t know any better.

He broke his collarbone during his junior year of high school in Sylvania, Ga., and again during his senior season. Waters played three games in those two years, which explains why there were no scholarship offers after his graduation.

Waters had an idea. He would choose three schools and arrange a tryout at each. First came South Georgia Junior College. In charge at South Georgia was a fast-talking, 25-year-old coach named Bobby Bowden, who now resides at Florida State and has a team ranked in the Top 20 of just about every preseason poll.

Bowden’s idea of a tryout didn’t include a 40-yard dash and a shuttle run. It did, however, include a full scrimmage.

“I used to bring in hundreds of kids and try them out,” Bowden says. “It was for the boys who didn’t have major college scholarships. We’d tell them to bring their pads.”

Waters injured his knee and underwent surgery. He recovered, chose Stetson University in Deland, Fla., and then watched as the school discontinued its football program after Waters’ freshman season. That’s when he settled on Presbyterian.

As a senior quarterback in 1960, Waters became the first and only player from the losing team to be named the MVP in the Tangerine Bowl (now the Citrus Bowl). The 49ers, impressed with him, picked Waters in the seventh round.

The 49ers were an interesting team. They had the shotgun offense, the first of its kind in the NFL, and an eclectic collection of quarterbacks, including Waters, John Brodie and later Billy Kilmer.

Waters ended his career as a safety, a position change dictated by injuries to three of six 49er defensive backs in 1964. The story goes that on his third play on defense, Waters found himself face to face with a charging Cleveland running back named Jim Brown.

Brown and Waters met in one of those collisions that cause spectators to flinch. As Brown got off the ground, he looked to see who had made the tackle. He saw Waters, who weighed considerably less than the legendary Brown, and began to smile.

“You hit harder than any quarterback I ever ran into,” Brown said.

Waters nodded and returned to the 49er huddle, too embarrassed to say that a San Francisco linebacker had pushed him into Brown.

After two seasons as an assistant at Presbyterian, Waters became the receivers coach at Stanford. One of his pupils was Gene Washington.

“Yeah, ‘Muddy’ Waters,” Washington says. “He was the type of coach who could really identify with the players. He had a way of working with you, trying to get your confidence level high.”

It is no different now. Since arriving at Western in 1969, Waters has coached teams to national rankings on three levels--National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, NCAA II and most recently, NCAA I-AA. In 1983, Western advanced to the NCAA I-AA national championship game.

“There are some teams that try to do everything and don’t,” Bowden says. “Then there are teams that try to do a few things well. That’s how I would characterize a Bob Waters team.”

Western played Florida State last season at Tallahassee, Fla. The two men met on the field before the game and, out of habit, Bowden extended his arm for a handshake. “I knew he had been sick,” Bowden says, “but . . . “

Waters slowly raised his right arm with his left. They shook hands.

“He’ll fight it,” Bowden says. “He’s a good man.”

Next Saturday against Appalachian State, Waters will begin his 18th season as Western’s head coach. His team is not particularly large or fast. Changes in tuition have forced him to recruit primarily within the state, where competition remains high. And it is not uncommon to examine the roster of say, Auburn, which Western plays later this season, and find the Division I school with players 20 pounds heavier, several inches taller and more highly regarded than the ones found at WCU.

But this season, they play with a purpose other than simply to win football games. And that should count for something.

“He’s giving everything he has for us,” says sophomore quarterback Todd Cottrell, “so we feel like we should give as much we can back.”

Says Jeff Waters: “We see him out there not quitting. Most of us would do just about anything for him.”

There has been talk among the players to do something special for Waters, perhaps place a sign over the locker-room door leading to the field that would remind them of their commitment. Or maybe a more permanent structure, such as a large rock with a plaque commemorating Waters’ contribution to Western that they would touch as they ran onto the field. A Southern Conference championship, Waters’ first, would be nice, too.

Waters would settle for a season without fanfare. “I want them to react to me as a good football coach, not as a sick person,” he says. “I don’t want them to react as though as I’m fragile or sick. I want them to respect me because I’m the coach. I want them to respect my position as a person.

“I’ve got (ALS) and if it can provide inspiration, fine, I guess,” he says. “But I’d rather find another way to be an inspiration. I’m really not trying to be a hero in this sort of thing,” he says.

Like Gehrig nearly 50 years before him, Waters asks for no sympathy. He finds happiness in his family, his friends and his football team. He would have preferred that ALS ignored him, but it didn’t and that’s that. And isn’t that what Gehrig said back in July of 1939 in Yankee Stadium, that you do the best you can and go on?

“I may have been given a bad break, but I have an awful lot to live for,” Gehrig said. “All in all, I can say on this day that I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

Soon, the Blue Ridge Mountains that surround this campus will be bathed in the hues and shades of autumn. This is Waters’ special time of year, when he goes about his craft with quiet determination. He will be where he belongs, of course: on a sideline, teaching his players much more than football. They, you see, are the luckiest people on the face of the earth. They have Bob Waters and daily lessons in humility.

Step down as coach? How silly. This kind of man you raise higher.