No Tears for Fears : Alzheimer’s Symptoms Strip Memories From Former Ram Great

This is not a life that should be forgotten. It has been, until now, a 71-year highlight film that, for those who don’t know the man, plays out suspiciously like some Faustian joy ride.

Perhaps, in a cruel conclusion, Tom Fears has been called to “accounts payable.”

Maybe no one gets what he was handed and walks away clean.

Maybe no one deserves to have been so happy. Maybe, ultimately, no one so blessed should be allowed to remember that he caught touchdown passes from Bob Waterfield and Norm Van Brocklin on Sundays at the Coliseum.

Maybe such a fortunate son should not be allowed to boast about being so good that--on a team that included “Crazylegs,” “Deacon Dan” and “Night Train”--no one saw a need to give him a nickname.

Maybe he should not be allowed to reflect, as the Rams warm up the moving vans, that his name might soon become indelibly etched in history as the man who crossed into an end zone in 1951 and hand-delivered the Los Angeles Rams their only NFL championship.

Or that, as an assistant coach in 1961, he strode into Green Bay, Wis., around the time Coach Vince Lombardi was reshaping football with his block of stone and chisel.

Or that, in 1970, he took another walk into Canton and the NFL Hall of Fame.

Or that, in 1951, he married Luella Wintheiser, a pretty, common-sense woman of German decent, and hasn’t looked back.

Or that she bore six children, three of each gender--”a balanced attack,” Fears likes to say--who in turn have borne six grandchildren.

How many of us get to say, “If I had to do it all over again, I’d do it the same way.”

How many look back with no regrets?

“I thank my lucky stars,” Fears says. “I’ve had the best of everything. My wife is the greatest lady I’ve ever met. I say that unequivocally.”

The plan was for Fears to live out his golden years with all these wonderful memories. In 1988, he and Luella moved from Orange County to an upscale townhouse in Palm Desert. Their back porch overlooks the 16th fairway of the gated-community course. Fears took up golf later in life and figured he had a lot of catching up to do.

There is nothing wrong with Fears that meets the eye. He keeps himself in splendid physical condition, shaves the fat from his meat, watches his cholesterol, works out at the gym. Fears, in fact, weighs seven pounds less than he did when he was protecting his knees from the likes of Philadelphia Eagle linebacker Chuck Bednarik, the NFL hit man of the 1950s.

Fears can be expected to live in good health for years, which might turn out to be another cruel twist.

He noticed something was wrong about six months ago.

“I used to have at least an average memory,” he says.

Suddenly, then rapidly, Fears began to forget things. It was as though a computer virus had invaded his brain and deleted microchips.

“He’d be reading a paper and say, ‘I don’t know why I’m reading this because I don’t know what I just read,’ ” Luella says.

Fears first thought memory loss came with the territory at his age.

But the condition quickly worsened. One day, Fears sat alone in his car, dumbfounded, unable to remove the keys from his ignition. He’d forgotten he needed to press a button to release them.

Lu taped instructions to the dashboard: “To take keys out of the ignition, push this button.”

Earlier this summer, while their home was being remodeled, Tom and Lu moved temporarily into a Palm Springs condominium. Making the routine drive back home to play golf, a route Fears knew as well as any down-and-out pattern he ever ran, he got lost in the desert.

The family, scared, took the keys out of his hands.

“He could be driving and forget where the brakes are,” Lu said.

The next drive was to the doctor. A magnetic resonance imaging test revealed Fears had suffered some loss of brain cells that could not be regenerated.

As owner of three Orange County board and care homes in the 1970s, Lu Fears had been down this road before.

“I had Alzheimer’s in my homes,” she said. “I know how they act.”

Lu did not need the Mayo Clinic Family Health Book to recite, chapter and verse, the signs and symptoms of the disease first described in 1906 by Alois Alzheimer, a German neurologist:

--Gradual loss of memory for recent events and inability to learn new information.

--Growing tendency to repeat oneself, misplace objects, become confused, and get lost.

--Slow disintegration of personality, judgment and social graces.

--Increasing irritability, anxiety, depression, confusion and restlessness.

Alzheimer’s afflicts at least 2.5 million Americans, most over 65.

Lu Fears had watched this most common form of dementia, for which there is no cure, reduce loved ones to invalids and tear families apart.

A family friend, Dan Fortmann, a former Chicago Bear star and Ram physician in the 1950s, wasted away from Alzheimer’s and ended up in a convalescent home, unable to recognize his wife.

“I’m very glad I had the boarding houses,” Lu Fears says. “I learned a lot. I know what to expect. This (Tom’s case) is nothing compared to what I had. I had some fifth stage, people who couldn’t put sentences together.”

Lu Fears also is aware that early symptoms of Alzheimer’s can turn out to be treatable forms of dementia.

Tom Fears has resigned himself to the worst-case scenario. Recently, speaking to Orange County sportswriters--he and 13 other former Rams will be honored at today’s game against the 49ers--he disclosed that he had Alzheimer’s, even though the condition still has not officially been diagnosed.

“I think I have it,” Fears says. “You always have hope. But I’m not depending or banking on it.”

Lu Fears exhausts all other possibilities. Diagnosing Alzheimer’s is a process of elimination. Similar symptoms can occur because of other factors, such as hypothyroidism, depression, adverse reaction to medication or a vitamin B12 deficiency.

Fears has undergone blood work and awaits the results.

In the meantime, Lu and her children pore through medical journals and diet books in the hopes of somehow stemming Tom’s memory regression.

Fears already has been prescribed medication for his increased irritability and uncharacteristic bursts of temper, symptoms common to Alzheimer’s.

He also is taking a drug called hydergine, which some believe might be able to reverse existing damage to brain cells.

“This is all we can do, try these things and see,” Lu says. “If we can just control it, so it doesn’t get any worse.”

Fears goes about his daily activities, wondering what tomorrow will bring.

“When does it stop?” he asks. “How (much) worse does it get? That’s the scariest part. You know there are Alzheimer’s (patients) that are in homes, that have to have everything done for them. I hope I don’t reach that point. I don’t think I will, but God knows.”

*

The 71-year-old man bites into a breaded jumbo shrimp at a Mexican restaurant near his home and wonders how long he will remember he is Tom Fears.

Over dinner, he repeatedly asks the name of his waiter, Luis, who kindly obliges each request. Fears confesses he had to repeat the name of a visiting reporter all day to keep it fresh in his mind. He maintains a daily notebook to keep him abreast of the day’s itinerary.

“I know in the last six months my memory has been slipping,” Fears says. “Your neighbors, unless you see them regularly, you forget their names. It’s embarrassing. That’s the worst part. It’s embarrassing. People think that you don’t give a damn about them, but that’s not the way it is.”

At NFL Alumni golfing functions, Fears has drawn blanks when coming across players he played with or coached.

Oddly, the 1950s are clearer to him than the 1990s.

“I don’t know what the hell I did yesterday,” he says.

Lu says her husband’s memory begins to leave him on events in the last 20 years.

Unsure how fast his memory will recede, Fears races time as he attempts to reconstruct his life over shrimp and drinks. He becomes increasingly frustrated when he cannot remember the basic chronology of his career. Where did he go in 1970, after being fired as the first coach of the New Orleans Saints?

Damn, was it Philadelphia?

“These are things that are normal things, things that I should know just like that,” Fears says, snapping his finger to punctuate the point. “I’ve seen this progression and it’s very, very tough. When will it completely go out?

“I know my kids of course. I have six kids and six grandchildren. But one of my grandchildren, I can never remember her name. I’ll look at it, write it down a hundred times. Then I think I’ve got it. Then I’m sitting right here, and I can’t remember her name. It scares the hell out of me.”

Imagine the prospect of not knowing you are Thomas Jesse Fears, son of a mining engineer father and a Mexican mother.

That you grew up in Los Angeles in a two-bedroom house near 38th and Western. That before you were a football star at the Coliseum, you were an usher there, earning 50 cents a day.

That you idolized your only sibling, Chuck, 3 1/2 years older. That it was Chuck who first starred at Manuel Arts High and then UCLA, Chuck who anchored the Bruin team that went to the 1943 Rose Bowl, Chuck who became a successful electrical engineer.

That your life, as were many, was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. That, early on, your father, Charles Sr., was captured by the Japanese in the Philippines and wasn’t liberated until 1945.

“They kicked the crap out of him,” Fears says. “He wasn’t the same man when he came back.”

That you joined the armed services hoping to fight the Japanese as a fighter pilot, but after earning your wings, you were stationed in Colorado Springs to play football for the 2nd Air Force Superbombers. And although you wanted to fight, you concede the assignment “probably saved my life.”

Imagine not remembering that the Cleveland Rams drafted you in the 12th round in 1945, but you had made a commitment to attend UCLA, where you played two years. The Rams, it turned out, moved to Los Angeles in 1946 and waited for you to finish up a cozy college ride that included perks from campus “sugar daddies” and bit parts in Hollywood movies.

That, while with the Rams, you teamed with Elroy (Crazylegs) Hirsch to become one of the greatest receiving duos of all time. That, in a nine-year career, you led the NFL in receptions three times, including your rookie season of 1948, when you caught 55 passes.

That your team played in NFL championship games in 1949, 1950 and 1951. That, after losing the first two, to Philadelphia and Cleveland, your Rams won their only Los Angeles championship in 1951, avenging a loss to the Browns the previous year.

That Los Angeles had a champion because of you.

With the score 17-17 in the fourth quarter, quarterback Van Brocklin’s game-winning pass landed in your hands.

“That was a 73-yarder,” Fears recalls distinctly. “How in the hell can I forget that. If I forget that, then everything’s gone, I think.”

Imagine not being able to remember your glory years.

“They really were,” Fears says. “Everywhere we went we were heralded. It was great. Everybody likes attention.”

Or how humble you were, saying your greatness was a reflection of having played with two of the game’s greatest quarterbacks, Van Brocklin and Waterfield.

“When we get together at NFL golf parties, someone from Cleveland will say that (Brown quarterback) Otto Graham was the greatest,” Fears says. “And you can’t argue. But unquestionably, when you tell them we had the two greatest who ever played on one team, they’d have to admit it.”

That you thought Van Brocklin was a better passer than Waterfield, but that the comparison ended there.

“Waterfield was by far the best athlete,” Fears says. “He could run the ball, hand off, hide it better, and play defense too. We had players from all over--Florida, Carolina, Green Bay--and nobody ever had seen an athlete like Bob Waterfield.”

That you weren’t too shabby yourself, leading the Rams in receptions five times. Against the Green Bay Packers in 1950, you caught 18 passes, still the NFL single-game record.

That in 1950 you met a girl named Luella, from Minneapolis, who came to Los Angeles on a month’s vacation and extended the stay 43 years.

That you weren’t as flashy as Crazylegs, but had great instincts and fly-paper hands.

“Fabulous, a great, great receiver,” recalls Ram executive Jack Faulkner, who was a Ram assistant coach during Fears’ career. “He didn’t have the great speed you see these guys have today, but he could make you miss, had very quick hands and great vision. He was phenomenal.”

That your team records stood for years until Henry Ellard came along. In 1988, with his 86 catches, Ellard broke your team record of 84, set in 1950.

As Ellard closed in on the mark, he had to pass, daily, the picture of you that hangs on the wall of the team cafeteria, yet Ellard, remarkably, had no idea who you were.

Imagine forgetting that.

“The team puts out (record) books, you know,” Fears says. “He should have seen it in the records. I sure as hell knew who the great ones in front of me were. It’s a different era.”

Or that after retiring in 1956, you became an astute businessman and assistant coach. You invested in taco stands and made out well. In 1960, you joined Waterfield’s staff as a Ram assistant.

That in 1961, you became receiver coach for the Green Bay Packers the season the team won its first of five NFL championships under Lombardi.

“Everything they say about him was true,” Fears says of the legendary coach. “He was a smart guy, and a hard worker. He was a Catholic, a daily communicant. He went to church every day. That’s really something, especially for a guy who would coach the rest of the day and into the night.”

That you got your break in 1967 when the expansion New Orleans Saints named you as the franchise’s first coach. In the opener, your John Gilliam ran back the opening kickoff 94 yards for a touchdown.

“We couldn’t get the people off the field,” recalls Faulkner, an assistant to Fears on that first Saint team. “They thought the game was over. It was fabulous. Al Hirt was playing the horn, the fans were down there dancing with their umbrellas.”

That reality soon set in. That you got fired eight games into the 1970 season after posting a four-year mark of 13-34-2.

That you re-emerged in 1975 to coach the Southern California Sun of the World Football League. But the tent folded after two seasons. And that, in the 1980s, you were a front-office man in another short-lived venture, the Los Angeles Express of the United States Football League.

Imagine forgetting all that.

*

Stretched out on his living-room recliner, watching the TV for as long as he can stand it, Fears coaches and curses the Rams through a horrible exhibition performance against the San Diego Chargers.

In the kitchen, within earshot, Luella Fears sips coffee and works on her game plan to halt her husband’s memory loss.

Recently, she took Fears to a clinic that offers experimental treatment for Alzheimer’s. There, Fears was tested and determined to be an Alzheimer’s candidate, but the family ultimately decided against the treatment.

“We don’t have time for something to be tested, then wait years for the FDA to approve something years from now,” Luella says. “We hope we can arrest it at this stage.”

Fears has no history of Alzheimer’s in his immediate family, yet doctors are running out of tests.

It is perhaps perversely fitting that, as the Rams make plans to move and become a memory after 48 years in town, the player who perhaps best embodies a Los Angeles Ram--Tom Fears--may ultimately be shielded from remembering the exodus.

“I’m saddened by it,” Fears says of the potential Rams’ move.

As it stands, Fears tends to remember only the good times, anyway.

The 73-yard pass from Van Brocklin. How in the hell could I forget that?

In case the lights continue to fade, Fears wants everyone to know he remembers his life as a love story, not a sob story.

“This is a sickness, and when you’ve been diagnosed with such, people feel sorry for you,” Fears says. “I don’t think I should be felt sorry for.”

Tom Fears: Season by Season

Year Rec (Rank) Yds (Rank) TDs (Rank) 1948 51 (1st) 698 (3rd) 4 (11th) 1949 77 (1st) 1,013 (2nd) 9 (1st) 1950 84 (1st) 1,116 (1st) 7 (4th) 1951 32 (12th) 528 (11th) 3 (16th) 1952 48 (7th) 600 (11th) 6 (7th) 1953 23 (30th) 278 (36th) 4 (11th) 1954 36 (17th) 546 (23rd) 3 (19th) 1955 44 (3rd) 569 (11th) 2 (25th) 1956 5 49 0 Total 400 5,397 38

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

Ranks second on Rams’ all-time reception list behind Henry Ellard (532).

Ranks fourth on Rams’ all-time reception yardage behind Ellard (8,816), Elroy Hirsch (6,289) and Jack Snow (6,012).