Dwight Clark not first former 49er to die from ALS
Three members of the 1964 49ers also died of ALS. Baffled team and families have searched for a reason.
It had been decades since anyone remembered the three 49ers who died from ALS. Then Dwight Clark revealed last year he too was suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease.
The Bay Area sports icon who died Monday became the catalyst to refocus attention on Matt Hazeltine, Gary Lewis and Bob Waters. They are the three forgotten members of the 1964 49ers whose deaths from ALS are as mystifying today as when they occurred in the late 1980s.
“Matt knew what Dwight Clark learned: There is no cure and the body is going to give out,” Hazeltine’s widow Deborah said recently.
Clark’s announcement in March 2017 brought a flood of emotions for survivors of the small football community that has been hit particularly hard by a disease that attacks the nervous system, often leading to paralysis and death from respiratory failure.
It also led two amateur filmmakers to hunt for a long-forgotten documentary on a VHS cassette that had gone missing. It was created with the help of former 49ers as an ALS fundraiser in 1990 to pay homage to the three stricken teammates — and raise a bigger question among former players long before the current national debate about concussions: Will I die early because of football?
“The idea was born to try to do something and bring light to this,” said Karen Smith, who assisted on the production.
The baffling anomaly of three players from the 1964 team contracting ALS received national attention in the late 1980s as 49ers officials searched for clues. Theories ranged from the fertilizer
on the team’s then-practice field in Redwood City to the use of drugs. They investigated anabolic steroids, painkillers and dimethyl sulfoxide, or DMSO, the one-time controversial drug athletes and trainers applied to help heal sprained ankles, tendonitis and muscle strains.
“They looked at high protein diets, the lack of amino acids, mega doses of pain medications,” Deborah Hazeltine recalled.
Clark also practiced at the Red Morton Community Center in Redwood City before the team moved to Santa Clara in 1988. Considering two in 100,000 people in the United States contract ALS, some still wonder if there is a connection to the facility where four known victims once practiced.
Former 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo Jr. told NBC Bay Area last month that he plans to commission a study to investigate whether the cause of the disease has anything to do with the neighborhood surrounding the field.
Football’s impact
But Deborah Hazeltine always thought the answers could be found in the savagery of the game.
“You don’t even need a neurologist to tell you that,” said Hazeltine, who was part of the class-action concussion suit against the NFL that has been slow to see settlements paid out. “You are going to hit for blood, teeth and bone and you want them to see stars.
“Getting hit time and time and time again, God knows how many concussions that man suffered,” Hazeltine added of her late husband, who was a fierce linebacker out of Cal.
Sheri Waters said her late husband Bob Waters tried to identify a pattern by requesting medical information from 49ers officials, whom she and Deborah Hazeltine said declined to help. Waters told DeBartolo that he wasn’t interested in suing. He just wanted to solve a mystery that unfolded before DeBartolo’s tenure.
“The saddest part isn’t that they were ill,” Sheri Waters said recently. “The saddest part is the NFL and 49ers didn’t want to acknowledge they were sick because” of playing football.
Deborah Hazeltine said team and league officials worried that her husband, Lewis and Waters would file claims for workers compensation benefits.
Also, questions about the ALS cases surfaced around the time another member of the 1960s teams won a
$2.36 million judgment against the club. In 1988, a judge found the 49ers liable for fraud for failing to tell defensive lineman Charlie Krueger about the severity of a knee injury that had left him permanently crippled.
By most accounts, DeBartolo did everything he could to help Clark, who was part of two Super Bowlwinning teams during his ownership.
In 2016, DeBartolo and the Yorks, his sister’s family who now owns the team, each donated $1 million to create the Golden Heart Fund. It supports 49ers alumni suffering from physical or mental conditions because of playing football.
“Make no mistake. History has its eyes on all of us,” DeBartolo said when announcing the fund. “We’ve got to do all that we can do to look after one another and to take care of one another. Not just when the uniform is on but, more importantly, when the uniform comes off.”
Clark was such a towering Bay Area sports figure he overshadowed the three 1964 players who had withered away from the crippling neurodegenerative disease.
But Deborah Hazeltine and Sheri Waters are happy their husbands haven’t been completely forgotten. After all, these players demanded answers so others in the NFL would not endure similar fates. (Lewis’ wife and daughters could
not be reached.)
“Unfortunately it is not going to stop with Dwight Clark,” Deborah Hazeltine said. “We’re going to see a whole new wave of Parkinson’s, ALS and brain disease coming down.”
Delving into history
The plight of those three forgotten 49ers was on the mind of legendary San Francisco receiver R.C. “Alley-oop” Owens three decades ago. His concerns foreshadowed the current research on how playing the game might lead to greater incidences of neurological diseases including CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
At least 14 former NFL players have contracted ALS, including Clark, the three 49ers from 1964, former Raiders running back Steve Smith and ex-Oakland guard Mickey Marvin.
Former NFL players are four times as likely to die from the disease as the general U.S. population, according to federal researchers.
Owens had learned about the ravages of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis after spending time with Charlie Wedemeyer, the famed Los Gatos High football coach who died from the disease in 2010. Much like Stephen Hawking was on an international level, Wedemeyer became a national inspiration for the way he handled his ordeal while continuing to coach and teach.
Watching Wedemeyer’s
struggles led Owens to action after his former teammates Hazeltine, Lewis and Waters had died in 1986, ‘87 and ‘89. He recruited almost 30 past players to create an oral history of the 49ers.
What unfolded was a string of colorful vignettes from the likes of quarterback Y.A. Tittle and six-time All-Pro Leo Nomellini, documenting the team’s history through the early 1980s.
The 49ers alumni group planned to sell cassettes to fans and donate all proceeds to the ALS Association, a nonprofit organization that helps fund research, care services and public education for the fatal condition.
Owens got production help from Julia Hutton, whom he met in 1982 at a celebrity tennis tournament in Aptos that featured many 49ers players. At the time, Hutton produced media for Santa Cruz County non-profits with Karen Smith, who helped on the ALS campaign.
The project abruptly ended because NFL officials declined to give filmmakers permission to use game footage they wanted to enhance the production. The women took their copies of the tape and moved on with life, the cassettes getting misplaced along the way.
Questions about the three 1964 49ers who had contracted ALS also faded in the ensuing years. Then came March 19, 2017, the day the man known for
“The Catch” wrote in a heartfelt open letter: “I have ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Those words are still very hard for me to say.”
As she heard the news, it all came rushing back to Hutton, 73, who vowed: “This thing is going to get done.”
But there was one problem. She couldn’t find her copies of the VHS cassettes, which disappeared after decades of moving from Santa Cruz to Arizona to Hawaii. Last fall, she turned to Smith, 69, to pick up the hunt in her Victorian near St. James Park in San Jose.
Smith also had no idea where the cassettes had gone after moving into her home in 2004. Smith ’s partner finally found them in December in an unmarked cardboard box with classic movies and educational videotapes. They were sitting on a bookshelf in a studio above the garage. The label said, “Sports Stories for ALS.”
The women converted the footage into a digital format that could be edited into a 40-minute film. They plan to release a DVD version for the start of NFL summer camp in mid-July to fulfill the vision of former players.
“Most of these guys are gone now,” said Hutton, who is retired and lives on the Big Island. “This was their desire: to raise money for ALS.”
The 49ers recently contributed a VIP ticket package
to the ALS Association to help with the filmmakers’ upcoming campaign.
The disk will cost $20, plus shipping, and will be available at www.1000plusvideo.video.
Hutton again failed to get permission to use game footage, although an NFL spokesman said the league has allowed charitable based projects to use clips in the past. As a way around copyright laws, filmmakers are asking fans for personal footage and photographs from games dating to Kezar Stadium. Those who want to donate material should email it to Nikki. Stevens@1000plusvideo.video.
Their intention is not to present a glossy production of the 49ers’ complete history. It doesn’t include megastars Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Ronnie Lott, Roger Craig and Clark because they weren’t alumni at the time of the filming.
Resurrecting the ALS project also is a way to remember Owens, who died in 2012 of complications from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. He was 77.
Twelve other players in the film are gone, including at least seven who suffered from brain-related issues.
Owens’ widow, Susan, was overjoyed to learn Hutton and Smith are fulfilling her husband’s legacy.
“He would absolutely love it,” she said.