Growing Up on the Gridiron

by Vicki Mayk

  Jamie agrees, saying he is open to the caveat that the youngest players should not play tackle. “If they want to set an age limit for when they start playing contact, I’m fine with that,” he says without hesitation. He also thinks better equipment should be required for youth football.

  Although they all remain passionate about football, the reality of Owen’s CTE diagnosis and the mounting body of research around the traumatic brain injury has changed their attitudes about some aspects of the game.

  Owen’s brother Morgan admits that he has tempered his passion for games filled with cracking hits. “ESPN had a show where they would show highlights of people getting smashed. I used to love it. Now when I see those violent hits, those violent collisions, I don’t know what I was thinking.” His own style of play, he concedes, probably put him at risk for CTE. “I used to love, when I played football, that I would have all the different facemask marks on my helmet,” he says, adding, “I led with my head a lot.” With that admission comes a question: Why does he not exhibit any CTE symptoms when Owen did? “Owen and I are brothers and we are blood. How was it so prevalent in his brain? How can I be functioning relatively normally while he seemed to have symptoms as early as he did?” Both Morgan and his father pledged their brains to the Boston University brain bank, hoping that it may help to find reasons why heredity appeared to single out Owen.

  Nevertheless, he will allow his son Tanner to play, quickly adding, “If he wants to play.” And he adds a proviso: “But probably not before seventh grade. That’s when I started playing. That’s middle school. And maybe not until he’s a freshman. He’s definitely not playing peewee football. There are so many other sports you can play where you can develop skills. I’m glad we have the research that we have now. And we know, of course, that this is bad for a kid. Their brains are still developing. There’s no way kids should be out there banging their heads at that age.”

  While Mike Fay keenly misses his friend, Owen’s death and CTE diagnosis have not dimmed his passion for football. He enjoys coaching and still likes watching the game. On Sundays, his social media feed displays pictures of his son and daughter decked out in kid-size Philadelphia Eagles gear. His son, River, had a replica of a Parkland Trojans jersey before he was six months old. Nevertheless, on some days he feels ambivalent as he contemplates the risks he was exposed to by playing the sport.

  “I’m on the fence: my best friend perhaps died because of that. I probably had fifty concussions in my life. I was a lineman, I was smacking heads in every single play,” Mike says, savoring the hyperbole. He is quiet for a moment, his brown eyes thoughtful. “But I would have to say, overall, no, it hasn’t changed the way I coach football. Part of me thinks that if playing the game you love and having passion is going to somehow lead to that, maybe having that. . . . is worth it, you know?”

  Luke DeLuca thinks of Owen frequently. He sells commercial real estate in a territory that includes the Lehigh Valley as well as Bucks and Montgomery Counties. When Luke puts gas in his car, he will fill the tank until the charge hits forty cents. Forty was Owen’s Penn Quakers number. “It’s another way of remembering him. That way, I’m remembering him a couple of times a week,” Luke says.

  He says that if he has sons, he’ll allow them to play football when they are older, provided that they can observe better rules to protect their heads. Although he doesn’t worry about it, he also knows he put himself at risk for CTE. “I feel like, had I known that head collisions could have that effect, I would have changed the way I hit people,” Luke says. “I played a position where I hit people. Very often I would hit someone with my head when I could have used my shoulder.”

  Even with the advantage of hindsight, there’s no question that he would still play football. He loved it. One question brings him up short.

  “I wonder what Owen’s decision would be about playing, if he had known what would happen.” All of Owen’s friends pondered the question at some point after his death. Among them, there is a sense of fatalism, a belief that Owen would not, could not, have been dissuaded from playing football.

  Luke is no different. It takes him less than ten seconds to answer.

  “I bet he would play.”

  EPILOGUE

  THE BEIGE AND GRAY BUILDING with aluminum siding, tucked behind the VA Medical Center in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood, could be mistaken for a maintenance building. There’s a sign nearby that says motorcycles can be stored. A neighboring building has an open garage bay, and a backhoe is visible inside. It feels like a place frequented by workmen. Except the building with no sign and no visible identification has a doorbell like the kind you find on a house. Ring it and the gray metal door is opened by a lab technician.

  Stepping inside, there’s a large poster hanging in the corridor, the kind that researchers and scientists use to present their findings at conferences and research symposiums. This one has images of brain tissue stained brown. The brain belonged to Owen Thomas. Nearly ten years after Owen’s death, his is the first illustrated case visitors see on entering this nondescript building housing the VA-BU-CLF Brain Bank. Back in 2010, when Ann McKee studied Owen’s brain and found he had CTE, there were a couple of dozen brains in the brain bank. Now it houses more than seven hundred. New brains arrive every week, processed in this building in a deliberately obscure location that keeps the high-profile research out of the public eye.

  The story of Owen’s case lingers beyond the brain bank’s walls. In 2018, journalist Malcolm Gladwell would devote an episode of his podcast, Revisionist History, to revisiting Owen’s story and the issue of CTE and college football. In opening the episode, titled “Burden of Proof,” Gladwell says, “This episode is about Owen Thomas, a young man I never had the chance to meet. About what happened to him and why we should not forget about him.”

  He also would pose the question: “What level of proof do we need about the harmfulness of some activity before we act?” In the podcast, Tom Thomas, Kathy Brearley, and their son Morgan tell the stories they had told so many times already: how Owen had lived the life of a warrior until he crumbled at the end of his junior year at Penn. Gladwell would emphasize, “When I said at the beginning that we shouldn’t forget about Owen Thomas, I’m talking about this: that we shouldn’t forget that he went from clarity and purpose to failing everything.”

  Ann McKee also has not forgotten Owen. Like Gladwell, she had never met him but, even after hundreds of cases, Owen’s is one that she still cites in presentations and mentions in interviews. A decade after his death, in her office on the twelfth floor of the VA hospital, the stacks of stained slides have grown. The specimens reflect her relentless search for the truth about what happens to brains when athletes and military veterans are subjected to impacts that human beings aren’t supposed to sustain on a regular basis.

  Just as CTE research has evolved and changed, so has its most visible researcher. McKee is different than she was when she began this research. Some differences are visible in her office. There’s a lot less Green Bay Packers memorabilia, although she still has a framed Sports Illustrated cover showing Vince Lombardi hoisted on his players’ shoulders following his last win as Green Bay coach. But now it is a counterpoint to another cover from the same magazine hanging below it, this one with the headline: “Concussions . . . The hits that are changing the game . . . And the hits no one is noticing.”

  On the wall facing her desk is evidence that the credibility she was often denied early in her research has, nearly a decade later, finally been bestowed. There’s the framed cover of The Boston Globe Magazine from 2017 announcing McKee as its Bostonian of the Year. That was the year before Time magazine named her one of its hundred Most Influential People. Beside the Globe cover is a color picture of former New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez, another athlete whose brain came under her microscope after his death and who was found to have CTE. The Hernandez picture was a gift from a Boston Globe reporter. A third framed article from The New Y
ork Times about women CTE researchers completes the trio.

  In addition to recognition from mainstream media, McKee has received honors from her peers in the medical community: the 2018 Henry Wisniewski Lifetime Achievement Award from the Alzheimer’s Association and election to the National Academy of Medicine.

  But the truth is that, by 2018, McKee did not need the recognition. She knows unequivocally that her research is both valid and important. The criticisms do not affect her in the way they once did. “You stop caring about making people happy. As a woman, you know, we’re all trained to be pleasers. And also, I’m very conscious that I was raised to be considerate and conscious and appreciative of how the other person is. . . . And so those situations were very hard for me, originally,” McKee says. “They’re not pleasant now, but I really don’t care what people think of me. It’s like, look: If I cared, I would’ve stopped a long time ago. So think what you like. I’m going to do what I feel compelled to do and I’m not losing any steam.”

  Although she’s over sixty, she has no plans to retire. “I won’t ever be done. I mean, I don’t think this will come to conclusion in my lifetime. I can’t stop now.”

  The findings from the CTE research could open the door to understanding more about other neurodegenerative diseases—a dream for McKee. “I can’t imagine a cold stop, because it’s just too much part of you. . . . We’re so crazy committed at this point. How could we stop?” She pauses, and there is a trace of amusement in her blue eyes. “So—the reason I haven’t retired: old scientists die on the job, don’t you know that?”

  Like Ann McKee and Malcolm Gladwell, I’d never met Owen Thomas. I’d attended the church where his father was pastor and, when Owen died, I joined the memorial page established by his friends on Facebook. The stories shared there had convinced me that there was a story that needed to be told. I was compelled to find out who this young, redheaded football player had been and why so many friends, teammates, teachers, even casual acquaintances felt forever changed because they knew him. His CTE diagnosis was just one aspect of a story that centered on the relationships among young men on a football team. I contemplated writing that story for months before I began work on it on September 30, 2012—Owen’s birthday.

  But before I started, I went to see Tom Thomas at Union United Church of Christ. I was about to begin interviewing people about Owen and I wanted him to know before he heard secondhand. Given his role as a minister, it felt like I was seeking his blessing for the project. I sat in his office, the cemetery where Owen was buried visible over his shoulder, and told him I wanted to write about his son. For the briefest moment, Tom’s face registered surprise. He paused for a minute, thoughtfully considering my reasons for writing about Owen and his friends. In a few minutes, in his gentle and soft-spoken way, he was suggesting which of Owen’s friends should be interviewed for the book. Later there would be several long interviews with him and his wife, Kathy. Their courage and faith inspired me. We would run into each other at the fundraisers his sons’ friends held in Owen’s memory. He’d ask me how it was going. He supported the project, even when it seemed to stretch on indefinitely. He supported it, even when it meant that he had to contact the Philadelphia coroner for a copy of his son’s autopsy because I needed it and only a family member could request it. The autopsy was sent to Tom and Kathy’s home and I went there on a spring Saturday to get it. We spent some time sitting on his deck talking about it. “I read this,” he said, as he handed the envelope from the coroner to me. “I’d never seen this before,” he added quietly, as if I would be surprised that a parent had not read their child’s autopsy after his tragic death by suicide.

  On a Saturday morning in April 2019, I got off the elevator on the seventh floor at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest in suburban Allentown and walked through the automatic doors into wing 7A. It was quiet and I could hear my rubber-soled shoes scuffing the beige tile floor. The low murmur of subdued voices from visitors in the rooms along the corridor accompanied me as I looked for room 4. Walking through its door, I headed for the bed by the window. Tom Thomas was propped up, graying hair tousled, an IV in his arm and a hospital gown visible above the bedclothes. Get-well artwork from his two grandchildren hung on the wall, next to a University of Virginia Cavaliers jersey hung to celebrate his alma mater’s win in college basketball’s Final Four. A sports program was on the television, but the sound was muted. Tom’s eyes were closed and I hesitated, reluctant to wake him. But I had nearly two hundred pages of a manuscript under my arm, and its weight reminded me that I was there for a reason: although we’d talked about it together for nearly a decade, Tom had never read any of the book that I’d written about his son.

  Barely a month before my hospital visit, members of his former congregation learned that Tom was sick with what was described as a serious health issue. At the beginning of April, word came that he’d been admitted to the hospital. Not long after, on Caring Bridge, an online site that people use to give updates about seriously ill friends and family members, Kathy began posting updates about his condition. She explained that Tom’s lung cancer, which had necessitated removing one-third of his right lung in 2013, had metastasized to his brain. Although he had been declared cancer free in 2018, by September of that year he was not feeling himself. On March 16, 2019, an MRI was done to determine the cause of pressure behind his right eye. It showed he had three brain tumors—one pressing on the optic nerve and two on the frontal or temporal lobes. His condition deteriorated rapidly after the diagnosis and he was admitted to the hospital on March 28.

  Pastor Kris Snyder-Samuelson, who succeeded him as senior pastor at Union United Church of Christ, had asked if I’d go to the hospital and read him part of the book.

  Standing in his hospital room, I said his name once—“Pastor Tom”—and his eyes opened. “It’s Vicki Mayk.” I came around to the side of his bed and touched his hand. “I wanted to see you. Do you remember that I told you that the book about Owen is going to be published?” I’d emailed him with the news in January. He looked uncertain, so I repeated the information. It seemed to refresh his memory.

  “Pastor Kris thought I should come and read you a preview. Would you like that?”

  He nodded and I began reading. “Owen Thomas entered the world screaming . . .”

  Tom Thomas died on May 17, 2019. His memorial service was held a week later, at Union United Church of Christ. Before the service, Tom’s cremated remains were in Memorial Hall at the church—the site of Sunday coffee hours after services and the room where he’d led many vacation bible school programs and gatherings at the church. Surrounding the simple box that held his remains was a small collection of objects that reflected Tom’s interests: a green ministerial stole, a University of Virginia baseball cap, a hammer, and his worn brown work boots. A single rose was on the table by the box.

  I waited in a long line to pay my condolences. Kathy stood in a dark dress near her husband’s ashes, her long hair pulled back. Her son Morgan was nearby with his wife, Brittany.

  Kathy gestured toward Tom’s remains. “Whoever thought it would end like this?” she said. “What an epilogue.” She turned to me, her deep blue eyes steady. “You know, we harvested Tom’s brain to send to Boston.”

  It would go where his son’s brain had gone, to Ann McKee’s research lab.

  At Tom’s memorial service, one of the people eulogizing him would speak of the decision to donate Tom’s brain as an act that reflected his character. The Reverend Dr. Larry Pickens, ecumenical director of the Lehigh Conference of Churches, had worked with Tom on its interfaith committee, promoting understanding among the many faith traditions in the community. But Pickens said that unexpectedly they found common ground in another way: around the experience of football. “We both shared the experience of being college football linemen. He, of course, was in a major college program at the University of Virginia. I played for a Division III school. But as we talked about our football careers, he began to t
ell me the story about the death of his son, Owen, a lineman at the University of Pennsylvania. A twenty-one-year-old junior who was diagnosed with CTE—chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a disease that’s generally attributed to repetitive head trauma,” Pickens said. “And as Tom talked, I stopped him. I said, ‘Wait a minute Tom. I know this story.’

  “And the reason I knew the story is I realized that it was one of the vignettes shared in the book written by Sheryl Sandberg, Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience and Finding Joy. I had read that book just before having this conversation with Tom. And it was in that moment that I developed a connection and a bond with Tom Thomas. It was on the human level that I encountered Tom. It was in looking through the crucible of his pain and faith that I began to understand the depth of this man. He was a man of conviction and faith.”

  Noting that Tom had decided to make a difference after Owen’s death by placing himself on the brain registry at Boston University CTE Center, to study his brain as part of research that will help others, Pickens added, “That is what social justice is. It’s making a difference with your life in order to help others.”

  Following Tom’s memorial service, those attending followed the same path that they had walked nine years before at Owen’s funeral, leaving the church from a side door and cutting through a parking lot to the adjacent graveyard. Tom was laid to rest near Owen. Just as it had been nine years before, it was a perfect spring day in May. The sun shone in a nearly cloudless sky. Leaves trembled in the soft breeze. And at noon, the chimes in the tall, white steeple of Union United Church of Christ tolled a melody that spilled over the surrounding countryside.