‘Touch with the past’: Inside the homes of Harry Jacobs and Al Bemiller, Buffalo Bills champions living with dementia (2024)

HAMBURG, N.Y. — The nighttime routine is straightforward, as such routines must be. Kay Jacobs ushers her Harry to bed, where they say some prayers before she reads him a story. Harry likes books about dogs and sports most of all.

“You are really good at reading. You know that?” Harry says almost every night.

Then Kay turns off the light on another long day of ensuring Harry is healthy and safe.

Harry Jacobs is 82 years old and has dementia. He has lost most of his memory. He doesn’t remember playing for the Buffalo Bills’ AFL championship teams in 1964 and 1965. He was the gentlemanly-yet-rugged middle linebacker, the charismatic leader and play-caller for a devastating defense. Today, he struggles to summon the names of his three children.

By the time Harry falls asleep, he already will have forgotten everything his wife of 61 years just read to him.

“It never ceases to amaze me how somebody can’t remember,” Kay said. “I should be used to it by now. It’ll be, like, ‘If you try real hard, do you think you’ll come up with it? If you try really hard?’ And he can’t.”

Less than 2 miles away, up McKinley Parkway and a right turn onto Clark Street, evenings are different at the Bemiller home. That’s when Jacobs’ old Bills teammate gets twitchy for some action.

On a damp night last November, when his family was in bed, Al Bemiller woke up on his living-room couch, where he always sleeps, and slipped out for a pitcher of Bud Light.

Bemiller, 80 years old, walked next door to the Armor Inn Tap Room and made it back home before the two daughters who live with him and his visiting sister realized he’d escaped.

They might never have known about Bemiller’s expedition — wouldn’t have known to ask anything the next morning — if not for his missing eyeglasses and the blood on his khakis.

Without those disconcerting clues, nobody would have been any wiser. Not even Bemiller himself. The former Bills offensive lineman didn’t remember leaving the house or falling down because he has dementia, too.

“Physically, he’s not that bad,” his son, Todd Bemiller, said a couple of hours after finding Al’s glasses amid the wet leaves in the front yard. “It’s the brain. He doesn’t remember anything short-term. It’s been tough. You worry.”

Al, sitting two feet away, shifted his attention from the television and toward his son.

“I feel I’ve been very lucky to be living this long,” Bemiller said. “I’m getting to the age where you croak. What are you going to do?”

Todd, frustrated, asked his dad, “Did you have fun last night?”

“What did we do last night?” Al replied. Todd shook his head. Al shrugged and turned back to ESPN.

Jacobs’ and Bemiller’s conditions might not be related to their years of football, but they probably are. Cracking skulls certainly didn’t strengthen their brains. They lined up against each other in practice for seven years, two sessions a day and without water breaks in training camp. Equipment was rudimentary, concussions an afterthought.

Over and over, whistle to whistle, collision after collision. The sad likelihood is they helped bring dementia upon one another.

“We practiced with pads, and we hit every day,” Ed Rutkowski, an all-purpose back and receiver on those AFL title teams, said last month in the Jacobses’ living room.

“Each day, they were bumping heads, and the helmets we had were terrible, just a plastic shell.”

Jacobs and Bemiller were plow horses in a blossoming football league. They filled thankless positions, received no guarantees. Fearful of being replaced, they absorbed thousands of thumps, shook off the “dings” and “stingers” and refused to come off the field.

Repeated impacts laid a half-century ago have crashed their brains, doctors believe. Memories are swept away like the pounding surf would erase words scratched into the sand.

“It was a cruel game back then, and guys knew it,” said Bills Wall of Fame cornerback Booker Edgerson. “But they loved the game.”

Bemiller’s nickname was Tombstone, inspired by his one-time aspiration to become a mortician. He didn’t miss a game. At Syracuse, he won the 1959 national championship and wrestled. He started all but one game throughout his nine-year pro career in Buffalo. From 1961 through 1969, only Dallas Cowboys linebacker Bob Lilly and Minnesota Vikings defensive end Jim Marshall started every game in either the NFL or AFL.

Jacobs was known as the Baby-Faced Assassin, the aggressive play-caller for Joe Collier’s defense. Jacobs, Mike Stratton and John Tracey combined to start 62 straight games, the record for a linebacker trio.

“He was the head man,” former Bills defensive end Ron McDole said of Jacobs. “He was an effective leader. He could play and knew what to do.

“When you’re starting up like we were in the AFL, that can be tough. But Harry told you what to do, and you did it.”

Jacobs was the lead plaintiff in a 2011 lawsuit that claimed the NFL, which overtook the AFL in 1970, committed fraud and conspiracy in handling its treatment of concussions and repeated head trauma. Bemiller was among 106 retired players who filed a similar lawsuit in 2012.

The NFL settled for $1 billion in January 2017, but further controversy has beset payouts. Over $500 million in payouts had been approved by last summer, although actuaries predicted it would take 10 years before the NFL would disburse the first $400 million. The miscalculation inflated settlement estimates to $1.4 billion.

Widespread denials for dementia patients led to another class-action suit, claiming the “NFL seeks to rig the system” and engage in “scorched-earth litigation … making this a settlement in name only.”

Kay Jacobs and Todd Bemiller stated they had no idea where their loved one’s claims stood.

How much, truly, is football to blame for Jacobs’ and Bemiller’s debilities?

Octogenarians who never played football, after all, can slide into senility. They get Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.

“Dementia is not a normal part of aging,” said Dr. Robert Stern, director of clinical research for the Boston University CTE Center and director of the clinical core for the BU Alzheimer’s Disease Center.

“If someone played a whole lot of football and had a lot of exposure to head impacts, they also are at a very increased risk for developing the dementia from CTE at that age. In those days, that probably was one of the worst times in terms of protecting the brain. It was at the very beginning of helmets. It allowed the centers and linebackers to hit each other over and over again for the first time.”

Confusion over a diagnosis has helped contribute to what Stern called “the fiasco of the NFL concussion settlement.” The settlement is meant to provide baseline testing and compensation for retired players Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS and dementia. But the diagnoses can depend on quality of care.

Alzheimer’s is the most common cause of dementia. Stern noted some neurologists will make that finding on a former football player and stop there. A more intuitive doctor, though, might send his patient for an amyloid PET scan to rule out Alzheimer’s disease.

“The one who got the Alzheimer’s diagnosis,” Stern said, “would get through the settlement a substantially higher sum of compensation as opposed to the one who actually had the more accurate diagnosis that it isn’t Alzheimer’s and that it’s from football.”

Bemiller and Jacobs are part of the NFL’s 88 Plan, a program that helps cover medical costs associated with dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and ALS. The 88 Plan is for living players and, as such, won’t cover CTE, a condition current technology can confirm with only an autopsy.

Bemiller and Jacobs have been more than football players. Family was at each man’s foundation during his football career and through retirement. Community service was vital. Bemiller hailed from Hanover, Pa., about an hour north of Baltimore. Jacobs came from suburban Peoria, Ill. They adopted Western New York as home.

Harry and Kay committed their lives to Christianity in February 1964. They have three children, eight grandchildren and a great-grandchild on the way, but Harry can’t remember whose baby it will be. Harry in retirement founded the Jacobs Team, a financial firm that advises family-run businesses on how to grow and last for generations. His son, David Jacobs, runs the company now. Harry also served as an officer to several national, state and local business associations.

As for the Bemillers, Edgerson said “it used to piss me off a little bit” how tight they’ve been. Bills teammates were jealous of the bond Bemiller had with his wife, son and three daughters.

“I’ve never seen anyone so dedicated to his children and his children so dedicated to the parents,” Edgerson said. “Everything they did, they did it together.”

Bemiller and Jacobs also were men’s men, each in his own way. They played gnarled positions, yes, but they distinguished themselves off the field.

Jacobs was righteous, while Bemiller was drawn to revelry.

“If you were looking at paintings,” said Dick Cunningham, their Bills teammate and Al’s brother-in-law, “you might say Harry is somewhat of a Rembrandt. It is what you see. Al is more of a Dalí or Picasso. What you see isn’t always what you get.

“Al kids around a lot, and he never meets a stranger. Al is a character and always will be until he passes on.”

Bills coach John Rauch’s mission when he took over in 1969 was to reinvent the team by rototilling the roster. He continued it the next offseason, cutting Jacobs, Bemiller and five-time AFL All-Star safety George Saimes on the same day.

No team claimed Bemiller. He had free-agent offers to continue his career, but he didn’t want to uproot his family. A profitable offseason home-building business with McDole had kept Bemiller busy for a while. He unsuccessfully ran for Cheektowaga town supervisor in 1969 and said he would retire if he won, an indication where his heart was.

So he stuck around, held court inside Al Bemiller’s Turfside Lounge at 410 Clark Street in Hamburg, worked as a substitute teacher, coached football players at Buffalo State and wrestling champions at St. Francis High and was recreation director at the Wyoming Correctional Facility in Attica. In 2013, the Monday Quarterback Club presented him with the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Distinguished Service Award for long and meritorious service to the Bills.

“I had some great experiences,” Bemiller said. “At Syracuse, we were national champs! I enjoyed the hell out of it. I was lucky I could keep playing. Then I got here and stayed a while.”

Bemiller’s and Jacobs’ lives were full. They had healthy families, held down multiple professional roles, remained physically fit, apparently managed their money well, got involved in the community and were active in the Buffalo Bills Alumni Association.

Their minds began parallel descents within the past decade.

“It didn’t so much have to do with memory,” Kay Jacobs said of the first signs, “but personality changes like anger issues. He was really sullen. The family would get together and say, ‘What’s the matter with Dad?'”

Harry’s pivotal moment happened five years ago after a series of car accidents. An appointment was made with Erie County Medical Center’s driver evaluation program. Harry was late for his appointment; he went to three wrong hospitals first. A verbal exam was administered. He was told he shouldn’t operate a vehicle anymore.

Bemiller can’t drive anymore either, but he has difficulty grasping that concept. One of his last times behind the steering wheel, he got lost in a Walmart parking lot.

“What do you mean I don’t drive?” Bemiller asked upon hearing his son mention the fact. “When was the last time I drove?”

“Three years ago,” Todd Bemiller said. Al shrugged and resumed watching ESPN.

Kay lamented the evaporation of Harry’s oratory acumen. As a local football celebrity, businessman and civic presence, he often was asked to deliver keynote addresses and hold court with this college department or that church group. He was excellent.

But she noticed his speeches were getting scattershot, tangential. Answers, once sharp and concise, wandered and rattled.

Kay was anxious for what would be Harry’s final speech. The Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame inducted him in 2012. At the top of his paper, she wrote “SMILE.” Sticking to the script, as they’d carefully discussed, Harry read Kay’s handwritten message aloud, too.

The Bemillers were nervous about Al’s induction three years later. Wanda Bemiller, his wife of 55 years, died in her sleep four months before the ceremony. Al made it through his speech with his children’s support.

“They’re like helicopters,” said Cunningham, who is married to Bemiller’s sister, Carole Lee. “He can’t move without one of them on top of him.”

Appropriate, given Al’s inclination to sneak over to the Armor Inn Tap Room for a few draught beers when nobody is looking. If he shows up alone, then the bar staff has been instructed to phone the house. Two of his daughters, Tanya and Tambra Bemiller, live with him. Tanya’s dogs, J.T. (a 119-pound St. Bernard) and Brew (a 226-pound black Newfoundland), are his buddies.

“They treat me better than the girls,” Al cracked.

To help scratch Al’s itch, his children will escort him to the bar on supervised excursions.

The setting energizes him, reminds him of his Turfside Lounge’s glory days, when he would puff on a cigar alongside his teammates. They would greet fans and regulars who came to hear Ed Bentley’s Memphis Sound several nights a week.

“You couldn’t get in the place,” Al said. “We did great business.”

That was until disco emerged as the popular music of choice. Al refused to switch from blues rock. His crowds dwindled, and the bar was sold in 1984.

“I had great times there,” Al said. “My wife didn’t like it, but …”

“That’s because she’s the one who did all the work!” Todd interjected.

Al Bemiller prefers sitting at the bar to a table, watching live music to whatever sports are on the flat screens. The first Friday night of Lent, however, he had to wait for both. A horde gathered for the fish fry, forcing Bemiller and his brood to a high-top table in a dark corner. Local ’80s cover band Flipside wouldn’t open their first set until 9:30 p.m.

Under the watchful eyes of Tanya and youngest daughter Tia Dolegala, such outings feel safe, controlled. He will gesture to familiar faces more than speak to them and wave at any little kid he spies.

“Did you ever get to the Lounge?” Bemiller asked me.

I told him I didn’t move to Buffalo until 2000, that I would have been 13 when he sold it. Four minutes later, Bemiller asked what I thought of the Turfside Lounge.

“He didn’t move here until 2000, Dad,” Tanya reminded him.

He looked at Tanya quizzically.

“You sold it in 1984,” Tanya said.

Two of Tia’s three sons, Jake and Jadd, and husband Greg came along to the Armor Inn. Jake Dolegala played quarterback at Central Connecticut and is on the verge of joining the NFL, if not as a late-round draft choice, then as a rookie free agent soon after the final selection.

Bemiller, as a mentor and an inspiration, has been central to Jake’s athletic dreams. Yet the special moment coming next month for Bemiller’s grandson doesn’t register.

“When we were younger, he was more vocal in telling us what we needed to do,” Jake Dolegala said. “Now, he really can’t do that.

“He’ll ask me pretty much every day, ‘Jake, are you done with school now?’ Yeah. ‘So what are you going to do now?’ I’m going to follow in your footsteps. ‘Yeah?’ I’m going to play in the NFL, Grandpa. ‘Oh, yeah?'”

Tanya and Tia insisted their father eat something. They must force the issue because Al otherwise can’t be bothered. He likes mostly sweets. He’ll have cereal with banana in the morning and little more than Boost high-protein drinks the rest of the day. This Friday night, his daughters convinced him to try some chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream.

Al is down to 197 pounds, which sounds sturdy, but he’s 6-foot-3 and played at 243 pounds. His legs are noticeably spindly underneath his blue jeans. One day in February, Todd said, his dad fell down three times.

But Bemiller bolted sure-footedly from the high-top table to take up a new residence once the Armor Inn opened up its auxiliary bar, a spot that soon will be dedicated to Bemiller and already features a Syracuse flag and a Bills football signed by him. Flipside tore through songs he didn’t really know, but his hand tapped vigorously to the beat anyway.

One week later, Kay and Harry Jacobs were playing rummy at the dining-room table and spoke about their fish fry dinner.

“Within seconds,” Kay said, “he didn’t remember. It must be a very lonely feeling.”

Jacobs is one of 17 to have played in each of the AFL’s 10 seasons. He was with the Boston Patriots for the lone game on the AFL’s opening day and with the Bills on the West Coast for the league’s final regular-season game. His career ended after six games with the New Orleans Saints.

The tales Jacobs should be able to tell. But his brain is a nearly empty hard drive with an inability to record.

Jacobs doesn’t remember earning a Bradley University mechanical engineering degree or wrestling there or playing football there, doesn’t remember Joe Namath, doesn’t remember what his doctors tell him, doesn’t remember Ralph Wilson, doesn’t remember what Jack Kemp did after football, doesn’t remember all his grandchildren’s names.

“This is going to be a tough interview for you,” Jacobs said with a laugh.

He sat in an armchair in his Hamburg home, handsomely dressed as if he were just home from the office or church. While Bemiller’s living room is stereotypical of a proud football player — a man-cave motif with mementos from his Bills and Syracuse days, including framed nameplates off his old teammates’ jerseys — there’s no such décor at the Jacobses’ house.

The interview took place a day after Valentine’s and 14 days after Harry and Kay’s 61st wedding anniversary. Kay emerged from the kitchen with a tea tray, cashews, cheese and crackers, purple grapes and co*cktail napkins with red hearts on them. “Be Joyful Always,” read her cup.

I asked how she and Harry had met.

“How did we meet?” Kay challenged Harry from the loveseat across the room. “You know this.”

Harry put forth only silence and a crumpled brow.

“You’re from Canton, Illinois,” she prodded. “How’d we meet? You were a lifeguard?”

More silence. Kay surrendered and began to explain, “He was a lifeguard …”

“Canton Lake,” Harry said.

“Canton Lake!” Kay exclaimed. “That’s right!”

“She was a bathing beauty,” he added, unprompted.

Such moments, fleeting and rare, are precious to Kay and their family. Sentimentality is virtually impossible for someone with a barren memory bank.

Harry throughout most his life was the mushy type who would cry “at the drop of a hat,” Kay said, but he doesn’t anymore. She noticed him only “tear up once” after his mother, Sylvia Jacobs, died in September at 106 years old. Kay stressed Harry and his mother were close, the three of them having lived together for a year.

One of Jacobs’ steadiest connections over the decades has been Rutkowski, his old Bills roommate and civic collaborator. Rutkowski was Erie County Executive from 1979 to 1987 and would reach out to Jacobs on various small-business initiatives.

Rutkowski came along for the interview to give Jacobs a familiar face and voice, maybe to help summon a Bills reflection or two.

“You played for the Bills,” Rutkowski said with a kind calmness. “We won two championships.”

“People have told me that,” Jacobs said.

“In that ’64-’65 championship run,” Rutkowski continued, “there were 17 consecutive games where our defense didn’t allow a rushing touchdown. You were the leader.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“In our second championship game against the San Diego Chargers, we weren’t supposed to win. We were heavy underdogs. But because of you, we shut them out 23-0.”

“I don’t remember it.”

“You played a great game,” Rutkowski said.

Football doesn’t register much at all in the Jacobs household these days. Kay used to enjoy watching games on television with Harry, who would explain the X’s and O’s in great detail. Those days are over. This winter’s Super Bowl result provided no joy. He has no recollection of being a Patriots alum.

The Jacobses’ daily schedule helps maintain a sense of normalcy. They like to have breakfast at the Pegasus Restaurant in Hamburg. After 30 years, they still attend regular services at Watermark Wesleyan Church. Twice-a-week workouts with a personal trainer have been effective; he recently ditched his walker for a cane.

Harry remains analytical with a deck of cards. David Jacobs, his middle child, frequently drops by to get pasted at the trick-taking game pitch.

“My dad does not have a strong memory except with numbers,” David said. “He can keep track of the cards and the score and what everybody has in their hands.”

The bedtime routine begins around 11 p.m. Kay reads devotionals and then talks to Harry about their faith. They finish with a book about animals or football. Recent selections include “A Dog’s Purpose” by W. Bruce Cameron, “Always By My Side: Life Lessons from Millie and All the Dogs I’ve Loved” by Edward Grinnan, “The Cookie That Did Not Crumble” by Cookie Gilchrist and “The Dancing Bear: My Eighteen Years in the Trenches of the AFL and NFL” by Ron McDole.

“He doesn’t remember what we’ve read,” Kay said. “But he does enjoy it. He follows along. He’s interested. His brain is working.”

Amid everything he has forgotten, it turns out Harry Jacobs is certain of at least one thing, a notion that emerged with a question:

How would you explain to someone else what it’s like not to have memories anymore?

Jacobs paused a few seconds.

“I couldn’t, could I?” Jacobs said. He pointed across the room. “That young lady is my touch with the past.

“I know she married me, and I know I love her. I love her to pieces. She’s my connection. It’s sad to say she’s my only connection, but that’s real.

“I’ve loved her all the time. She’s the love of my life.”

Questions of regret and blame hover over heartbreaking stories such as these. The more we learn about repeated head trauma in sports such as football and hockey, the less they feel like fun and games. Stakes are higher than mere wins, losses, championships and money.

Nobody in this story wanted to sign up for a do-over.

“I don’t think like that,” Kay Jacobs said. “That just isn’t an option. It is what it is.”

She added that she hates to see Harry suffer, but he interrupted to say, “I don’t feel like I suffer.”

Families shoulder much of the burden, as many do with elderly parents who didn’t play a high-contact sport. Wives and children and grandchildren and friends must chauffeur, maintain, oversee, babysit, nourish and administer as they experience their loved one’s deterioration.

“Football made my health better,” Bemiller said. “Nothing wrong’s with me yet. I took a lot of hits, but I’m still around.”

Todd Bemiller rolled his eyes and shook his head.

A study published in the journal Neurology estimated at least 9.6 percent, and as much as 19.3 percent, of players who reach the NFL level will develop CTE. The study was based on 111 former players’ brains donated to the Boston University CTE Center.

Donated brains span players of different eras. Some played with more enhanced rules, better helmet technology and improved medical care than others.

“I’m sick, too,” McDole said. “I’ve got the thing everybody’s got. Not as bad as other people got, but it’s really difficult, and it’s getting worse.

“It’s a shame because the average person doesn’t realize. Some people are even committing suicide. It’s a tragic disease.”

For seven years, Al Bemiller and Harry Jacobs played together with the Bills, sharing a locker room, winning two AFL championships and falling one game short of Super Bowl I.

For nearly six decades, they’ve lived in the same area, have shared laughs with scores of mutual friends, have attended the same Bills Alumni Association events and have similar medical concerns.

Jacobs, having just been reminded that he knocked heads with Bemiller in practice, was asked what he remembers about his old mate.

“Nothing,” Jacobs said, “except I practiced against him.”

Asked what memories he has of Jacobs, Bemiller didn’t respond.

(Top photos of Jacobs and Bemiller: Robert L. Smith / Orchard Park, N.Y.)