Rich Hofmann: Death of ex-Eagle Andre Waters sparked concussion awareness

BELLE GLADE, Fla. - It is called Foreverglades Cemetery. Word play seems out of place at a burial ground, but there you have it. This is where Andre Waters rests, in Plot No. 118.

"Waters?" asks the man behind the desk in the office, reaching for a file drawer. "How many years ago?"

"Three."

"Three? It doesn't seem that long," says a woman working on the other side of the room. She stands up.

"I'll take him out," she tells her co-worker. "You know, Andre was my classmate. It was all so sad."

Waters took his own life in November 2006. Most people assumed his depression was linked to his inability to gain entry as an NFL coach after his career as a safety with the Eagles and Arizona Cardinals ended in the mid-'90s. He had coached some in college but could never hook on in the NFL. He had no coaching mentor and it just never worked out. It is wrong to try to be a mind reader, but some thought that might have been the issue - that and the physical pain he endured following a brutal career. But there was no way to know.

The family came here for the burial. It is a small cemetery. This is farm country; in the distance, several columns of black smoke rise above sugar cane fields, where the detritus is being burned off to facilitate future growth. In the cemetery, there is a mausoleum, and then the rest of the grave markers are all flat to the ground. Bouquets of flowers spring from the landscape, here and there.

"You know, I went to school with him since we were this high," the woman says, holding her hand, palm-down, next to her hip.

"Where?"

"Pahokee," she says, pointing back over her shoulder. Pahokee is the next town over. She says they went through several schools together, including East Lake Middle School and Pahokee High School. She says her name is Lisa Bonnell.

"He was such a rough football player, but he was such a nice, quiet kid," she says. "I was always struck by how different he was on the field. There was such a difference. He was a good guy, a teddy bear - all through school he was like that. So different."

It is what struck everyone, including the reporters who covered his career with the Eagles. He knew one way to play, and it was fearsome. But in the locker room, he was approachable and unwaveringly sincere. There was no boisterousness about him, no bravado. He really was very quiet.

"Here it is," Bonnell says. It is a marker with Andre's name, his dates of birth and death, and a cheesy carving of a football player. There is no bouquet.

His death was a shock to people who knew him then. In the weeks that followed, there would be more shocking news: Christopher Nowinski, a former Harvard football player and professional wrestler whose career was ended by postconcussion syndrome, asked the Waters family for permission to have a portion of Andre's brain examined by a neuropathologist. His finding was that Waters had the brain of an Alzheimer's patient in his 80s, the result of concussions, presumably from playing football.

It was from that moment that everything changed. The New York Times consistently hammered at the issue. Congress held hearings. The NFL became more aware, all too belatedly. You can trace it all back to Andre Waters. His death was a landmark moment.

We are nowhere near the definitive answers we need. The science of concussions is still evolving, and football at all levels continues with this conundrum: If you impose strict, lengthy rest standards for minor concussions, players will just lie about their symptoms because they want to play. The key to the future will be educating players. We are years away.

But awareness in the NFL has grown significantly. The initial steps are being taken and the first major one might have been here, on a windswept graveyard in rural Florida.

"It's a shame, if it took him to get some changes made," Lisa Bonnell says. Then she heads back into the office. *

Send e-mail to hofmanr@phillynews.com,

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