Ex-Detroit Lions S Tommy Vaughn diagnosed with CTE: ‘I truly understand my daddy even more’

Detroit Free Press

To the best of her recollection, Kristal Vaughn saw her father, ex-Detroit Lions safety Tommy Vaughn, hit her mother, Cynthia, a half-dozen or so times over the course of their life.

Each time, Kristal chalked the incident up to some stress her father was under. Tommy was an assistant coach for several pro and college football teams after his playing days, and he briefly ran a bank in Chicago, where he had a falling out with a friend. After one physical incident, Kristal remembers her father storming upstairs then returning an hour or so later as if nothing happened and asking if anyone was hungry.

Tommy’s behavior became more erratic over the years. He was prone to mood swings and occasional outbursts late in life, and nearly a year after his death, Kristal believes she finally has an answer why.

The Vaughn family donated Tommy’s brain to the Concussion Legacy Foundation’s Brain Bank after his death last July at the age of 77. Researchers at the foundation, a collaboration between Boston University’s School of Medicine and the Department of Veterans Affairs, determined Vaughn had advanced Stage 3 chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.

Vaughn is at least the sixth ex-Lion whose brain has been donated to the foundation. Of the public donations, Lou Creekmur, Mel Farr and Wally Hilgenberg also had CTE. Results for Herb Orvis’ public donation have not yet been determined.

CTE is a progressive brain disease associated with traumatic brain injuries. It is commonly found in former football players, can only be diagnosed post-mortem and, according to the Alzheimer’s Association, is associated with symptoms like memory loss, confusion and aggressive or erratic behavior.

“Honestly, as soon as I hung up with the doctor and he gave me the report, I just fell to my knees and started crying even more cause I truly understand my daddy even more,” Kristal said. “And why he’s the way he was.”

Kristal’s mother, Cynthia, died seven days after her father, and her brother, Terrace, passed away 20 years ago at the age of 33.

Tommy, who made 61 starts for the Lions in 1965-71, suffered a number of debilitating injuries during his playing career. He lost part of the pinky toe on his left foot when he had it stepped on by a cleat. He had three discs removed from his neck after he was done playing. And Kristal said he was knocked unconscious and sent to the hospital at least three times as a Lion.

“What made him quit was in 1971, when he saw (Chuck Hughes), he died on the field,” Kristal said. “And a week later, my dad got hit so hard, it was his third time getting hit, he woke up in the hospital. … And the doctor then informed him, him and my mom, you have a choice, continue playing football and getting hit in the head again and be a vegetable or watch your children grow up. So he chose Terrace and I over football.”

Vaughn led a successful post-playing career.

Along with his job at Union National Bank, he was an assistant football coach for the Detroit Wheels of the World Football League and in college at Missouri, Wyoming, Arizona State and his alma matter, Iowa State. He earned two master’s degrees, including one while he was playing. And he worked as a high school economics teacher and coach until he was 65.

But the man who his sister, Connie Carr, described as a “mischievous” kid and “happy-go-lucky guy” — he played football, basketball and baseball in high school, and trumpet in the marching band — was diagnosed as bipolar in 1986 and was thought to be dealing with Alzheimer’s at the time of his death.

“I didn’t realize how bad he was,” Kristal said. “I thought it was mostly Alzheimer’s and the doc said he did not have Alzheimer’s at all. It was all brain damage.”

Kristal said her father hit her “five to seven times” and once got into a fistfight with her brother that left him with a bloody nose and her brother with a black eye. One time, when she was 16 or 17, Kristal said she was on the monthly dinner date she had with her dad when he “blurted out something sexual.”

“I just looked at him going, ‘This is one of your behaviors. I’ll give you a few moments,’” she said. “It was something weird, something that dealt with having sex anally … and I’m sitting there looking at him going, ‘Why are you telling me this? Then I’m like, ‘Oh, Dad’s having one of his moments,’ and I just blew it off. And then 5 minutes later he was back.”

Tommy often had no recollection of the incidents after they happened, Kristal said, so the family took the approach of, “if he didn’t remember, it didn’t happen and move on.”

In 1985, when the family moved to Arizona and Cynthia began working as a case worker at a local hospital, Kristal first realized there might be a medical explanation for her father’s behavior. Cynthia worked with people who had suffered traumatic brain injuries, often from car accidents, and she came home one day saying, “Oh my goodness, this explains my (husband).”

“I’m like, what do you mean?” Kristal said. “And she literally sat down, explained what she learned from that hospital and we’re like, ‘Ooooh. That makes (sense).’”

Carr, too, noticed changes in Tommy’s behavior over the years, something she attributes to a particularly violent collision he had in a game against the Dallas Cowboys, one of the hits that rendered him unconscious.

While Tommy remained largely happy and engaged in post-playing career, Carr said she once received a phone call from an Arizona hospital, where he was having in-patient surgery, informing her that Tommy he had left his room in his gown and was sitting in the hospital waiting room hoping to check out.

“I didn’t see him change at all until, my opinion, is after football started,” Carr said. “He got on my nerves for a little bit about, ‘They should check (this).’ I said, ‘Tom, ain’t nothing wrong with you.’ Oh yeah, (Connie), my head hurts.’”

For both Kristal and Connie, their memories of Tommy remain largely positive.

Connie said Tommy once phoned her from the classroom where he was teaching so his students could tell her happy birthday, and Kristal called Tommy “a great daddy” and said she plans to spread his ashes and those of her mother in Wyoming’s Crystal Lake, where her brother’s ashes were scattered years ago.

Tommy’s CTE diagnosis, though, has complicated Kristal’s relationship with football. It’s a sport she loved growing up, played as a young girl and still enjoys watching today. But it also has left her thinking, “I never got to know the true Tommy Vaughn.”

“To this day if he was alive, knowing the end result and everything, would he still play football and still did what he did? The answer is, in a heartbeat,” Kristal said. “Only thing is he would raise Terrace and I different. That was his only big regret. But he loved football.”

Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.

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