Super Bowl — Tom Dempsey, Former N.F.L. Kicker, Is Dealing With Dementia

JEFFERSON, La. — "He liked to hit people," Carlene Dempsey said flatly. "He didn't care if he got his bell rung."

She was referring to her Falstaffian husband, Tom Dempsey, the former N.F.L. kicker born without toes on his right foot who in November 1970 — after a long night of drinking and debauchery in the French Quarter of New Orleans — set the league record for the longest field goal in a regular-season game. The 63-yard kick lifted the New Orleans Saints to a 19-17 victory over the Detroit Lions, and in the process helped transform Dempsey into a folk hero in the city hosting the Super Bowl on Sunday, the rare Saints player to hold a prominent N.F.L. record before the Sean Payton era.

Now 66, Dempsey sat recently with his wife at the dining room table in the modest 1,500-square-foot home they share with their daughter, Ashley, and their grandson, Dylan, in this New Orleans suburb. It quickly became apparent that when reflecting upon his football career, Dempsey seemed to take more delight discussing the hits he had delivered than the kicks he had made.

He wistfully recalled how, in high school and college, if his coaches wanted someone on the opposing team knocked out, they usually called on him to deliver a teeth-rattling hit. And his eyes twinkled with glee when he talked about how the coaches he played for over the course of his 10-year N.F.L. career with the Saints, the Eagles, the Rams, the Oilers and the Bills would sometimes call on him to be the wedge buster — football's version of a kamikaze pilot — on kickoffs.

"I would hit anybody," Dempsey boasted, echoing the sentiment of Carlene, his wife of more than 40 years. "I didn't care."

The cruel irony in this is that Dempsey's love of hitting people on the football field may very well be responsible for the syndrome that is slowly depriving him of the hard-hitting memories he so delights in sharing. He is suffering from dementia.

In a recent interview, Carlene was by Dempsey's side to dutifully and lovingly act as fact-checker and blank filler. A couple of times, she prompted him to share a story she knew he would be keen to share. She also did not hesitate to step in and correct him when it appeared his memory was failing him.

"I went to Encinitas High School," he said at one point. That prompted Carlene to say, "No, honey, you went to San Dieguito High School in Encinitas, remember?" He replied, "Oh yeah, that's right."

Dr. Daniel Amen, a brain disorder specialist who has done extensive studies on football players, made the initial diagnosis of Dempsey. He said he was astonished by the amount of damage he noticed in his brain after getting back the results of some scans.

"I wondered, Why does this kicker's brain look not so good?" Amen said in a phone interview. "Because I was thinking that kickers should have the best-looking brains. But he didn't."

What Amen later learned is that bygone-era kickers like Dempsey, who was listed at 6 feet 2 inches and 255 pounds, did things on the field that are pretty much unheard-of today: they played other positions on offense and/or defense, as Dempsey did in high school and college, not to mention being vital components on special-teams units — unlike modern kickers, who usually get near a return man only if he manages to get past the 10 other guys on the coverage team, and that is only if the kickoff does not sail out of the end zone for a touchback.

After being kicked off the football team at Palomar College for punching one of his coaches, Dempsey was brought into the N.F.L. by Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers in the hopes of turning him into a kicker/offensive lineman in the mold of Lou Groza. But for the first time in his football life, Dempsey was heavily outmatched physically by the famed monsters on the Packers' defensive line.

"I got beat up pretty bad every day in practice," said Dempsey, who never played a game in a Packers uniform. It was then, he says, that he decided, after a stint playing for a semipro team in Massachusetts, that he wanted to focus exclusively on being a kicker. But again, that did not stop him from hitting people on the football field.

Over the course of his career, the Dempseys say, Tom had three concussions that were diagnosed, but that several others likely went undiagnosed. They recalled one game in which Dempsey, after laying a jarring hit on someone after kicking off, was so disoriented that he ran to the wrong sideline and grabbed a seat on the opposing team's bench. He had to be shown back to his place across the field by an equipment manager, and he later returned to the game.

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