San Francisco 49er Forrest Blue, Dead at 65, Had Dementia Last 15 Years

Forrest Blue, a center with the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Colts in the 1970s, has died at 65 in a California assisted-living facility. According to the obituary in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, Blue spent “the past decade-and-a-half with dementia believed to be connected to his playing career.” See http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/07/20/SPN51KCHLM.DTL.

In other words, dementia starting at age 50.

Last month I did the math on the Chronicle’s obit of Hall of Fame running back John Henry Johnson, who died at 81, and determined that the onset of his dementia was at age 59.

Chronicle reporter Eric Branch writes that the brains of Blue and Johnson, as well as that of another dead 49er, Joe Perry, were donated to chronic traumatic encephalopathy research.

Irv Muchnick