Wayne Hawkins played in Super Bowl II in January of 1968 as the starting right guard for the Oakland Raiders. He might tell you he played in two Super Bowls, but he didn’t.

Hawkins played for the Raiders from the team’s inception in 1960 through 1969. He’ll tell you he played three years. Or was it four?

Hawkins’ memories, of his football career, his wife Sharon, his family, his life after football as a real estate developer, can get lost in the haze of traumatic brain injury and dementia.

The story of the 79-year-old Rancho Mirage resident is an all-too-familiar one for former and current football players these days. Years of battling in the football trenches, taking blows to the head, ignoring injuries and hard hits in a desire to get back on the field, have taken their toll on Hawkins' body and his brain. And now the money to provide him the constant care he needs is running out.

“We were getting 24/7 care from a professional caregiving group here,” said Sharon, sitting with Wayne at the kitchen table of the Rancho Mirage home they rent. “And the NFL was paying for it. Due to the April events, we went through our personal funds on top of the NFL yearly allotment for the brain injury insurance.”

Those April events included a right hip replacement followed days later by a stroke. Hawkins has worked hard to learn to walk again, but the medical costs of the hip replacement, the physical therapy for the stroke and the memory loss care have wiped out the Hawkins family, including the $118,000 Wayne receives each April from the NFL through a concussion lawsuit settlement.

“We have no tree, no gifts this year. And the kids (two grown sons and grandchildren) understand,” Sharon said. “And they have helped us, but one of the kids has two in college and one is pre-med. They have their own demands. One of the sons has a daughter who is an international competitor in swimming. So they have their lives about that.”

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Wayne Hawkins was a star lineman at the University of Pacific playing offense and defense. He was drafted by the Denver Broncos of the new American Football League in 1960, but quickly was picked up by the Oakland Raiders in an allotment draft before the AFL’s first season that fall.

When the Raiders debuted that year, Hawkins was the starting right guard, a position he held for 10 years. Playing next to Hall of Fame center Jim Otto, Hawkins helped the Raiders to the AFL title in 1967 and a berth in Super Bowl II against the Green Bay Packers. The Raiders played in the AFL conference championship games in 1968 and 1969.

“He was very good, just solid,” said Tom Flores, a desert resident and former quarterback and Raiders head coach who was Hawkins' teammate at Pacific and later with the Raiders. “You could count on him and Jim Otto side by side. They were my protectors in my years with the Raiders.”

A left knee injury ended Hawkins' career, but he transitioned into real estate and development in Northern California, pursued a new hobby downhill skiing while raising a family with Sharon, who he met while she was a cheerleader at Pacific.

“I said ‘I want that one,”” Hawkins says, drawing a laugh from himself and Sharon.

Hawkins admits he never thought about concussions or long-term effects of the brutal hits he took while playing. Sharon recounts one hit Hawkins took from 6-foot-9 defensive end Ernie Ladd that crushed Hawkins’ head against the goal post, which in those days were just inside the goal line.

The next day it was discovered that Hawkins’ jaw was broke from ear to ear. His jaw was wired shut and he played the next six games. In a game against Denver, Hawkins was knocked unconscious early in the first quarter. He sat dazed on the sidelines the rest of the first half, then came back and played the entire second half.

“I always went back in the game. That was my job,” he said.

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As Sharon recounts other head trauma incidents and the approximate 20 concussions Hawkins suffered, he says, “She knows more about it than I do,” a phrase he repeats a dozen times in half an hour.

In 2002, Sharon said signs of problems for Wayne began.

“Family and friends began to call and tell me Wayne would call them two or three times a week and repeat the same story,” she said. “And then they would let me know. Then I began to be aware of it. When you are close to something, you don’t see it.”

On walks with the family husky Duffy, Hawkins would get lost, only to have the dog pull him home in the proper direction.

“Good dog,” Hawkins said.

Then, while working on a development project in Reno, Hawkins became lost on the freeway trying to drive back to California for no apparent reason. The Nevada highway patrol found him, took him home, and the next day he gave up his driver’s license.

By 2006, doctors provided a diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer’s, but that was later changed to traumatic brain injury and dementia. By 2012, as one of five former players in a UCLA study, doctors said Hawkins’ brain functions and P.E.T. scans were consistent with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease found in the brains of many former NFL players whose brains are examined after they die.

“That was too late, because it was too late to use that as part of his brain issues for the concussion lawsuit,” Sharon said.

Hawkins was part of the so-called 88 Plan concussion lawsuit settlement. That plan, named for the number of former Baltimore Colts tight end John Mackay, provides funds from the NFL to former players for medical and custodial care required because of dementia, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. For Hawkins, that has meant $118,000 a year for 12 months of care starting each April 1.

A second concussion lawsuit had NFL owners promising more money for former players in need, but distributions have been held up by a counter lawsuit.

“This is a shame because this money is there and it should be distributed to people who need it,” said Flores, who was head coach of the Raiders for two Super Bowl victories. “But it is being held up by a small group of guys who feel like it wasn’t enough. And it’s not fair. It’s not fair to people like Wayne and Sharon.”

Since moving to Rancho Mirage in the summer of 2015 at the suggestion of Flores and his wife Barbara because of the more than 40 former NFL players who live in the desert, Hawkins has been in three care facilities. Sharon has pulled him out of all three and has filed a lawsuit against one for the caliber of care he was receiving.

Ask Hawkins if he suffered any other injuries from football and he’ll say no, that he was healthy. His wife points to a 2016 total replacement of his left knee, the knee that ended his football career, and the right hip replacement earlier this year.

The medical expenses for the year have wiped out the couples’ money and in-home care had to end Dec. 14. That means Sharon is now the caregiver of the house, but doctors told her in 2015 after she was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, a common irregular heartbeat, that she shouldn’t be her husband’s caregiver. But the $4,087 the couple receives each month from Social Security and Hawkins’ AFL pension is barely enough for one week’s care costs, including his physical rehabilitation from the stroke.

As a way to raise part of the $80,000 Sharon believes the couple needs between now and the next NFL check in April, she has started a GoFundMe page for her husband.

“I was watching this show on television about the young man who was teased recently because he had a brain tumor,” she said. “And they were saying a GoFundMe page was established in his name. I was wondering what am I going to do, because health-wise I shouldn’t take care of him. So I went online and we have a good friend who has a computer company, and he came over and helped me establish that page.”

For now, Sharon will take care of her husband’s needs as he battles the long-term effect of his days as an all-league offensive lineman. She has been told by wives of other past Raiders, Barbara Flores and Betty Blanda, that it is best not to approach the Raiders about Wayne’s plight, and Sharon doesn’t want to approach the couples’ long-time friends, many they have known since their college days.

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Even today, Hawkins says he enjoyed football and doesn’t regret playing the game professionally rather that using his master’s degree in secondary education to become a teacher.

“I think it is the way football is,” said Flores, who is now a radio analyst for Raiders games. “That might be a little crass, and most of these guys as you will say are aware of the possibilities (of brain injuries). Some that you read about and see about maybe played one year and retired because of their fear. But a majority of them keep playing. The game just lights them up.”

Both of Hawkins’ sons played college football, one at Stanford and one at Pacific, and Hawkins says he watches football each week. Sometimes, Sharon says, Wayne thinks he’s watching one of his sons play high school football on television, or he wonders if his brother is coming to the house. That brother died when Wayne was 42.

Asked what he remembers most about the game, Wayne smiles and says “Rock'em’, sock'em’, Jesus block’em. And we had a tough game. But we played well. Our whole team was good.”

Asked what his days are like now, Hawkins says he practices. And he plays football with the kids, a one-man team against five or six kids. Sharon sits next to her husband of 56 years and smiles.