Remembering Kevin Turner, 46, who battled ALS and the NFL

FORMER EAGLES fullback Kevin Turner lost his six-year battle with ALS Thursday. He passed away at his home in Vestavia Hills, Ala. with his family by his side. He was just 46.

"I just wanted to tell everyone Myra and I lost a great son today," Kevin's father Raymond posted on Facebook. "He will be missed so much. Thank everyone so very much over this journey we have had for all your support, prayers. He was ready to go to Heaven. Excited, he said. Love y'all and thanks God bless."

The last time I saw Kevin, who spent five of his eight NFL seasons with the Eagles (1995-99), was three years ago outside the Philadelphia federal courthouse.

He had made the difficult trip up from Alabama for a hearing in the concussion lawsuit that he and more than 5,000 other former NFL players had filed against the league.

Turner still was able to walk, but the disease already had started ravaging his upper body. He had minimal use of his arms and hands, and his speech and breathing were failing him. He needed help brushing his teeth and putting on his pants.

Turner didn't need to attend that hearing, but he wanted to be there.

"I wanted to be here to show the (players') attorneys that this (suit isn't just about) 4,000 guys who played football and might undergo some neurological condition down the road," he said. "I wanted to show them who they're working for and what types of things are happening."

The NFL eventually settled the suit out of court, which cost them some money, of which they have an endless amount, but allowed them to sidestep any admission of negligence or culpability.

There's no way to prove conclusively that the head trauma Turner suffered playing football was responsible for his ALS. But there was no doubt in his mind that it did.

"Absolutely," he said in 2013. "There's no history of it in my family. A few (doctors) have said they believe (it was caused by concussions). Nobody can be certain. But from the data that they have and what they've seen in others, they believe it. And so do I."

Turner rushed for just 635 yards and one touchdown in his eight seasons in the NFL. Never carried the ball more than 50 times in a season.

That wasn't his role. He earned his money the hard way. He earned it by lowering his head and shoulder and serving as a battering ram for the headline-makers, for Ricky Watters and Charlie Garner and Duce Staley. They got the yards. He got the stingers and the nerve damage.

Even after he was diagnosed with ALS, he never regretted playing in the NFL. But he admitted he might've done some things differently if he had known the risks that came with all of those head shots.

"I would like to have had the (concussion) information," he said three years ago. "It might have kept me from . . . I might've played six years instead of eight. It might've prevented me from going back into a game or practice when I knew I was still dazed.

"Even in 2007, the NFL was on HBO's Real Sports acting like we were idiots. (They were saying), 'No, no, no, there's no correlation (between concussions and long-term brain damage).'

"Believe me, if there hadn't been a lawsuit or I hadn't come out, and other players hadn't come out, they'd still be saying, 'No, no, no.' I'm sure they're a bunch of very good people. But until they're forced to do something else, why would they change."

Kevin Turner lived long enough to see a settlement in the lawsuit that bore his name. He even lived long enough to see the NFL finally - finally - admit a link between football-related head trauma and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

That happened two weeks ago when the league's top health and safety officer, Jeff Miller, acknowledged the link during a round-table discussion on concussions with a congressional committee.

That was little solace, though, for a man who was robbed of what so many of us take for granted.

"The hard thing for me now is not being able to be out there with my kids, throwing the baseball and shooting the basketball," Turner told me three years ago.

"I can't pick them up. They help me get dressed, help me clean myself. The total opposite of what I dreamed it would be."

Dreams aren't always what they're cracked up to be.

Rest in peace, Kevin.

@Pdomo Blog: philly.com/Eaglesblog