Lockout Could Cost Former Lineman Care at Dementia Facility

[Elmore Furth]

So much for loyalty. Chew them up, spit them out and throw them away.

The potential casualties of the N.F.L.’s work stoppage include players, owners and, eventually, parking-lot attendants and many others whose work is tied to the sport. The lockout’s first victim, however, could be a former merchant seaman from Brooklyn who once worked on the Apollo lunar module but today lies inert in Room 12 at the Silverado dementia-care facility here.

The 78-year-old man, Bruce Schwager, spends most waking hours staring at the NFL Network, silently comforted by the images of players running and blocking and tackling the way he did as a lineman for the United States Merchant Marine Academy so long ago. He does not notice his wife, Bette, silently packing his clothes and pictures into moving boxes, and does not understand when she blames the players union in which her husband still belongs.

Since July 2009, the charitable arm of the N.F.L. players union had voluntarily paid Schwager’s medical bills, which eventually topped $250,000. Schwager never played in a regular-season game — he joined the union by attending two training camps — and the players association treated him as one of its own.


Lockout Could Cost Former Lineman Care at Dementia Facility