It had been decades since anyone remembered the three 49ers who died from ALS. Then Dwight Clark revealed last year he too was suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease.
The Bay Area sports icon who died Monday became the catalyst to refocus attention on Matt Hazeltine, Gary Lewis and Bob Waters. They are the three forgotten members of the 1964 49ers whose deaths from ALS are as mystifying today as when they occurred in the late 1980s.
“Matt knew what Dwight Clark learned: There is no cure and the body is going to give out,” Hazeltine’s widow Deborah said recently.