I remember Joe Wille his last year w/ Jets at Shea stadium. I had a sideline pass and took a bunch of pictures. He looked like every move was agony for him.

Flash forward to the 1980's and I'm doing commercials for a local Appliance chain and he is the "spokes-celeb" and he showed up half in the bag. He was obviously using booze/pills for the pain and you could literally HEAR his knees click when he walked! UGH!!!

Flash forward 10 years and I am doing another set of commercials for the same chain and Joe Wille shows up and he is a different person. Sober, New Knees, New Wife, all is Good.

I took out the folder of photos I took at Shea and he looked them over and smiled and said "That was a Brutal time!". He asked if he could have someone them and I offered to print up better copies in 11"x14" size and he gave me his contact info. I spent around 10 hours on printing 10 of them on really good Bromide Archival paper and sent them to him. I got a letter back two weeks later with a check for $1K (not expected) and when I saw him in an ESPN interview a few years ago, in the background was one of my shots on the wall, framed nicely.

He seems to have met and faced his demons and hopefully does not have the concussion issues that plague most football players of late.