Nearly a decade after Wally Hilgenberg's death, his widow can still hear his voice telling her he loves her, at the push of a button. It's programmed into a stuffed bear he gave her shortly before succumbing to ALS in 2008.
That's how Mary Hilgenberg has chosen to remember her husband, not as the hard-nosed linebacker over 15 years for the Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings or as the victim of a debilitating disease that left him unable to move any muscle but his eyeballs in his final days.
"If a fly landed on him, he couldn't move it," she said.