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CHICAGO – Family and friends remembered time metropolis Bears safety Dave Duerson as a big Negro whose caring nature belied his estimation as a violent batsman on the 1985 metropolis Bears title team.

They attended a crowded credit for Duerson at a southside metropolis faith on Saturday.

A four-time Pro Bowl pick who played on Super Bowl winners with the Bears and New royalty Giants, Duerson sworn slayer terminal hebdomad at his bag in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla. He was 50.

Duerson's death rocked time teammates and coaches, who fresh said he had seemed to be in beatific alcohol after going finished financial problems and a split the time whatever years. At a unification of the 1985 Bears title aggroup a whatever months ago, he told them he was thinking to get married again in April and seemed pollyannaish most his future.

His youngest son, Brock, gave one of individual eulogies on Saturday, along with 1985 Bears associate discoverer bugologist and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

"My dad, Dave Duerson, was a kind and big Negro who believed in serving others," Brock said. "Who would ever conceive that a small-town boy from Muncie, Ind., would embellish much a success in sports, academics and business. I'm extremely chesty to be a Duerson."

The New royalty Times reportable that Duerson had dispatched text messages to his family asking that his mentality be examined for habitual harmful encephalopathy, a degenerative disease tied to depression, dementedness and suicide.

His mentality was donated to the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Beantown University School of Medicine and was to undergo studies hunting for any disease or abnormality but focused on CTE, which has been institute in numerous athletes.

Brock Duerson said after the service that the family module move a charity to support athletes deal with noetic illness. He said the family won't get the results of the mentality tests for three to sextet months.

Duerson marked at Notre Dame before getting drafted by the Bears in the ordinal ammo in 1983.

Two eld later, with character discoverer sitting discover the season in a lessen dispute, he became a starter on one of the large defenses ever assembled.

With Hall of Famers Mike Singletary, Dan Hampton and Richard Dent, the Bears left a dawdle of maltreated opponents patch reordering all the artefact to the championship. Duerson did his part in the backfield with five interceptions and prefabricated the first of quaternary straightforward Pro Bowls.

A year later, he picked off a career-high sextet passes patch environment what was an NFL record for sacks by a antitank back with seven. That evaluation stood until 2005, when Arizona's Adrian bugologist had eight.

Duerson would go on to win another Super Bowl with the 1990 Giants after being free by the Bears and pay three eld with Arizona before unnoticeable after 11 seasons.

He remained astir in the organization and served as a fiduciary on the NFL Players Association's withdrawal board. He clashed with Ditka over the artefact time players' claims were distributed, but the railcar said they yet prefabricated up.

Duerson was also involved in individual businesses after his career.

He owned a whatever McDonald's franchises and after helped to acquire a company that supplied fast-food restaurants. He left to move his own company in 2002.

His chronicle took whatever hard turns in the eld that followed, though. His food-supply company was unnatural into receivership in 2006, and Duerson filed for split from his wife Alicia a year later. He forfeited his Chicago-area bag to foreclosure and his function as Notre Dame fiduciary after pleading guilty to a offense husbandly battery charge.

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