 FOUNDERS
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We Need Your Help
The SILVERANDBLACKFUND is a non-profit organization is making a difference in the lives of former Oakland Raider players who are ill and are unable to pay their medical bills or have suffered severe financial loss due to an illness. The fund will use it's resources toward eliminating hardship for these players. For many retired Raiders life after professional football career is a constant battle. Many are faced with serious health issues, and in some cases, these situations are life threatening. Through various fundraising resources proceeds from these events will establish a fund for retired Raiders players.
With the SilverandBlackFund all other proceeds from any event or project, after expenses will go to the fund. The fund will distribute small grants to former Raider players within the State of California.
Please take the time to look through our website. It will tell you a little bit more about us and our project outline, including the history, design, and project plan. You can watch our progress as contributions are received and you can keep in touch with your favorite players from present and past.
How your donation will help
We rely entirely on past and present Football players donations of there time and money to fund our projects.
Recently former Oakland Raider Steve Smith was told by Doctors he was dying of ALS. Steve was a member of the only two national championship football teams in Penn State history. He was one of the captains of the 1986 team that stunned Miami. He was drafted in the third round by the Los Angeles Raiders. He was the guy they called 'Tank' in high school and 'Rhino' in the NFL because of the way he ran over defenders. He did the dirty work, blocking for stars like Marcus Allen and Eric Dickerson, Bo Jackson and Roger Craig.
One of Smiths greatest games occurred in 1988 on Monday Night Football against Denver. The Broncos led 24-0 and were burying the Oakland Raiders. They had outgained the Raiders 254-39 in the first half and appeared to have the game well in hand, but the Los Angeles defense turned things around early in the third quarter. Eddie Anderson picked off an errant John Elway pass and returned it to the Denver 40. On the next play, Jay Schroeder rolled right after a play-action fake and found fullback Steve Smith, who took it the distance. That combination clicked again on their next possession, as Smith took another play-action pass 42 yards for a touchdown. Momentum clearly shifted the Raiders way when, stymied at his own 1, Schroeder hit Mervyn Fernandez with a 48-yard pass to get them out of a deep hole. Along with his two touchdowns Smith made a key block later in the game as running back Marcus Allen plowed over the goal line for the touchdown. The Raiders won the game spearheaded by Smith.
Now, he is fighting death with day-long doses of pills, oils and intravenous medicines. And yet, it doesn't seem to matter that his wife helps him out of a wheelchair and feeds him every meal and holds a cup to his mouth so he can sip from a straw. Steve Smith always seems to smile the widest smiles.
More than 5,000 Americans each year are diagnosed with ALS, which destroys specialized nerve cells called motor neurons. Life expectancy is usually 2 to 5 years. Steve Smith seemed to be following the same awful path so familiar to ALS patients: a body steadily wasting away until the ability to move, swallow and breathe vanish - with a perfectly clear mind tortured through it all.
It didn't take long before the muscles in his hands deteriorated to the point where he could not grasp the dimes and quarters in his car change holder.
Hope, though, came unexpectedly last year when Chie Smith read a People Magazine article about a doctor in suburban Philadelphia who was making breakthroughs with ALS patients.
Smith has been visiting Dr. Greg Bach every month since last July 2004, for checkups and treatments. He takes up to two dozen oral medications and is injected with other antibiotics intravenously every day. It is somewhat of a radical medical turn. ALS doctors scoff at Bach's findings. And it can be difficult to accept Bach's talk of how tick bites can cause misdiagnosis of everything from ALS to muscular dystrophy to road rage.
He certainly has supporters, though. 'He is taking patients who are given a dead-end diagnosis, and he's treating them and they're making recoveries,' said Pat Smith, head of the Lyme Disease Association, a non-profit group based in New Jersey. 'It doesn't matter what anyone thinks about it. Patients are getting help.'
Steve Smith is convinced he has Lyme disease. He is convinced he will recover. 'So many people have been misdiagnosed, just like Steve,' his wife said. 'The ALS doctors, they just shut the door on you. They don't want to hear it. It's really disgusting. The thing that gets to me is that we lost nine precious months.'
There have been small signs of recovery lately. The muscle tone in his arms appears to be returning. His weight has remained steady when most ALS patients whither away as their muscles die. His voice, though still muddy, seems stronger.
'He's beating the odds,' Bach said. 'It's taken a lot of inner strength to do this. I believe he's going to be one of the ones who make it. I know he is. All the time he put in (working out for football) is what actually is saving his life.'
In June, he also started an alternative medical treatment at the Haverford Wellness Center in Havertown. Five days a week, two or three times each day, his blood is drawn and mixed with amino acids and a soy-based substance, and then injected back into his system. The idea is to give the body extra material to heal damaged motor neuron cells. On a recent visit to Haverford, Chie Smith followed her handwritten notes, and a doctor's pointers, as she learned to use the syringes. The goal is to perform the procedure at home. They chatted and laughed a bit as they left the center. There is hope. And yet there is still so far to go.
If you have any questions regarding donations or the SilverandBlackFund, please contact us.
Make a donation
The SilverandBlackFund. Donations may be tax deductible.
Donate online with PayPal using the easy to use forms linked below. Our account name for this is donate@silverandblackfund.com. PayPal allows for onetime, monthly and yearly payment options (cancel a subscription).
You do not need to have a PayPal account to make a onetime donation to us through their service.
Donate via postal mail
You can send donations via snail-mail to the SilverandBlackFund's head office address.
If sending donations from outside the United States, please note again that an international money order or a check payable on a United States bank would be appreciated, to avoid collection costs. Sending a foreign check (or any other kind of draft drawn on a bank outside the United States) may involve processing fees in excess of $50. International postal money orders payable in the United States are available in post offices in many countries and will ensure your complete donation goes to SilverandBlackFund. Please do not send currency through the mail.
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