On this day four years ago – September 10, 2021 – Kevin Atkinson went to the doctor for a routine check-up and walked out with a diagnosis that he had five to seven years to live.

Not that he believed it, of course.

Atkinson sauntered out of that UT Southwestern Hospital just like he prowled the sidelines of a Flower Mound Marcus football game when he was peeved at an official. That neurologist had no idea what he was talking about.

Sure, Atkinson knew something was wrong. For three years, he’d slowly, inexplicably, lost his ability to talk. His words first slowed, then slurred, lagging farther behind the rapid pace of his brain with each passing day.

Atkinson had been given so many different answers in the desperate search for why. First it was that he’d suffered a mini stroke. Then it was Parkinson’s. Those were hard to hear, but acceptable. This latest answer was not. Kevin Atkinson had Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a degenerative brain disease.

The neurologist had told him there was no cure. All Atkinson could do was live his best life for whatever was left of it. So, maybe it was perfect timing that Marcus had a district game against Keller Central that night. Atkinson could do what he had always done best, pouring into high school kids without thinking about himself. Except tonight, that selfless act would be a little selfish. Because the pregame speeches, the perfect play call against that one defensive formation, and the decision on whether or not to use that final timeout could distract him – even just for three hours – from the fact that this doctor believed he was going to die soon.

Maybe Kevin could immerse himself in the game, but his wife, Chrissy, couldn’t. She and her three kids had never missed a game. Both of her daughters cheered for his team, and her son played quarterback. She thought she had experienced every emotion that a Friday night could bring, until that night.

“It was like I was in a bubble; I was underwater,” Chrissy said. “I could hear everybody complaining about their day. And I just thought, ‘You don’t even know.’ I couldn’t say anything to anybody.”

PSP is a horrible disease. All it does is take. As it progresses, it kills more of your brain’s most vital nerve cells, systematically robbing you of all your physical capabilities, like going down a cruel checklist. First, your ability to talk. Then to walk. Then to chew. Frankly, it takes away your life long before it stops your heart.

But of all the things this wretched illness takes, the Atkinson family has found that one of the most painful things it ripped away was their community. Because PSP isn’t just evil; it’s anonymous. When Chrissy tells people that Kevin has PSP, they’ll react with a polite, “Oh, I’m sorry,’ as if he has the flu – the default response when someone says they have a medical condition you’ve never heard of. The doctors at the nearby urgent care don’t even know what PSP is when Chrissy has to take Kevin in after a fall.

So that underwater feeling that Chrissy had on Night One has not left her. With each day, the Atkinson family is pulled deeper and deeper below the surface, silently drowning while everyone else wonders, ‘Whatever happened to that awesome head coach from Flower Mound Marcus? You know, the one who coached Garrett Nussmeier? Wasn’t it a stroke? Parkinson’s?’

For a while, the family’s well-deserved privacy created a disconnect between what people thought was happening and what they were actually going through. At first, they didn’t even want to believe it themselves. Google told them PSP developed in 70-year-olds, and Kevin was only 52. The neurologist said it came with all these symptoms – like falling and choking – that Kevin showed no sign of. But as the disease has progressed, and all these symptoms the neurologist warned of have unfolded like a painful prophecy, the Atkinsons are determined to not let PSP take their father away quietly, like it’s done to so many others.

“I want people to realize exactly what he’s going through and to bring awareness to the disease,” Chrissy said.

These days, Kevin Atkinson sits in a special chair in front of the TV from the moment he wakes up to the moment he goes to sleep. The bruises pockmarking his body are evidence of why he can’t do much else. He falls almost every time he tries to get up on his own. His wife has to help him shower and use the bathroom. His youngest daughter, Abby, brushes his teeth for him and shaves his face. The closest he can get to a meal is gummy pasta because he’ll choke on everything else.

But of all the things Kevin can’t do anymore, the thing his wife and children miss most is his voice. He used to give the best advice. Every morning, he dropped his kids off at school before going into the office, leaving them with the same reminder before peeling out of the carpool line.

“Hey,” he’d call out to them, ducking his head so he could see them out of the car. “Stay tough, be a leader, and remember, you’re an Atkinson. People notice you.”

Now, his kids are walking into some of the most important phases of their lives, and they’re looking back at the car, at their dad, for a word of encouragement that can’t come. His oldest daughter, Lexi, yearns for it as a new mom to a three-month-old baby. His only son, Colton, recently married, wishes he could ask him about how to set a good foundation for his marriage. His youngest daughter, Abby, who graduated from Texas Tech in 2025, wants to know how he navigated life after graduation.

“I think that my siblings and I feel like we’re just missing out on so much wisdom – so many things that he would love to be sharing and pouring into us,” Lexi said.

And the hardest part is that his kids know he still has that advice in him. Because for everything that PSP has taken from Kevin Atkinson, it hasn’t touched his thoughts or memory. His piercing blue eyes are a window to a soul that’s still there. He knows exactly what each child needs to hear, but he can only try communicating it with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. So, most of the time, that advice stays rattling inside his mind, trapped inside a body that doesn’t work anymore.

In that gap between what Kevin can express and what his family can understand, his wife and children are left to wonder what he’s thinking and how much he’s suffering. So, every day they wake up with conflicting emotions: thankful for another day with their dad, and heartbroken that he has to spend another day in pain. 

“It’s hard to see a man that was so strong and so full of life… just for it to be taken away from him,” Chrissy said. “It’s like the longest, hardest goodbye.”

Back in January 1990, at a simpler time in her life, Chrissy Schiele’s biggest problem was that she needed a date to her college formal. She had just broken up with her boyfriend, which she knew was the right decision, but it left her with the dreaded idea of going to this party alone.

Noticing the predicament, one of her guy friends offered to set Chrissy up with one of his fraternity brothers.

“All the guys were just standing in a line, and I just kind of went down until I went, ‘Him, he’s cute!’” Chrissy said. “He had the prettiest eyes.”

But, alas, Kevin Atkinson already had a date.

Oh well, Chrissy thought, no biggie. But then Kevin called her the Sunday morning after the formal and asked her to lunch. Kevin cried during a sad movie that day, and Chrissy says that her single life was over at that moment. They married two years later.

“He and my mom have the most amazing marriage,” Lexi said. “They’ve been married for over 30 years; they’re college sweethearts. I think my siblings would agree with me; they just set such a good example of what a marriage and relationship should look like that we all had such high standards.”

Kevin and Chrissy’s marriage is marked by mutual sacrifice. The family moved five times in six years for Kevin’s job, and Chrissy chose the houses and coordinated the moves while Kevin worked late. But Kevin also stepped up when Chrissy needed him. She is a flight attendant for Delta Air Lines, which took her away from home for days at a time, leaving Kevin alone with the kids. He ruled with an iron fist, always the stricter of the two parents, running his house like a football practice. 

“Growing up, you heard the door open, and you were like, ‘Oh crap, dad’s home. Better get off the Xbox,’” Colton said.

Where Chrissy would wake the kids up with a hug and a “Good morning,” Kevin would flip on the lights and say, “Get up.” He harped on the little signs of discipline – unloading the dishwasher, washing the toothpaste out of your sink, and making your bed every morning – with the same intensity as if his star defensive tackle had jumped offsides or his wide receiver false started.

But Kevin was also the perfect girl-dad. He practiced all the TikTok dances Lexi and Abby wanted him to. He was silly and goofy, knowing just how to make each child bust out laughing. He even learned how to use a flat iron and curling iron so he could do his daughter’s hair before school every day.

“He would seriously give me a slick back ponytail with men’s hair gel,” Abby said. “That’s terrible, but it’s so sweet that he wanted to do my hair and spend time with me during football season when there’s so much going on.”

Football took up the majority of Kevin’s day. But he always included his kids in his work, and therefore, they fell in love with the sport just as much as their dad did. If one of the children was sick when they were little, Chrissy would give them a throw-up bowl so they could sit with her in the car, parked at an angle where they could see the scoreboard. Colton became the starting quarterback at Denton High and ate lunch with his dad in the film room every day. If Kevin’s team ever lost on a Thursday night, Abby would have to be sent to his office during class the next day because she’d jump down the throat of anyone who made a snide remark.

For the longest time, the Atkinsons defined themselves as a football family, which makes the start of every new season so much harder, now.

“It just makes me want to cry, because it just means so much to us – Friday Night Lights and this time of the year,” Abby said. “It’s hard. I just keep thinking, ‘Man, my dad should be out there still.’”

The first signs of an illness were in the fall of 2018, when Kevin came home from work complaining about his right side feeling weaker than his left. After brain scans came back inconclusive, the doctors assumed he had a stroke. But then Kevin’s speech started to slow. The deterioration of his speech was so gradual that his family and offensive coordinator never noticed it. But as Flower Mound Marcus made a playoff run in 2019, and more eyes focused on the program, rumors started circling about why Coach A was slurring his words during postgame interviews.

“In the 2019 season, we went deep into the playoffs that year, and some people reached out and asked, ‘Does he have a drinking problem?’” Chrissy said. “That was horrible for our family. And that’s when we knew something more was going on here.”

Kevin started speech therapy, but no amount of practice helped. In fact, his speech got worse. During COVID, when the entire school went virtual, Kevin attempted to send a video message to his team, but his mouth couldn’t articulate what his brain wanted to say.

“He’d go outside on our back porch for hours, just recording the same video over and over again because he didn’t like the way he sounded,” Lexi said.

In June of 2021, Kevin was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. The doctors scheduled him for a routine check-up on September 10, 2021. Remarkably, Atkinson coached for another football season, leading Flower Mound Marcus to the playoffs. But by the end, he had to give up play calling duties, unable to communicate the play he wanted to run in time like he had for two decades. He retired after the 2022 season. He chose to walk away, but it was not on his own terms.

It was a long and winding road to the PSP diagnosis. With most diseases, it’s horrifying to be diagnosed, but at least there’s a plan of action. PSP is more unknown and sinister. No one can tell the Atkinson family what to expect – much less a cure – as doctors throw Hail Marys against an invisible enemy

“When he was in the hospital a couple weeks ago for the tremors, it’s like, ‘OK, we’re going to try this,’” Abby said. “They don’t even know if it’s going to work! And then you’re giving him this medication. It sucks, basically.”

After his retirement, Kevin used to look forward all day to his evening walks. He’d take the family’s Goldendoodle on a five-mile trek, and he even lifted weights well past retirement. As the disease progressed, he put down the weights. But he refused to stop walking, leaning on his daughters as they carried him like a wounded warrior for miles around the neighborhood.

“He literally is the toughest person I’ve ever met in my life, or will ever meet in my life,” Lexi said. “He just refuses to give up. Since he’s been diagnosed, he’s never complained. He never had a bad attitude. He never said, ‘Why me?’ We’ve all had bad attitudes – the kids and my mom. We’ve had a really hard time, obviously. But he never once had a bad attitude.”

Kevin cannot walk anymore. But every evening, Abby takes him on a golf cart ride around the neighborhood. She’s in her early 20s, and most of her friends are living together and enjoying the Dallas nightlife. But she’s put all that on pause to be a school teacher by day and her father’s caretaker by night, shunning her own desires in a way that’s eerily similar to what her dad used to do.

One night, Abby was blasting Kenny Chesney on the radio. Her father always loved country music. And as they turned around the bend, with a perfect view of the setting sun, Kevin flipped his cap backward, a signal that he was vibing out. In those moments, she’s happier than any of her friends who went to Thirsty Thursday at the local bar.

“There was a time when I thought, ‘Oh, I’m missing out, I need to go out and have fun because I’m young,’” Abby said. “And then I realized my dad would do this for me. I just love him so much. I love getting to live at home with them, and I love making him smile every day.”

Kevin’s children cling to these smiles, little reminders of the man who raised them. For the last two years, he has lived in a kind of purgatory, somewhere between life and death. His children inadvertently slip between the present and past tense when talking about him. In a lot of ways, the dad who raised them is already gone. Chrissy says Kevin used to embarrass her all the time when he’d tell people his life story in the elevator. Now, when she sees an old video of him, she can’t believe how southern he sounded. Her husband is not dead, and she’s almost forgotten the sound of his voice.

“It’s been a few years since we’ve really been able to like… talk to him,” Lexi said. “You know, the way that we grew up being able to talk to him. I don’t know if this makes sense or not, but the other day I was trying to think, ‘What was my dad like?’ I have a hard time remembering, because it’s been so many years since this disease has taken over.”

But then there are moments, like on that golf cart, when they realize Kevin Atkinson is still here, and fighting harder than ever. Last Thursday, while Abby was doing the dishes, she peeked into the living room and saw Kevin with both hands raised in a “touchdown” signal after Colorado scored the game-winner. A couple of weeks ago, when Kevin went to the hospital with tremors, the family watched Adam Sandler’s “50 First Dates,” and Kevin burst out laughing at a dirty joke.

“He always told me, ‘Never let them see you sweat.’” Colton said. “Which means, don’t let people see you down. It’s just incredible the way he’s practiced what he preached.”

The family acknowledges that this proof of Kevin’s consciousness is bittersweet. Sometimes, they think it’d be easier for him if he didn’t have to watch his body deteriorate. But all in all, they are extremely thankful. Since their father’s mind is intact, they can still create new memories for however much time he has left. In these final years, they have swarmed around their father. Lexi and her husband moved to Fort Worth so Kevin can see the baby as much as possible. He and Chrissy picked out their grandparent names – Coach and KiKi – a decade ago, and he gets to take pictures with his new granddaughter. Colton and his new wife moved four blocks away from their parents. Abby, as mentioned, lives at home. The family has a beach vacation planned in a couple of weeks, and the matching hats that say “Kev’s Crew” have already come in. Lexi said that one of the hardest parts of this disease is seeing her parents be robbed of their golden retirement years together. It’s as if the family is trying to pack what should’ve been the last few decades of Kevin’s life into a few years.

“I’ve seen my kids just step up, and I didn’t even know that any of us really had this in us,” Chrissy said. “He’s so loved. The kids would do anything for him. They’re here in a minute if I need them.”

There’s no getting around it: Kevin Atkinson was a hardass, both as a parent and a football coach. Maybe his kids didn’t realize in the moment why he was so stern about making your bed and unloading the dishwasher, but now they’ve realized he was preparing them to deal with the inevitable adversity that life would bring.

“We’re so lucky,” Lexi said. “We had…”

She catches herself. There she is talking like he’s gone, again.

“Well, we still have him. I don’t want to make it sound like it’s the past tense. But those conversations we got to have with him all throughout growing up were so awesome. He definitely made all of us who we are.”

It’s important to remind herself that he’s still here. It’s like Kevin was preparing them for a test their entire upbringing, and now he’s gotten to watch them pass it with flying colors. So even in this nightmare, he’s had every father’s dream come true.

Now there is no worthy silver lining for this story. Nothing about this situation is fair. Kevin did nothing to deserve PSP. Essentially, he was struck by lightning, and no one can tell him why. Without any answers, the family is left to search for their own.

“If he’s going to go through this, it’s for a reason,” Lexi said. “We don’t know what that reason is – whether that’s to spread awareness so that other families don’t feel so isolated, or it’s to help bring other people closer to God because of our faith – we don’t know. But we do know there’s a reason for everything.”

They may never know the reason, but every now and then they’re granted little clues. A couple of years ago, when Abby was still at Texas Tech, she was at the gym when a man approached her.

“Hey, are you Abby Atkinson?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said.

“I played for your dad at Keller in 2007,” he said. “He changed my life. I just want you to know I’m praying for him.”

Kevin Atkinson was a damn good football coach. Over 21 years, he compiled a 126-100 record over stops at Keller, Denton, and Flower Mound Marcus. He consistently left teams better than he found them, bringing Keller from 5-5 in 2002 to 9-3 in 2003, or Denton from 3-7 in 2012 to 9-4 in 2015, and Flower Mound Marcus from 4-6 in 2017 to 11-2 in 2019. And he would consider his career a failure if that’s what he was remembered for.

“He loved football, but he wasn’t a football coach because he loved football,” Lexi said. “He was a football coach because he loved kids. He loved getting to pour into the lives of other people. That’s what fueled him.”

Kevin impacted countless lives, numerous young men like that guy in the Lubbock gym. Lexi married one of them. She and her husband, Gabe, actually dated in eighth grade. During her birthday party that year, Kevin pulled Gabe, the middle school quarterback, aside to watch Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers. He missed Lexi’s entire birthday party, dissecting Rodgers’s pocket movement with the high school coach.

“At the time, I didn’t know this, but my husband was obsessed with my dad, and idolized him completely,” Lexi said.

In the wake of Kevin’s illness, generations of men whom he mentored have come out of the woodwork. It’s a shame it had to take a terminal diagnosis for it to happen, but Kevin is one of the rare people who gets to hear how much he meant to people before he passes on. Chrissy knows that, unfortunately, our society works in a way where most don’t know how highly everyone thought of them until they’re gone. That’s why she wants to use Kevin’s story to motivate coaching families across Texas: in the grind of a season, when wins and losses feel like life or death, keep in mind that one day everyone will remember you for something far more important.

 “I knew he was an awesome guy,” Chrissy said. “But just to hear all the stories, it makes me think how impactful everything he did was. Not very many people get to say they go to work today and impact lives like that.”

Chrissy is hoping that, in the same way she found out what Kevin’s football coaching career really meant years after he retired, she finds out what his PSP battle really meant some time down the line.

Early in Kevin’s PSP battle, she saw a video about legendary New York Giants head coach Tom Coughlin caring for his wife through her own PSP diagnosis. In it, Coughlin says, “We don’t get to choose our sunsets, but I’m blessed to get to hold my wife’s hand through hers.” That quote has stuck with her and inspired her for years. She hopes that something she said in this article, as painful as it was to talk about, can touch a family that’s going through a similar storm. As for now, she, her husband, and her daughter are gonna take that evening golf cart ride for however many more nights the Good Lord gives him. She’ll hold his hand as they watch the sun set. You’d better believe Kenny Chesney’s gonna be on the radio, and Kevin Atkinson’s turning his hat backward.

“It sucks that this has to happen to my dad,” Abby said. “But it’s like, are we going to be sad and complain about it? Or are we going to drink from the cup God has given us? Are we going to learn and grow and become better people, encouraging others that they can do the same thing?”