Wife of Eagle Head Football Coach Passes Away

Tammy Marie Allen Wulff, wife of Eastern Washington University head football coach Paul Wulff, passed away Tuesday evening (March 12) after a five-year battle with brain cancer. She was 39.

Formerly from Bainbridge, Wash., Tammy attended Washington State University where she met Paul in 1988. Married in June of 1993, the Wulffs have lived in Cheney since the fall of 1993 when Paul joined the EWU coaching staff. He became head coach in 2000.

Services are pending, but Tammy's funeral will take place in the Seattle area. However, a memorial service is also being planned for Cheney.

Wulff died in San Francisco where she underwent surgery last Friday for the aggressive tumor that returned recently. She also had surgery in San Francisco last August, and subsequent rehabilitation and treatments had enabled her to spend the last few months at her home in Cheney.

She was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer in January of 1997, and started alternative treatments at the Burzynski Clinic in Houston, Texas, the following month. The experimental drugs and traditional radiation stopped the cancer from growing and even disappeared.

As late as June 1, 2001, a MRI exam revealed no further trace of the cancer. However, in late July, she experienced small motor malfunctions and another MRI exam revealed a new tumor in her brain.

The Wulffs then went to San Francisco to meet with Dr. Mitchell Berger, and Tammy was admitted as just the fourth person in a new clinical trial that included surgery to remove the tumor. Because of some paralysis on her right side following the surgery, Tammy spent about a month at St. Luke's rehabilitation center in Spokane. She was released and attended Eastern's football game at Albi Stadium against Montana State on Oct. 6. Her condition improved as the season progressed, and she sat in the stands at Eastern's remaining football games.

Since the surgery in August, she had been receiving aggressive treatments to attack any remaining cancer cells. She received the new drug Temodar, a chemotherapy pill that for a few months helped break up the cancer and make it smaller.

At the request of Paul, Eastern's football awards banquet will go as planned on Friday, March 15 at 6 p.m. at the Pence Union Building on the EWU campus in Cheney. The event will start with a moment of silence for Tammy as well as Ron Raver. A member of the Eastern athletic department for 35 years, Raver died on March 1 after his own battle with cancer.