Albert Quixall spent more than 20 years in a care home suffering from dementia before he died last month at the age of 87.
Quixall cost Manchester United a British record £45,000 when he moved from Sheffield Wednesday in 1958.
He won the FA Cup in 1963 with Bobby Charlton, Tony Dunne, Bill Foulkes and Maurice Setters, who also died last month six years after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
A poster boy of his era, the blond Quixall was unrecognisable by the end.
‘Everything about him went,’ says his son Paul, who worked with Albert in the scrap metal business.
‘His face, everything. He used to have good legs. I lifted the bed sheets up and they were just withered, like little pipe cleaners. It was very sad to see him in that condition.
'It’s like being in prison but in your own body. He didn’t recognise anybody. The television was on and he was staring at it but you could tell nothing was going in. It was too upsetting.’