Pete Pihos could do just about anything on a football field. A member of both the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame, he was an outstanding pass-catcher, a powerful runner and a formidable blocker, helping to take the Philadelphia Eagles to two consecutive National Football League championships in the 1940s.

But a half-century after his playing days ended, Pihos had become debilitated by Alzheimer’s disease. His former wife Donna Pihos tried to raise money for his care by selling his memorabilia, only to be victimized by a swindle. A joint NFL-players union fund aiding former players with dementia later contributed to the bulk of Pete Pihos’ treatment costs at the Grace Healthcare nursing home in Winston-Salem, N.C., where he spent his final years. Pete Pihos died there Tuesday at 87, Donna Pihos said.

She said that a neurologist who treated him believed that his dementia resulted from football contact.

“We have footage of his being banged in the head over and over,” Donna Pihos said Tuesday.

Peter Louis Pihos was born Oct. 22, 1923, in Orlando, Fla., but grew up in Chicago. He was an all-American end at Indiana University in 1943, served in the Army during World War II, then returned to Indiana in 1945, when he won all-American honors again, this time at fullback on an unbeaten team.

Pihos played on the Eagles team that won the 1948 NFL championship, defeating the Chicago Cardinals, 7-0, in a snowstorm. When the Eagles played the Los Angeles Rams in the 1949 title game, Pihos opened the scoring on a muddy, rain-swept Los Angeles Coliseum field with a 31-yard reception and run in a 14-0 victory.

“When he gets his hands on a ball, there isn’t much the defense can do,” Eagles Coach Greasy Neale was quoted saying in “The Eagles Encyclopedia.” “He just runs over people.”

Pihos, who missed only one game in his nine seasons in the NFL, won first-team All-Pro honors five times and led the NFL in receptions from 1953 to 1955, his final season. He caught 373 passes overall for 5,619 yards and 61 touchdowns, and sometimes played defensive end as well. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1970.

He was an assistant at Tulane University and a sales manager for a North Carolina construction company after his playing days. In his early 80s, disabled with Alzheimer’s, Pihos was living on his NFL pension and Social Security.