How a lifetime of newspaper reading led to a 100-year-old meeting Patrick Mahomes
The year 1919 was a momentous one. For starters, the signing of the Treaty of Versailles marked the formal end of World War I months after the armistice, and Congress passed the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that gave American women the right to vote.
Less profoundly but of cultural significance no one could have foreseen, what we know today as the NFL entered its embryonic phase with the founding of the first franchises that underpinned the league currently celebrating its 100th season.
In other news, Melba Walker arrived into the world on Dec. 7 and began her life on North Nettleton Avenue in Bonner Springs, where her father, Alva, was a subscriber to The Kansas City Star and Times.
The carpenter and sports devotee perhaps read of the aforementioned events in the newspapers that by then had employed the likes of U.S. Presidents Harry S. Truman (mailroom) and Theodore Roosevelt (guest contributor) as well as Walt Disney (delivery) and Ernest Hemingway (cub reporter).
The paper would become a foundation and constant companion in his daughter’s life, including its place in a delightful convergence of events that fused together that passion of hers and the birth of the NFL and made for one of her most treasured experiences in a considerable lifetime.
Still in Bonner Springs
Much as things have changed a century later, Melba still lives on North Nettleton, albeit a few houses away. She still subscribes to The Star and still has numerous editions as commemorative historical markers: from the news of Pearl Harbor on her 22nd birthday through the rest of World War II to Vietnam and the lunar landing to 9-11 and many others in between.
She always loved how the so-called rough draft of history took her deeper into history in the making. Because it transported her to the events and allowed her to learn how the news affected people and what they really thought about it all.
Moreover, for all the days of her life, the joyful and downright hilarious woman whose son Monte Mitchell calls her a “walking history book” still vividly remembers the Dust Bowl and The Great Depression.
She still thinks of the kids coming to school with rubber bands around their shoes to keep the soles from flapping and the ones who didn’t have money for lunch, still recalls the masses passing through on train boxcars desperate for work anywhere.
She still loves telling about having been a cheerleader and dancing in jazz clubs (“Twinkle-toes,” she called herself) and playing piano and the never-ending disappointment of being told there was no Santa Claus. Especially considering she’d once witnessed him in a Kansas City department store, where her eyes flashed “purple, green and yellow” at the spectacle of another girl in his lap before she rushed over to sling her off him.
“When I believe, I believe,” she said.
Good thing: She certainly had to believe in herself when her first husband, Maurice Mitchell, died from cancer in 1960 and she was left to raise and provide for six children. (She remarried in 1970 to Don Mills.)
Outside the house her children grew up in and where her daughter, Mary, now is her caretaker, Monte thought about how she made ends meet. He smiled at the memory of the delicious cinnamon rolls she made and sold. And he pointed across the street to where she opened a fabric shop so she could keep an eye on the kids even as she toiled for them.
Oh, she knows of Mahomes
But for all she’d sacrificed and seen and done and shared with her family in her 36,500-plus-and-counting days, she somehow remains full of surprises even to them.
Like when they were out to lunch last summer at Nick and Jake’s in Shawnee. Out of nowhere, it seemed, she commented on how much their waiter looked like Chiefs’ quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
“We were dumbfounded,” Monte said. “It’s like, ‘Mother, how would you know who Patrick Mahomes is, let alone what he looks like?’ She doesn’t really sit around and watch NFL football on Sunday; she would rather sit there and read her newspapers.”
As it happens, there’s been, uh, plenty about this budding historical figure in her newspapers. Articles from which she surmised that he was not just a transcendent talent but humble and admirable. Plus, pictures in The Star revealed … he was really cute.
Unbeknownst to her son, she even had deemed Mahomes worthy of one of the newspaper clipping files that she typically reserves for major events or institutions or trends or figures — which Mahomes seems to be all in one.
The lunch prompted Monte to contact the Chiefs about his mother, who had never attended a professional sporting event.
His subsequent letter launched a remarkable series of events, coinciding with this: The Chiefs in conjunction with the NFL just happened to have been seeking a centenarian to honor amid the 100th-season celebration, Monte said, and wanted someone right at 100 instead of one of those 99-year-old kids or over-the-hill 101-and-ups.
Next thing you know, here’s a film crew coming to the house for a day. And Mitch Holtus, the voice of the Chiefs, stopping by to present her with an invitation to one of the best days of her life and a customized jersey bearing No. 100 and “Melba.”
Next thing you know, she’s with family at Arrowhead Stadium touring the Chiefs’ Ring of Honor and the locker room the day before their home opener against Baltimore on Sept. 22.
Escorted by the ever-gracious Mike Davidson, the longtime equipment manager who is now the team’s associate historian, she was amazed to get to hold Mahomes’ helmet and realize its weight and even have it held over her head as if she was about to put it on.
“Just sent something through me,” she said. “That was a big thrill, believe me.”
The biggest one was delivered the next day.
Clark, Pat, Trav and the gang
After she and five other family members were picked up in a luxury van, they had sideline access before the game. She was greeted by, among others, Chiefs owner Clark Hunt, president Mark Donovan and Pro Football Hall of Famer Bobby Bell, who at 79 told her he’s aiming for 100, too.
Soon, she was featured on the Arrowhead scoreboard, which she went along with but said last week “didn’t impress me that much.”
A procession of players sure did, though, especially Mahomes himself. Flanked by tight end Travis Kelce, he handed her a game ball and thanked her for coming. You could see on her face that she simply couldn’t believe this was happening.
So when Monte wanted to give the ball back to the Chiefs to get it signed later, Melba was reluctant because she was concerned she might not get back the exact same ball. But she was assured she would and did. It’s in her living room now, signed by Mahomes and Kelce and placed in a glass case that you’d better not smudge up.
“I mean, I couldn’t put a price on it, really,” she said.
It was the sincerity of the greetings that moved her most, the eye contact and patience and personal touches. She was struck that no one was merely going through the motions — especially the guy she hopes has a file on her now.
Instead of being, like, “ ‘I’m Mahomes,’ and swinging his shoulders,” she said, “he does not have a big head, (and) that’s the whole secret of it all.”
Now, she’s got the big head, she jokes.
Noting the prestige and attention that has come with the moment and a slick “Cheers to 100” video presented by Bud Light, she playfully said, “It’s hard to keep track of my fame.”
Come to think of it, it’s not like this is the first time she’s been a bit of a sensation. Back in 1961, she was the subject of a story gone viral ... at least in the context of the times.
After deciding she wanted carpet in the house but didn’t want her six kids running all over it, she figured why not have it installed on the ceiling?
That led to stories in the local news and wire services, one of which became a brief in The New York Times. Monte remembers a TV crew coming to the house, and family lore has it that it made the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite just before he signed off one night with his famous “And that’s the way it is” line.
Here’s the way it is now, though: Coming when and how this event did, starting with a heart-felt letter from her son, chances are this will resonate more than that.
So what if just maybe there is no Santa Claus?
Because there sure is a Patrick Mahomes.
“I would say that my 100-year-old mother hasn’t been as excited about anyone in her life since Santa Claus as she is with Mahomes!” Monte wrote in an email.
The family wonders if what she took from this meeting will add five years to her life, especially considering her good health.
This much is certain: It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Which is saying something a little more when it comes to a lifetime like hers — a lifetime we’re honored to put in the archives for the paper that’s been with her all the way.