Chiefs’ Joe Delaney properly memorialized in Louisiana. Chiefs should follow suit in KC
Seventy-eight times, Marvin Dearman retrieved from bayous, lakes, rivers, ponds or mudholes people who had already died or were in the throes of imminent death.
To this day, he isn’t sure why he volunteered for such a harrowing role when the city of Monroe, Louisiana, and its police department created a dive-rescue team.
All he knows is these were errands of mercy. Because the old ways, using hooks to drag for bodies, were so inhumane.
Dearman learned early in his 30-plus-year police career that it was better to avoid eye contact when seeking to save someone. Such a connection can be haunting if they don’t survive.
Marvin Dearman didn’t look Joe Delaney in the eye 37 years ago on June 28, when Delaney drowned trying to save children in the water … even though he couldn’t swim.
But Dearman might as well have had that experience after he gave Delaney mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Delaney died in his arms that wretched day at Chennault Park, where two boys also drowned.
Because every day since, Dearman has thought about Delaney.
He’s thought of many others, too, but no other situation was quite like this — and not because Delaney was a budding star with the Kansas City Chiefs.
He thinks of Delaney’s reflexive selflessness. And of his family, with whom he has become close.
He’s wondered what might have been if he’d gotten word of the unfolding disaster sooner than he did from 7 or 8 miles away. Or how it would have gone if he’d immediately known Delaney was in the water after pulling the two boys out instead of being informed someone else was in the water only minutes later.
All of which explains how Dearman came to have what he calls a revelation the morning after the Chiefs won Super Bowl LIV, a vision that led to a beautiful, indelible scene Saturday on sacred ground just yards from where this misery unfolded in 1983.
The power of the moment Saturday is a reminder that Delaney’s story should be more visibly commemorated in Kansas City.
While he’s in the Chiefs’ Ring of Honor at Arrowhead Stadium, his legacy is so singular and stirring as to merit its own distinct place of tribute and example, whether around the stadium or in the city at large.
But let’s stay in this moment.
Here among the 10-person Delaney family entourage was Joe’s widow, Carolyn. Her heart was “torn up all over again,” she said, but she smiled with pride at the few hundred people attending the dedication of a marvelous monument to him where he “really, truly … became (a) hero.”
Here for the first time at the site of their father’s death were his reverent daughters, Tamika, Crystal and Joanna, who was three months old when he died.
Here were former teammates of Joe’s at Northwestern State in Louisiana, including Barry Rubin, now the Chiefs’ strength and conditioning coach.
Here, too, was 81-year-old Johnny Robinson, an original Chief (from their start, when they were the Dallas Texans) who lives in Monroe. Amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, he and his wife, Wanda, largely have been on lockdown and unable to go to work at the Johnny Robinson Boys Home that became his life’s calling the last 40-plus years.
Robinson felt compelled to attend in his Pro Football Hall of Fame gold jacket on this steamy 91-degree day. He wanted to send a message that no one in pro football or among the Chiefs would ever forget Delaney.
And here was Dearman, wearing the Chiefs’ No. 37 Delaney jersey given to him by Carolyn, presiding over the ceremony.
I’ll never forget the tears in his eyes when we spoke right after the ceremony on Saturday. It made me hope yet more that he would find some new sense of peace, if not closure, from what he calls “the experience that never ends.”
That’s what Carolyn Delaney dearly wishes for him, knowing he did all he could.
As for that sort of feeling for herself, well …
“No, no, no sir,” she said, managing a smile. “Every day is just like it was yesterday to me.”
Still, this day was something profound for her, too.
It was a day that she expects now will make this site some 80 miles from her home in Haughton a place to celebrate his life instead of just a grim reminder of his death.
It was a day of fresh testimony to the good in the world, foremost in putting everything else on pause to consider this man’s example anew.
But also in the statement made in how it came together after Dearman was struck by the idea that, 37 years after No. 37’s death, it was time to honor this part of the franchise‘s DNA in a new way.
Suddenly, as if it were meant to be, one thing kept leading to another: After we wrote about it in The Star, suggesting donations of $37 apiece could fund the monument with contributions in excess to go to the Delaney 37 Foundation, about 150 people from around the country gave.
Among those drawn to the effort was Tripp Johnson of Johnson Granite Supply in North Kansas City. He looked up Dearman’s number and called him almost as soon as he read about the effort ... and donated the monument, design and install.
So much more remained to be done. At every turn, people said yes without hesitating — including the city of Monroe giving the idea a standing ovation.
That led to another part of the ceremony: Dearman handing Joanna Delaney a check for $5,475 earmarked for the foundation. On Monday, he received another check for $1,000 that will be forwarded to the foundation, which is in its early stages but seeks to serve youth and promote water safety.
All these years later, the story of Delaney remains just as piercing. Closure will always be elusive, at best, for those closest to the situation.
But all these years later, too, Delaney’s story also shines through… something you could only hope everyone felt in a whole new way on the scene on Saturday.
This story was originally published June 30, 2020 at 5:00 AM.