No Ordinary Joe Remembering a heroic act that ended in tragedy. Posted: Wednesday July 02, 2003 9:49 AM Why in creation did Joe Delaney jump into that pit full of water that day? Why in the world would the AFC's best young running back try to save three drowning boys when he himself couldn't swim? Nobody -- not his wife, not his mother -- had ever seen him so much as dog-paddle. A year and a half earlier, when he went to the Pro Bowl in Hawaii as the AFC's starting halfback and Rookie of the Year, he never set even a pinkie toe in the ocean or the pool. "Never had," says his wife, Carolyn, who'd known Joe since they were both seven. "In all my years, I never had seen him swim." So why? Why did the 24-year-old Kansas City Chief try to save three boys he didn't know with a skill he didn't have? He'd been sitting in the cool shade of a tree on a tar-bubbling afternoon at Chennault Park, a public recreation area in Monroe, La., when he heard voices calling, "Help! Help!" He popped up like a Bobo doll and sprinted toward the pit. What made Delaney that kind of person? Why did he mow that lonely woman's lawn when he was back home in Haughton, La., rich as he was? Why did he check in on that old man every day he was in town? Why did he show up on the Haughton streets one day with a bag full of new shoes and clothes for kids whose names he'd never heard? Why could he never think of anything that he wanted for himself? Why didn't he even make a Christmas list? The man never cashed a paycheck in his life. He would throw his checks on top of the TV for his wife. "Don't you want nothing for yourself?" Carolyn would ask Joe. "Nah," he'd say. "You just take care of you and the girls." "Nothing?" "Well, if you could give me a little pocket change for the week, I'd appreciate it." Why didn't he ask somebody else to help those three kids that day? After all, there were hundreds of people at the park, and not another soul dived into that pit. Nobody but Delaney, one guy who shouldn't have. The boys in that pit were struggling to stay afloat. They were two brothers -- Harry and LeMarkits Holland, 11 and 10, respectively -- and a cousin, Lancer Perkins, 11. Of course, LeMarkits was always with Harry. He idolized his big brother. A water park adjacent to Chennault was staging a big promotion with free admission that day, and the boys had wandered over to the pit and waded into the water. Like Delaney, they couldn't swim. So much of it doesn't make sense. Why hadn't the pit -- a huge rain-filled hole that was left after the dirt had been dug out and used to build a water slide -- been fenced off from the public? Who knew that four feet from the edge of the water the hole dropped off like a cliff to about 20 feet deep? LeMarkits has said that he remembers the water filling his lungs, the sensation of being pulled to the cold bottom, when all of a sudden a huge hand grabbed his shoulder and heaved him out of the deep water. Delaney dived for the other two boys, sinking below the surface. Folks along the bank waited for him to come up, but he never did. Harry and Lancer drowned with him. As much as you might hope that LeMarkits has done something with the gift Delaney gave him, so far he hasn't. In an interview with the Philadelphia Daily News two years ago, LeMarkits said he has been tortured by the thought that he got to live and Harry didn't. He said he made his mom sell Harry's bike, bed and toys. He even burned Harry's clothes, as if fire could burn his brother from his heart. But it never did. Thirty years old now, LeMarkits got out of jail in May after serving time for distribution of cocaine. There's still time for him to do something wonderful with the life Delaney gave him. After all, Delaney was doing wonderful things with the one he gave up. He was buried on the Fourth of July, 20 years ago. A telegram from President Reagan was read at the memorial service. The Presidential Citizens Medal was awarded posthumously. Three thousand people came to his funeral. A park in Haughton was named after him. No Chiefs player has worn number 37 since. The 37 Forever Foundation, a nonprofit group in Kansas City, honors him to this day by providing free swimming lessons to inner-city kids. "I wish they'd had that for Joe and me when we were kids," Carolyn says glumly. She thinks of her Joe every day. She can't help it. Their three daughters and four grandkids remind her of him constantly. There is a pause. "I never thought we wouldn't grow old together." She's only been on two dates since Joe died. Twenty years, two dates. "Why should I?" she says. "I just keep comparing them to Joe, and they can't stand up. Nobody in the world is like my Joe." Anyway, the point is, next time you're reading the sports section and you're about half-sick of DUIs and beaten wives, put it down for a second and remember Joe Delaney, who, in that splinter of a moment, when a hero was needed, didn't stop to ask why -------------------------------------------------------------------------- What a touching and beautiful story in a time when we , as a people, need one. We need more Joes.
That was a great article, very moving. I've never heard of the guy, being only 24, but that article touched me greatly. Truest definition of the word "HERO".
Joe Delaney had the potential to be a great great running back. I remember his game against the Oilers. They couldnt stop him. Im glad this story was written. I was saddened the day he died. Now other people who have never heard of him will know his story. HERO
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted on Sun, Jun. 29, 2003 Memories of Joe Delaney endure 20 years after his heroic death By RANDY COVITZ The Kansas City Star Carolyn Delaney doesn't plan a visit today to the country cemetery where her husband is buried. After 20 years, the pain is still too much to bear. So Delaney will spend today at home in Haughton, La., surrounded by loved ones. They will quietly commemorate the life of former Chiefs running back Joe Delaney, who drowned 20 years ago today while trying to rescue three boys floundering in a Monroe, La., pond. "There's not a day that passes by that I don't think about it," Carolyn Delaney said. "I think about how things would be now if he was still here, how life would be. "I have no big plans for the weekend. Just family and friends are going to get together, his mom and sisters and uncle. It will be like the Fourth of July on the 29th. We'll do it all on the 29th." It was on June 29, 1983, when Delaney, three weeks from the start of his third training camp with the Chiefs, sat under a tree at Chenault Park when he heard the screams of three boys. Though Delaney was not a swimmer, he dove in, fully clothed, and tried to pull the youths from the muddy water. Delaney, 24, and two of the boys drowned. Another made it back to the bank. "To me, it seems like this was yesterday," Carolyn Delaney said. "Everything is still fresh in my mind. I got a phone call telling me to come to the hospital, but they wouldn't tell me why. When I found out he had drowned trying to save some boys, my thoughts, were, `What was he doing around water?' " Carolyn, now 45, raised the couple's three daughters -- Tamika, now 27; Crystal, 24; and Joanna, 20 and just four months old at the time. They grew up not knowing their father but learned everything about him. "The girls don't remember anything about him," Carolyn said, "but they talk about their dad all the time and tell me all the many good things they've heard about him." Certainly, they were told of Delaney's selflessness, right down to the very last act of his life. And they learned about his brilliant, if shortlived football career. III Delaney, a second-round draft pick from Northwestern Louisiana in 1981, energized a Chiefs team that had suffered through seven consecutive seasons without a winning record. The soft-spoken Delaney stepped into the starting lineup in the sixth game after Ted McKnight suffered a knee injury, and he sparked the Chiefs to a 9-7 record. Possessing sprinter's speed and fullback toughness, Delaney, a smallish 5-10, 184 pounds, blazed for a then-Chiefs record 1,121 yards despite missing the season finale because of a fractured rib. He recorded five 100-yard games in 10 starts, highlighted by a 193-yard performance against Houston. After that game, Oilers defensive end Elvin Bethea, who will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in August, paid him the ultimate compliment: "I've played against the best -- O.J. Simpson, Gale Sayers, Walter Payton -- and (Delaney) ranks right up there with them," Bethea said. "He is great with a capital G." Delaney, the third-leading rusher in the AFC, was the only rookie selected to play in the Pro Bowl that year and was voted by his teammates as the club's MVP. "The year before Joe got here, they were talking about upgrading the offensive line," former Chiefs guard Tom Condon said. "At the end of the year, I read how well the offensive line did, and how good we were. "We all understood it was the same guys. The only difference was Joe Delaney." Marv Levy, then the Chiefs head coach, recalled a game against Denver in which Delaney's 70-yard touchdown run was called back because of a penalty. A couple of plays later, he came back with an 82-yard TD dash, still the second-longest run from scrimmage in Chiefs history. "He far exceeded anything we expected in terms of ability, in terms of work ethic, in terms of how he comported himself, his team play and the respect he gained from his teammates," said Levy, who went on to lead Buffalo to four Super Bowls but cited Delaney in his Pro Football Hall of Fame induction speech in 2001. Delaney led the Chiefs in rushing with 380 yards during the strike-shortened 1982 season, and he would have been the centerpiece of new coach John Mackovic's high-powered offense in 1983. "He had probably the best outlook for the future as anybody," former Chiefs safety Deron Cherry said. "When you come in as a rookie and take the league by storm, and accomplish the things he accomplished, that says the guy is special. "We will never really know what Joe Delaney could have accomplished in a uniform. We had glimpses." III Cherry and Condon were among a number of teammates, along with club owner Lamar Hunt, team president Jack Steadman, then-general manager Jim Schaaf and Mackovic who attended Delaney's funeral on a stifling hot day in Louisiana. While there, they learned how revered Delaney was in his small town near Shreveport. "I had never seen anything like it," said Condon, who was a pallbearer, along with teammate Art Still. "They couldn't have the service at the church they attended. They needed a much larger place. It wasn't air-conditioned, and it was an overflow crowd. "You felt so bad for the family and children, but you couldn't help but be touched by the overwhelming turnout and the respect and love the community felt for him. He was their hero." A year later, in ceremonies at Haughton High School, Delaney was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal by President Reagan for making "the ultimate sacrifice by placing the lives of three children above regard for his own safety." A bronze plaque memorializing Delaney was placed at the entrance of Turpin Stadium on the campus of Northwestern Louisiana, where the annual spring game is now called the Joe Delaney Bowl. "Everyone on this campus knows his name," Cathy Martin of the Northwestern Louisiana's sports information office said while compiling tapes to send ESPN for its tribute scheduled for July 6. "We still get requests for photos all the time." The Chiefs wore a patch on their uniforms in 1983 in honor of Delaney, and Hunt declared no other Chiefs player would ever wear No. 37. And a group of Chiefs fans who formed an organization, 37 Forever, as a way to perpetuate Delaney's memory, is underwriting the costs for 50 at-risk children in Kansas City to take swimming lessons. III As the years passed, Carolyn Delaney didn't hear much from her husband's former teammates or organization. She grew bitter, but time quelled those feelings. "Everybody goes on with their lives," Carolyn Delaney said. "To other people, it may be just some person who was a hero back then, and now that it's been 20 years, they're probably saying, `Let's just forget it and move on.' Somebody else is out there doing things now. "I don't get mad with anybody about it. I know in my life people have passed over the years, and I don't think about them either." Curiously, Joe Delaney has not been elected to the Chiefs Hall of Fame, a fact that surprises some of his former teammates and fans. "I thought he might have gone into the Hall of Fame right after he had drowned," Condon said. "I'm sure the Chiefs haven't intended to slight Joe. He played for us just a short time, but his impact on the team both on and off the field during that brief period of time, and in his heroic acts in terms of trying to save the children without really being able to swim, says everything about him as a person." Though Delaney played just two years, running back Mack Lee Hill, the first player inducted into the Chiefs Hall of Fame in 1971, also played just two seasons when he died while undergoing routine knee surgery. Hunt, who presides over the annual selection of Chiefs Hall of Fame inductees, said Delaney's omission is coincidental and not intentional. "What's happened now is we've got what I call a backlog (of candidates)," Hunt said, "and it's not a popularity contest. We're going through the process right now (for 2004), and we've got 13 finalists, and he certainly is one of the names on the list. "Longevity becomes important. In Mack Lee Hill's case, he was the first player, and there's nothing I can say that would emphasize how highly we think of Joe, yet there are others where the years are passing by.... Some players who have been to four or five Pro Bowls, and they're not yet in the Chiefs Hall of Fame, but he is definitely on the list and will be considered this year." While the 20th anniversary of Delaney's death might be an appropriate time for his election into the Chiefs Hall of Fame, Carolyn Delaney said the honor would not be important to Joe. "If Joe were here... he wouldn't care one way or the other," she said. "That's the way I look at it. If they put him up there, fine. If they don't, it doesn't matter. I don't feel bad about it all." III During the 20 years since her husband's death, Carolyn never re-married. Who could fill such shoes? "I have dated, but I never wanted to remarry," said Delaney, who works as a data entry processor for United Parcel Service in Shreveport. "I never loved anybody like I loved Joe, and I always tried to compare them to Joe, and it never worked out. I wouldn't want to do that to anybody. "The one thing I miss about Joe is I miss my best friend. I miss him being around me, having someone to talk to. He was a good football player and a better person." http://www.37forever.org/
True definition of a hero. That word is overused these days, and somewhat cheapened by its overuse....but not in this case. Thats a great story.
