BigRedChief
06-17-2008, 07:24 AM
http://thenewsstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080616/SPORTS/80615016/1006/rss02
Editor's note: The News-Star published a multi-story series five years ago on the 20th anniversary of the Monroe drowning death of pro football star Joe Delaney. The package, with additional reporting by Paul J. Letlow and Scott Beder, won a series of writing awards, spawned an ESPN special, helped Delaney to belated recognition as a member of the Kansas City Chiefs' Hall of Fame -- and, in the end, uncovered a surprising truth about that tragic day.
HERE'S A LOOK BACK:
A hand-written sign was up the next day, tacked to a nearby tree: "No swimming."
That didn't save two local boys - or Kansas City Chiefs running back Joe Delaney, the AFC's 1981 rookie of the year.
"All I saw was them go down," said 14-year-old Tyrone Dickens of West Monroe in the summer of 1983, "and not come back up."
The idea was as Southern as sun tea: A swimming hole. People used a pond on the west side of Chennault Park as that - until a sunny afternoon 20 years ago today.
In 1983, a trio of swimmers drowned in the muddy waters near Critter's Creek - a since-closed amusement park at Chennault Park in Monroe.
Marvin Dearman, the lead scuba diver for the Monroe Police Department that day, visited the eerily unchanged spot recently.
"Three kids went into this pond," he said. "One got out and told some adults that some kids had drowned. That's when they called the police."
Dickens made it to land first. He went for help - as 11-year-olds Harry L. Holland Jr. of Monroe and Lancy Perkins of Rayville remained submerged.
"When I went in there," Dickens said then, "I noticed a drop-off. I pulled on a branch but it broke - and I grabbed another one to get out. It felt like the mud was pulling me down."
Dickens called for help, looking to the athletic Delaney - who, while visiting with friends nearby, had earlier encouraged the youngsters not to go too far out.
Delaney was joined by Keith Jaques of Monroe, then 17 years old. It was around 2:25 p.m. on June 29.
"Joe heard him," said E.W. White, then Monroe's assistant police chief, "and went in to see if he could save the other boys."
That was Delaney's nature, to help others.
"He was so trusting," said older sister Alma Warren, who still lives in Haughton. "He never thought about the dangers he could possibly be in."
But this time was different - different from the time, back home in Bossier Parish, when Joe picked up the bill after relatives couldn't afford to bury a former teacher.
Delaney even told his college coach that he would stop playing the only position he'd ever played, if that would help the team.
"I promised Joe he would play wide receiver," said former Northwestern State coach A.L. Williams. "He came over and said: `Coach, you need me to play running back?' I'll do the best I can. That was Joe Delaney."
Sure, Delaney would happily mow a neighbor lady's yard in the dead-dog heat of a Louisiana summer.
But this was a different kind of selflessness. Because Delaney couldn't swim.
"I can't tell you how sad it was. Tragic, tragic," Williams said. "Even though he was not a good swimmer, he was going to go save those kids. It didn't cross his mind. I can see that."
June 29, 1983, would be the undoing of a promising football career - and, according to those who were closest to him, an even more promising life.
•
The scene was marked by noise and chaos as Dearman pulled the boys, one by one, from the pond.
Hundreds of people watched as this tragedy unfolded, drawn to the park by an offer of free admission - a local television station's promotional giveaway.
None were supposed to be swimming in the pond, a place created when dirt had been excavated from the site during the construction of a nearby amusement ride. There was an unsightly hole that had been left. So the city of Monroe put in some water. Some ducks.
"It was used to add some aesthetics. It is not a swimming pond," John Alston, Monroe's director of community affairs told The News-Star in 1983.
The boys, and Delaney, slipped under the water with shocking suddenness.
Park officials called Monroe Police in a matter of minutes, reporting a possible drowning at 2:28 p.m.
Officer Charles Brown arrived at the park at 2:33 p.m., according to a police spokesman. Dearman arrived at 2:35 p.m.
"When I get out there," Dearman said, "there are thousands of people."
Jaques said at the time that he didn't even know how many kids were in the pond, which covered two acres.
But then a woman in the park began screaming. "My baby," Jacques remembered in 1983. "My baby, he's gone under."
Dearman pulled Holland out at 2:38 p.m. Medical personnel began administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation to the 11-year-old as the next ambulance arrived - unaware that Delaney remained at the bottom of the pond.
"If we would have gotten to him sooner," Dearman said, "we might could have saved him."
A woman in the crowd kept saying that a man had gone in, too. So did Dickens, the first boy in the water: "There's a man," he insisted. "There's a man out there."
Dearman and another scuba specialist, Ouachita Parish Lt. Joe Davis, went back in. Dearman said then that the water was more than 20 feet deep.
Dearman ruminates on what he could have done, had he known Delaney was down there earlier. Turns it over in his mind. "It nags at me," he said.
When they finally got to Delaney and brought him to shore, "we got a pulse from him," Dearman said. But Delaney never recovered.
"We've always looked upon Joe as being one of the most caring persons we ever met," his sister Alma said. "All of us in the Delaney clan, we do what we can to help the other person. But would I have dove in to that water, not being able to see? That goes through my mind. But Joe never thought of that."
Former Northwestern teammate Barry Rubin was in the weight room at then-Northeastern Louisiana University when he heard the news on the radio.
"I couldn't believe it," said Rubin, now a strength coach with the Green Bay Packers. "It was shocking. He was a very humble, sincere person. He was kindhearted to everybody."
•
While he worked furiously to save the three doomed swimmers, Dearman never knew their identities. It was only later - at St. Francis Medical Center, when Delaney was pronounced dead - that Dearman found out.
"I was a big football fan and knew exactly who it was when they said Joe Delaney," Dearman said. "I followed his career at Northwestern (State) and with the Kansas City Chiefs."
Delaney - son of Woodrow and Eunice, just 5-11 and 185 pounds - was 10th overall in the NFL rushing yards in 1981, a year when the Saints' George Rogers led the league. He had been chosen in the second round out of Northwestern State.
That doesn't fully illustrate the way he burst onto the scene, however: Delaney set four Chiefs rushing records, was named the team MVP, started in the Pro Bowl and notched one of the best rookie rushing performances in NFL history.
"Joe had been with us for two seasons, had spectacular statistics and what would have been a great, great career," said legendary Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt, the major architect of the old American Football League.
"It was shocking for our organization - although, nothing compared to the loss for the Delaney family," Hunt said. "He really died a tremendous hero's death as far as I'm concerned, trying to save other people even though he knew he couldn't swim."
Delaney averaged 80.9 yards per game as a rookie, including a season-high 193 against Houston. Kansas City had its best record since its late 1960s days with quarterback Len Dawson and coach Hank Stram.
"Joe," Williams said, "had not reached the top of his game at all."
• The outpouring of emotion upon Delaney's death was dramatic, but brief.
President Reagan awarded Delaney a posthumous Presidential Citizens Medal. It was presented to Delaney's family by Vice President George Bush on July 15, 1983, in ceremonies at Haughton High's gym.
Hunt led a large group of Chiefs players and personnel who attended Delaney's funeral, which came to an abrupt halt while a telegram from Reagan was read aloud.
"I'm going to miss you, Joe," Delaney's mother Eunice said at the graveside, finally breaking down. "God knows, I'm going to miss you."
Delaney was buried on July 4th.
"Joe lived and died a hero," his wife Carolyn told The News-Star. She never remarried, asking rhetorically how you'd find another soulmate.
Time passed, and Delaney's long shadow of humanitarianism faded.
The proposed park in his honor at Haughton High didn't amount to much more than a sign. The Chiefs never honored him in their hall of fame.
But pockets of fans still remember Delaney - including a group that formed a charitable organization named after Delaney's number, 37 Forever.
"The money donated to 37 Forever pays for swimming lessons for underprivileged youths," said Phil Kloster, the foundation's president. Fifty children from the Kansas City area will attend a swimming program in memory of Delaney this summer.
"We have plans to expand our charity into Louisiana in the future, and we're looking for motivated volunteers to make that possible. Children - or for that matter, adults - should never drown because they never had the luxury of learning to swim at an early age," Kloster said.
"It's an honor," Delaney's sister Alma says of the efforts of groups like 37 Forever. "Joe's been a hero to us, even before he put his life on the line. If those kids had drowned and he had been in the surrounding area, he would never have been able to live with that."
Alma's life was touched by a sadly similar tragedy, 17 years later. Her youngest child and only son, named Joseph, drowned as well. Worst of all, it was on Mother's Day.
"A lot of people look at me like, `I can't believe you're coping with it,'" Alma said, quietly. "The Lord didn't give us Joe or my son to keep. He could have taken Joe or Joseph earlier."
Alma pauses. "The Lord has embraced me throughout," she said, finally.
Alma talks some more about Joe Delaney - and about Scripture, making special mention of this one: "Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for another."
Down a dirt road off Louisiana 157, in the tiny Bossier Parish town of Bellevue - right past the telephone pole marked "58" - you'll find that scripture again.
It's on Joe Delaney's tombstone.
Delaney gets his due
An NFL star's heroic death 20 years ago in Monroe will be retold on a national cable network this weekend, using archival details and photographs from The News-Star.
Haughton native Joe Delaney - then a 24-year-old running back for the Kansas City Chiefs - drowned in a pond at Chennault Park trying to save two 11-year-old boys on June 29, 1983. He was buried 20 years ago today in Haughton.
ESPN produced the 6-10 minute feature while the newspaper worked on its anniversary series last week, many times crossing paths with local reporters and photographers.
"The look of everything (in Louisiana) was interesting to us," says lead writer Chris Connelly, who will also host the ESPN segment, which airs at 10 p.m. Sunday during SportsCenter.
"As unknown as Joe's story is to people who were born later on," Connelly said, "the look of the pond and the look of his gravesite are distinctive - and seemed to have qualities that the rest of us were struck by."
Delaney and 11-year-old Harry L. Holland of Monroe were pronounced dead at St. Francis Medical Center on June 29, while Lancer Perkins of Rayville died the next day.
The ESPN piece also includes interviews with wife Carolyn Delaney as well as Marvin Dearman, the lead scuba diver for the Monroe Police Department on that day.
But the network pays special attention to Harry Holland's brother LeMarkits Holland, a Monroe boy who has often been misidentified as a swimmer saved by Delaney.
"It's hard," said ESPN coordinating producer Glenn Jacobs, "to separate the myth or the legend from what really happened. Part of that is time. Everybody has heard it for so long that it has become true."
Interviews with people who were there - including Holland's aunt - and comments Holland made for the Sunday ESPN segment, however, contradict what various national media reports claim happened at the pond near the since-closed amusement park, Critter's Creek.
•
Rosetta Thomas of Monroe - Lancer Perkins' mother and the sister of the Holland boys' mother, Nora Stubblefield - can still reach for details that attach startling clarity.
For instance, Thomas told The News-Star that Delaney "drove up in a brand-new baby blue Cougar." She remembered that the city had just mowed the grass around the pond that day.
And she remembered that LeMarkits Holland was already on land before Delaney dove in.
Thomas didn't originally take much stock in the danger, seeing the boys splashing around in ankle-deep water. But there was a ridge a little further out, she said, after which the water reached depths of 20 feet or more.
"At first, I really wasn't in shock," Thomas said, as she recalled walking over to the water's edge at Chennault Park. Six cousins from her family were in the water.
"I ran into Joe Delaney and he said: `Ma'am. What's the matter?' `I said, `My baby is in the water.' He pulled his shirt off and dived into the water," Thomas says. "He never did come back up. I kept trying to tell them that Joe Delaney was still in the water."
Lancer Perkins was one of six cousins from Thomas' family who were swimming at Chennault Park that Wednesday - including both LeMarkits and Harry Holland.
"LeMarkits got in it, but he never went all the way out," Thomas says. "He was out when Joe Delaney went in. I know for a fact, because I was right there."
She thinks 17-year-old Keith Jacques, who entered the water at about the same time as Delaney, saved her nephew. But that has not been confirmed.
Holland talked to Connelly at length, trying to make sense of the drama and confusion on that steamy June afternoon.
LeMarkits Holland's own comments confirm that he was on the bank before Delaney went in for Harry Holland and Lancer Perkins.
"Once they pulled me out of the water, I was trying to catch my breath and then go get some help," he says in the ESPN interview. "By that time, I guess Joe had already tried to help them. I seen him, when I got out of the water."
•
Even after several long trips back and forth from Bristol, Conn., to Haughton and Monroe - Jacobs and Connelly remain inspired. Exhausted, but inspired.
"The heroism is still what strikes me," said Jacobs. "There are differing accounts of whether it was really Delaney saving LeMarkits. No matter what happened, it doesn't change the basic fact that Delaney was a hero. He rushed into the water to save people."
Connelly marvels: "He ran in there. He heard the cries and ran in."
They were still at work, editing and rewriting, on Thursday.
Features like this one take so much time because the network's signature pieces have a distinctive feel - one characterized by the crafting ESPN puts into the interludes between the standard interview and environmental shots.
In a process that Jacobs calls "writing to the pictures," the network collects photos and memorabilia before the script is ever composed. These shots are then used between the talks with Connelly and various sources.
Photos and memorabilia usually come from hometown newspapers and faithful fans, Jacobs said.
In this case, Adam Jassey, founder of 37 Forever - a nonprofit group in Delaney's honor that teaches at-risk youth to swim each year in Kansas City - provided vintage Chiefs gear to be arranged with The News-Star's photos.
Connelly said they provide a sad counterpoint to the heroics being described.
Too, the photographs by Eddie Cox - hundreds of park goers surround the rescue efforts, wearing shorts and summer hats - and LeMarkits Holland's comments underscore the shocking suddenness of Delaney's drowning.
"When I got out of the water, I seen him go in the water," Holland tells ESPN. "And I didn't see him come back out."
Jacobs said he was still editing down what is now the 15th draft of Sunday night's script. He's looking to make the narrative as clear and concise as possible for an audience inundated with highlights and quick scores.
"What I personally come down to is the facts that I know: That Joe Delaney ran into the water," Jacobs said. "Whether he did or did not save Holland doesn't matter as much as that."
Connelly hopes that a new generation of viewers too young to have seen Delaney run - and especially the ever-growing crowd of brashly egotistical athletes - will see something to which they can aspire, as well.
"Stories of people like Joe stick with you," Connelly says. "You hope that they also stick with the people who watch. It would be great for other athletes to know who Joe is, too. He's a name that should continue to be on people's lips."
•
Though he found trouble with the law in his 20s (a period that's also explored in the ESPN piece), LeMarkits Holland is part of a family that has done a good bit of healing in the two decades since the drownings.
"It has," Thomas says, "gotten better with time. The way that I accept it is that my child died trying to save his first cousin."
Harry was pronounced dead on June 29, but Lancer didn't pass until early the morning of June 30, 1983.
It is during that time of the night that Thomas will dream of her lost boy.
"At that same time every year," Thomas said, "I wake up thinking about him. Then, I put it into the hands of the Lord."
Deriso column: Memory can be a tricky thing
We want our heroes to be angels. We want their stories to be clean, ordered affairs.
They never are.
Dig deep enough, ask enough questions, and the same portrait emerges: People who reach for greatness usually achieve it only in partial measure.
After working for about a month on the story of Kansas City Chiefs running back Joe Delaney and his sudden death, we came away with the certainty that these small revelations don't make him any less of a hero, or any smaller of a person.
Joe Delaney didn't do everything they said he did. Only this: Bravely goes into unknown depths trying to save two drowning boys on June 29, 1983 at Chennault Park in Monroe.
Each of them perished on that confusing summer afternoon. Almost immediately, the story became as muddied as the pond that the bodies had been pulled from.
Rosetta Thomas - mother to one of the dead boys, an aunt to the other - says she arrived at St. Francis Medical Center that afternoon and was told her brother had drowned. He hadn't.
The man lying there was the former AFC Rookie of the Year.
Time passed. The narrative eroded, with details running off in rivulets.
That wearing away was laid bare by interviews conducted 20 years later.
Some memories shimmered in their intensity, in their ability to awe and sadden:
• There was Thomas - sharing a final image of the two boys who died with Joe, Lancer Perkins and his cousin Harry Holland.
"My son, Lancer, he said: `We've got to save Harry,' " Thomas says. "But when they got back to the surface, Harry grabbed him around the neck. They went back down."
They never came back up.
• There was Alma Warren, Joe's oldest sister, recalling how her own son also drowned 17 years later.
On Mother's Day.
• There was Patsy Hughes, the stepmother of Keith Jacques, the last boy in the water.
"I won't never forget it," she says. "I was here when Keith came back; he was hysterical."
Hughes said Jacques was terribly shaken, and insisted that they visit Perkins, who was hospitalized.
"It was just like yesterday to me," Hughes says. "He said: `I tried to get Delaney out; I got a hold of his foot. But he was stuck.' Keith couldn't get him out. We think he got stuck in that mud."
Other points were every bit as lonely as Delaney must have been in those final, quiet moments underwater.
There were stories of a park in Haughton dedicated to Joe, but it was only a sign posted out front.
There was once the notion that Delaney's number was retired. It hasn't been - though, it's true, no Kansas City player has worn No. 37 since.
People got older, forgot things, made themselves remember others. Mostly, people forgot about Joe Delaney. The city of Monroe never put up a plaque to honor him, says it has no plans to.
A generation later, glowing microfilm retells the tale, but only in part. Friends and family, bystanders and rescue personnel attempt to fill in the rest. That's not easy.
"I laid awake last night, probably since I had had so much soda," says ESPN's Chris Connelly, as he furiously worked on tonight's feature on Delaney, "and I thought: What do I remember from 1983? What incident do I remember - because I am about the same age as Delaney was - with the depth and attention to detail that we are asking from these people? There are very, very few things you can remember that well."
The Delaney segment airs during the 10 p.m. edition of SportsCenter - their testament to a hard-won victory over distance and poor recollection.
Coordinating producer Glenn Jacobs said it was one of the most challenging pieces ESPN has ever produced. Us, too.
Sometimes, it was as if the story didn't want to be told. There were people who couldn't be found, people who didn't want to be found, phone calls that weren't returned.
There were walks through a country cemetery, where I learned the names and details of many of those who had passed - but not Joe Delaney. Only on a second trip, travelling the opposite direction, did I find the tattered little sign that directs you to his final resting place.
There were rumors and unanswered questions. Some weren't new.
"The only thing that still puzzles me," Joe's wife Carolyn said in 1983, "is who he was with. I'm sure it was friends, but no one has stepped forward to tell me the whole story about that day in the park."
Twenty years later, no one did, either.
For years, the myth had billowed up: Delaney was in the park signing autographs for a local charity event. He was there teaching young people the fundamentals of football.
He had saved one boy, but drowned after going back for two more.
None of that was true.
Members of the national press long believed some or all of it, anyway. Organizers at the fan-based 37 Forever Foundation - a non-profit set up to teach kids to swim in Joe's memory - are even now working at updating their Web site.
"We discovered," said foundation president Phil Kloster, as the stories emerged this week, "that we're spreading misinformation about the details of the drownings, unfortunately. We've long believed that Joe actually saved a boy, LeMarkits Holland."
Hughes confirmed that it was her stepson Keith who pulled out Holland - not Delaney. So did LeMarkits Holland's aunt, who was there.
Other journalists called, frustrated with trying to retell a story that once seemed so simple: Football star drowns trying to save some kids.
Well, sure. But what about the rest? Was it relevant? Not really. Much was left on hard drives, on the cutting-room floor, inside notebooks.
We kept arriving back at Delaney's selfless act, and what could come of it.
Kloster's group saw a good bit of Web traffic - hits increased from a daily average of 595 in May to 12,810 on July 1 alone at www.37forever.org (http://www.37forever.org). But they haven't yet found someone willing to be the point person for a Louisiana chapter of 37 Forever.
"While we have received a smattering of e-mails and donations, direct contact from interested parties hasn't yet increased significantly," Kloster says. "People seem reluctant to get involved. I think a misconception may be that 37 Forever is doing fine on their own. The truth is that we're actively seeking volunteers, sponsors, and in general, supporters of our cause."
There is no better way to honor the memory of a man named Joe Delaney, who went in after two strangers - whatever the details that surrounded his bravery or the aftermath of his death.
A hero is just a person who did a great thing. You can be one, too.
Editor's note: The News-Star published a multi-story series five years ago on the 20th anniversary of the Monroe drowning death of pro football star Joe Delaney. The package, with additional reporting by Paul J. Letlow and Scott Beder, won a series of writing awards, spawned an ESPN special, helped Delaney to belated recognition as a member of the Kansas City Chiefs' Hall of Fame -- and, in the end, uncovered a surprising truth about that tragic day.
HERE'S A LOOK BACK:
A hand-written sign was up the next day, tacked to a nearby tree: "No swimming."
That didn't save two local boys - or Kansas City Chiefs running back Joe Delaney, the AFC's 1981 rookie of the year.
"All I saw was them go down," said 14-year-old Tyrone Dickens of West Monroe in the summer of 1983, "and not come back up."
The idea was as Southern as sun tea: A swimming hole. People used a pond on the west side of Chennault Park as that - until a sunny afternoon 20 years ago today.
In 1983, a trio of swimmers drowned in the muddy waters near Critter's Creek - a since-closed amusement park at Chennault Park in Monroe.
Marvin Dearman, the lead scuba diver for the Monroe Police Department that day, visited the eerily unchanged spot recently.
"Three kids went into this pond," he said. "One got out and told some adults that some kids had drowned. That's when they called the police."
Dickens made it to land first. He went for help - as 11-year-olds Harry L. Holland Jr. of Monroe and Lancy Perkins of Rayville remained submerged.
"When I went in there," Dickens said then, "I noticed a drop-off. I pulled on a branch but it broke - and I grabbed another one to get out. It felt like the mud was pulling me down."
Dickens called for help, looking to the athletic Delaney - who, while visiting with friends nearby, had earlier encouraged the youngsters not to go too far out.
Delaney was joined by Keith Jaques of Monroe, then 17 years old. It was around 2:25 p.m. on June 29.
"Joe heard him," said E.W. White, then Monroe's assistant police chief, "and went in to see if he could save the other boys."
That was Delaney's nature, to help others.
"He was so trusting," said older sister Alma Warren, who still lives in Haughton. "He never thought about the dangers he could possibly be in."
But this time was different - different from the time, back home in Bossier Parish, when Joe picked up the bill after relatives couldn't afford to bury a former teacher.
Delaney even told his college coach that he would stop playing the only position he'd ever played, if that would help the team.
"I promised Joe he would play wide receiver," said former Northwestern State coach A.L. Williams. "He came over and said: `Coach, you need me to play running back?' I'll do the best I can. That was Joe Delaney."
Sure, Delaney would happily mow a neighbor lady's yard in the dead-dog heat of a Louisiana summer.
But this was a different kind of selflessness. Because Delaney couldn't swim.
"I can't tell you how sad it was. Tragic, tragic," Williams said. "Even though he was not a good swimmer, he was going to go save those kids. It didn't cross his mind. I can see that."
June 29, 1983, would be the undoing of a promising football career - and, according to those who were closest to him, an even more promising life.
•
The scene was marked by noise and chaos as Dearman pulled the boys, one by one, from the pond.
Hundreds of people watched as this tragedy unfolded, drawn to the park by an offer of free admission - a local television station's promotional giveaway.
None were supposed to be swimming in the pond, a place created when dirt had been excavated from the site during the construction of a nearby amusement ride. There was an unsightly hole that had been left. So the city of Monroe put in some water. Some ducks.
"It was used to add some aesthetics. It is not a swimming pond," John Alston, Monroe's director of community affairs told The News-Star in 1983.
The boys, and Delaney, slipped under the water with shocking suddenness.
Park officials called Monroe Police in a matter of minutes, reporting a possible drowning at 2:28 p.m.
Officer Charles Brown arrived at the park at 2:33 p.m., according to a police spokesman. Dearman arrived at 2:35 p.m.
"When I get out there," Dearman said, "there are thousands of people."
Jaques said at the time that he didn't even know how many kids were in the pond, which covered two acres.
But then a woman in the park began screaming. "My baby," Jacques remembered in 1983. "My baby, he's gone under."
Dearman pulled Holland out at 2:38 p.m. Medical personnel began administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation to the 11-year-old as the next ambulance arrived - unaware that Delaney remained at the bottom of the pond.
"If we would have gotten to him sooner," Dearman said, "we might could have saved him."
A woman in the crowd kept saying that a man had gone in, too. So did Dickens, the first boy in the water: "There's a man," he insisted. "There's a man out there."
Dearman and another scuba specialist, Ouachita Parish Lt. Joe Davis, went back in. Dearman said then that the water was more than 20 feet deep.
Dearman ruminates on what he could have done, had he known Delaney was down there earlier. Turns it over in his mind. "It nags at me," he said.
When they finally got to Delaney and brought him to shore, "we got a pulse from him," Dearman said. But Delaney never recovered.
"We've always looked upon Joe as being one of the most caring persons we ever met," his sister Alma said. "All of us in the Delaney clan, we do what we can to help the other person. But would I have dove in to that water, not being able to see? That goes through my mind. But Joe never thought of that."
Former Northwestern teammate Barry Rubin was in the weight room at then-Northeastern Louisiana University when he heard the news on the radio.
"I couldn't believe it," said Rubin, now a strength coach with the Green Bay Packers. "It was shocking. He was a very humble, sincere person. He was kindhearted to everybody."
•
While he worked furiously to save the three doomed swimmers, Dearman never knew their identities. It was only later - at St. Francis Medical Center, when Delaney was pronounced dead - that Dearman found out.
"I was a big football fan and knew exactly who it was when they said Joe Delaney," Dearman said. "I followed his career at Northwestern (State) and with the Kansas City Chiefs."
Delaney - son of Woodrow and Eunice, just 5-11 and 185 pounds - was 10th overall in the NFL rushing yards in 1981, a year when the Saints' George Rogers led the league. He had been chosen in the second round out of Northwestern State.
That doesn't fully illustrate the way he burst onto the scene, however: Delaney set four Chiefs rushing records, was named the team MVP, started in the Pro Bowl and notched one of the best rookie rushing performances in NFL history.
"Joe had been with us for two seasons, had spectacular statistics and what would have been a great, great career," said legendary Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt, the major architect of the old American Football League.
"It was shocking for our organization - although, nothing compared to the loss for the Delaney family," Hunt said. "He really died a tremendous hero's death as far as I'm concerned, trying to save other people even though he knew he couldn't swim."
Delaney averaged 80.9 yards per game as a rookie, including a season-high 193 against Houston. Kansas City had its best record since its late 1960s days with quarterback Len Dawson and coach Hank Stram.
"Joe," Williams said, "had not reached the top of his game at all."
• The outpouring of emotion upon Delaney's death was dramatic, but brief.
President Reagan awarded Delaney a posthumous Presidential Citizens Medal. It was presented to Delaney's family by Vice President George Bush on July 15, 1983, in ceremonies at Haughton High's gym.
Hunt led a large group of Chiefs players and personnel who attended Delaney's funeral, which came to an abrupt halt while a telegram from Reagan was read aloud.
"I'm going to miss you, Joe," Delaney's mother Eunice said at the graveside, finally breaking down. "God knows, I'm going to miss you."
Delaney was buried on July 4th.
"Joe lived and died a hero," his wife Carolyn told The News-Star. She never remarried, asking rhetorically how you'd find another soulmate.
Time passed, and Delaney's long shadow of humanitarianism faded.
The proposed park in his honor at Haughton High didn't amount to much more than a sign. The Chiefs never honored him in their hall of fame.
But pockets of fans still remember Delaney - including a group that formed a charitable organization named after Delaney's number, 37 Forever.
"The money donated to 37 Forever pays for swimming lessons for underprivileged youths," said Phil Kloster, the foundation's president. Fifty children from the Kansas City area will attend a swimming program in memory of Delaney this summer.
"We have plans to expand our charity into Louisiana in the future, and we're looking for motivated volunteers to make that possible. Children - or for that matter, adults - should never drown because they never had the luxury of learning to swim at an early age," Kloster said.
"It's an honor," Delaney's sister Alma says of the efforts of groups like 37 Forever. "Joe's been a hero to us, even before he put his life on the line. If those kids had drowned and he had been in the surrounding area, he would never have been able to live with that."
Alma's life was touched by a sadly similar tragedy, 17 years later. Her youngest child and only son, named Joseph, drowned as well. Worst of all, it was on Mother's Day.
"A lot of people look at me like, `I can't believe you're coping with it,'" Alma said, quietly. "The Lord didn't give us Joe or my son to keep. He could have taken Joe or Joseph earlier."
Alma pauses. "The Lord has embraced me throughout," she said, finally.
Alma talks some more about Joe Delaney - and about Scripture, making special mention of this one: "Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for another."
Down a dirt road off Louisiana 157, in the tiny Bossier Parish town of Bellevue - right past the telephone pole marked "58" - you'll find that scripture again.
It's on Joe Delaney's tombstone.
Delaney gets his due
An NFL star's heroic death 20 years ago in Monroe will be retold on a national cable network this weekend, using archival details and photographs from The News-Star.
Haughton native Joe Delaney - then a 24-year-old running back for the Kansas City Chiefs - drowned in a pond at Chennault Park trying to save two 11-year-old boys on June 29, 1983. He was buried 20 years ago today in Haughton.
ESPN produced the 6-10 minute feature while the newspaper worked on its anniversary series last week, many times crossing paths with local reporters and photographers.
"The look of everything (in Louisiana) was interesting to us," says lead writer Chris Connelly, who will also host the ESPN segment, which airs at 10 p.m. Sunday during SportsCenter.
"As unknown as Joe's story is to people who were born later on," Connelly said, "the look of the pond and the look of his gravesite are distinctive - and seemed to have qualities that the rest of us were struck by."
Delaney and 11-year-old Harry L. Holland of Monroe were pronounced dead at St. Francis Medical Center on June 29, while Lancer Perkins of Rayville died the next day.
The ESPN piece also includes interviews with wife Carolyn Delaney as well as Marvin Dearman, the lead scuba diver for the Monroe Police Department on that day.
But the network pays special attention to Harry Holland's brother LeMarkits Holland, a Monroe boy who has often been misidentified as a swimmer saved by Delaney.
"It's hard," said ESPN coordinating producer Glenn Jacobs, "to separate the myth or the legend from what really happened. Part of that is time. Everybody has heard it for so long that it has become true."
Interviews with people who were there - including Holland's aunt - and comments Holland made for the Sunday ESPN segment, however, contradict what various national media reports claim happened at the pond near the since-closed amusement park, Critter's Creek.
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Rosetta Thomas of Monroe - Lancer Perkins' mother and the sister of the Holland boys' mother, Nora Stubblefield - can still reach for details that attach startling clarity.
For instance, Thomas told The News-Star that Delaney "drove up in a brand-new baby blue Cougar." She remembered that the city had just mowed the grass around the pond that day.
And she remembered that LeMarkits Holland was already on land before Delaney dove in.
Thomas didn't originally take much stock in the danger, seeing the boys splashing around in ankle-deep water. But there was a ridge a little further out, she said, after which the water reached depths of 20 feet or more.
"At first, I really wasn't in shock," Thomas said, as she recalled walking over to the water's edge at Chennault Park. Six cousins from her family were in the water.
"I ran into Joe Delaney and he said: `Ma'am. What's the matter?' `I said, `My baby is in the water.' He pulled his shirt off and dived into the water," Thomas says. "He never did come back up. I kept trying to tell them that Joe Delaney was still in the water."
Lancer Perkins was one of six cousins from Thomas' family who were swimming at Chennault Park that Wednesday - including both LeMarkits and Harry Holland.
"LeMarkits got in it, but he never went all the way out," Thomas says. "He was out when Joe Delaney went in. I know for a fact, because I was right there."
She thinks 17-year-old Keith Jacques, who entered the water at about the same time as Delaney, saved her nephew. But that has not been confirmed.
Holland talked to Connelly at length, trying to make sense of the drama and confusion on that steamy June afternoon.
LeMarkits Holland's own comments confirm that he was on the bank before Delaney went in for Harry Holland and Lancer Perkins.
"Once they pulled me out of the water, I was trying to catch my breath and then go get some help," he says in the ESPN interview. "By that time, I guess Joe had already tried to help them. I seen him, when I got out of the water."
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Even after several long trips back and forth from Bristol, Conn., to Haughton and Monroe - Jacobs and Connelly remain inspired. Exhausted, but inspired.
"The heroism is still what strikes me," said Jacobs. "There are differing accounts of whether it was really Delaney saving LeMarkits. No matter what happened, it doesn't change the basic fact that Delaney was a hero. He rushed into the water to save people."
Connelly marvels: "He ran in there. He heard the cries and ran in."
They were still at work, editing and rewriting, on Thursday.
Features like this one take so much time because the network's signature pieces have a distinctive feel - one characterized by the crafting ESPN puts into the interludes between the standard interview and environmental shots.
In a process that Jacobs calls "writing to the pictures," the network collects photos and memorabilia before the script is ever composed. These shots are then used between the talks with Connelly and various sources.
Photos and memorabilia usually come from hometown newspapers and faithful fans, Jacobs said.
In this case, Adam Jassey, founder of 37 Forever - a nonprofit group in Delaney's honor that teaches at-risk youth to swim each year in Kansas City - provided vintage Chiefs gear to be arranged with The News-Star's photos.
Connelly said they provide a sad counterpoint to the heroics being described.
Too, the photographs by Eddie Cox - hundreds of park goers surround the rescue efforts, wearing shorts and summer hats - and LeMarkits Holland's comments underscore the shocking suddenness of Delaney's drowning.
"When I got out of the water, I seen him go in the water," Holland tells ESPN. "And I didn't see him come back out."
Jacobs said he was still editing down what is now the 15th draft of Sunday night's script. He's looking to make the narrative as clear and concise as possible for an audience inundated with highlights and quick scores.
"What I personally come down to is the facts that I know: That Joe Delaney ran into the water," Jacobs said. "Whether he did or did not save Holland doesn't matter as much as that."
Connelly hopes that a new generation of viewers too young to have seen Delaney run - and especially the ever-growing crowd of brashly egotistical athletes - will see something to which they can aspire, as well.
"Stories of people like Joe stick with you," Connelly says. "You hope that they also stick with the people who watch. It would be great for other athletes to know who Joe is, too. He's a name that should continue to be on people's lips."
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Though he found trouble with the law in his 20s (a period that's also explored in the ESPN piece), LeMarkits Holland is part of a family that has done a good bit of healing in the two decades since the drownings.
"It has," Thomas says, "gotten better with time. The way that I accept it is that my child died trying to save his first cousin."
Harry was pronounced dead on June 29, but Lancer didn't pass until early the morning of June 30, 1983.
It is during that time of the night that Thomas will dream of her lost boy.
"At that same time every year," Thomas said, "I wake up thinking about him. Then, I put it into the hands of the Lord."
Deriso column: Memory can be a tricky thing
We want our heroes to be angels. We want their stories to be clean, ordered affairs.
They never are.
Dig deep enough, ask enough questions, and the same portrait emerges: People who reach for greatness usually achieve it only in partial measure.
After working for about a month on the story of Kansas City Chiefs running back Joe Delaney and his sudden death, we came away with the certainty that these small revelations don't make him any less of a hero, or any smaller of a person.
Joe Delaney didn't do everything they said he did. Only this: Bravely goes into unknown depths trying to save two drowning boys on June 29, 1983 at Chennault Park in Monroe.
Each of them perished on that confusing summer afternoon. Almost immediately, the story became as muddied as the pond that the bodies had been pulled from.
Rosetta Thomas - mother to one of the dead boys, an aunt to the other - says she arrived at St. Francis Medical Center that afternoon and was told her brother had drowned. He hadn't.
The man lying there was the former AFC Rookie of the Year.
Time passed. The narrative eroded, with details running off in rivulets.
That wearing away was laid bare by interviews conducted 20 years later.
Some memories shimmered in their intensity, in their ability to awe and sadden:
• There was Thomas - sharing a final image of the two boys who died with Joe, Lancer Perkins and his cousin Harry Holland.
"My son, Lancer, he said: `We've got to save Harry,' " Thomas says. "But when they got back to the surface, Harry grabbed him around the neck. They went back down."
They never came back up.
• There was Alma Warren, Joe's oldest sister, recalling how her own son also drowned 17 years later.
On Mother's Day.
• There was Patsy Hughes, the stepmother of Keith Jacques, the last boy in the water.
"I won't never forget it," she says. "I was here when Keith came back; he was hysterical."
Hughes said Jacques was terribly shaken, and insisted that they visit Perkins, who was hospitalized.
"It was just like yesterday to me," Hughes says. "He said: `I tried to get Delaney out; I got a hold of his foot. But he was stuck.' Keith couldn't get him out. We think he got stuck in that mud."
Other points were every bit as lonely as Delaney must have been in those final, quiet moments underwater.
There were stories of a park in Haughton dedicated to Joe, but it was only a sign posted out front.
There was once the notion that Delaney's number was retired. It hasn't been - though, it's true, no Kansas City player has worn No. 37 since.
People got older, forgot things, made themselves remember others. Mostly, people forgot about Joe Delaney. The city of Monroe never put up a plaque to honor him, says it has no plans to.
A generation later, glowing microfilm retells the tale, but only in part. Friends and family, bystanders and rescue personnel attempt to fill in the rest. That's not easy.
"I laid awake last night, probably since I had had so much soda," says ESPN's Chris Connelly, as he furiously worked on tonight's feature on Delaney, "and I thought: What do I remember from 1983? What incident do I remember - because I am about the same age as Delaney was - with the depth and attention to detail that we are asking from these people? There are very, very few things you can remember that well."
The Delaney segment airs during the 10 p.m. edition of SportsCenter - their testament to a hard-won victory over distance and poor recollection.
Coordinating producer Glenn Jacobs said it was one of the most challenging pieces ESPN has ever produced. Us, too.
Sometimes, it was as if the story didn't want to be told. There were people who couldn't be found, people who didn't want to be found, phone calls that weren't returned.
There were walks through a country cemetery, where I learned the names and details of many of those who had passed - but not Joe Delaney. Only on a second trip, travelling the opposite direction, did I find the tattered little sign that directs you to his final resting place.
There were rumors and unanswered questions. Some weren't new.
"The only thing that still puzzles me," Joe's wife Carolyn said in 1983, "is who he was with. I'm sure it was friends, but no one has stepped forward to tell me the whole story about that day in the park."
Twenty years later, no one did, either.
For years, the myth had billowed up: Delaney was in the park signing autographs for a local charity event. He was there teaching young people the fundamentals of football.
He had saved one boy, but drowned after going back for two more.
None of that was true.
Members of the national press long believed some or all of it, anyway. Organizers at the fan-based 37 Forever Foundation - a non-profit set up to teach kids to swim in Joe's memory - are even now working at updating their Web site.
"We discovered," said foundation president Phil Kloster, as the stories emerged this week, "that we're spreading misinformation about the details of the drownings, unfortunately. We've long believed that Joe actually saved a boy, LeMarkits Holland."
Hughes confirmed that it was her stepson Keith who pulled out Holland - not Delaney. So did LeMarkits Holland's aunt, who was there.
Other journalists called, frustrated with trying to retell a story that once seemed so simple: Football star drowns trying to save some kids.
Well, sure. But what about the rest? Was it relevant? Not really. Much was left on hard drives, on the cutting-room floor, inside notebooks.
We kept arriving back at Delaney's selfless act, and what could come of it.
Kloster's group saw a good bit of Web traffic - hits increased from a daily average of 595 in May to 12,810 on July 1 alone at www.37forever.org (http://www.37forever.org). But they haven't yet found someone willing to be the point person for a Louisiana chapter of 37 Forever.
"While we have received a smattering of e-mails and donations, direct contact from interested parties hasn't yet increased significantly," Kloster says. "People seem reluctant to get involved. I think a misconception may be that 37 Forever is doing fine on their own. The truth is that we're actively seeking volunteers, sponsors, and in general, supporters of our cause."
There is no better way to honor the memory of a man named Joe Delaney, who went in after two strangers - whatever the details that surrounded his bravery or the aftermath of his death.
A hero is just a person who did a great thing. You can be one, too.