Adam Jassey has lived his entire life in New York, but he was raised to be a Chiefs and Royals fan because his father went to medical school here at the Kansas City College of Osteopathic Medicine (now Kansas City University) from 1966-1970.
His parents, he wrote in a recent e-mail, "wanted to bring KC back home to New York."
That explains why even from there Jassey, a 46-year-old attorney, named a son Brett (after George Brett) and knows that the date he attended his first Chiefs game at Arrowhead Stadium (Sept. 17, 1995) was the day Patrick Mahomes was born.
It also helps explain why the deep loss he felt as a 9-year-old in 1983 over what he calls the "Delaney Tragedy" has stayed seared in his memory.
What he then primarily processed as "the loss of my favorite player on the Chiefs, the very first superstar I ever saw in my life" naturally transformed into a different perspective as he matured.
The ongoing focus became on what Jassey calls "the most selfless example of bravery" he had ever heard of: Delaney dying back home in Louisiana trying to save three drowning children despite the fact he couldn't swim.
He thinks often of the simple fact that Joe Delaney, who is well-understood to have died as he lived, "clearly made the world a better place during his life."
So virtually since he found himself feeling "astonishment and disappointment" as he looked around Kansas City seeking something that memorializes Delaney when he visited for his first game at Arrowhead 25 years ago, Jassey has sought to find ways to pay tribute to Delaney.
As he put it in the recent e-mail, "With the advent of the internet, I wanted to join an online community of Chiefs fans and the one I joined was the old Kansas City Star Bulletin Board. During one quiet offseason night in 1999, I started a new thread called 'What About Joe Delaney?' and expressed what he did (for those who did not know) and why hasn't anything been done to commemorate him in Kansas City?
"Back in 1999, Delaney was not in the Chiefs Hall of Fame and Ring of Honor and #37 was never officially retired, so in a sense, it was as if he never played for the Chiefs and that did not sit right by me.
"As I learned, that did not sit right by a good number of Chiefs fans nationwide either and the clamor from that thread emboldened me and others to start a grassroots effort called The 37 Forever Foundation."
The non-profit organization partnered with the American Red Cross to provide free swim lessons to inner-city children and sought to preserve Delaney's legacy.
Moreover, along with others dedicated to the cause such as Phil Kloster, the group reached out to Delaney's widow, Carolyn, and also dedicated itself to Delaney's induction into the Ring of Honor and Chiefs Hall of Fame that came to fruition in 2004.
For several reasons, alas, the 37 Forever Foundation dissolved over time, though his family in the last few years has introduced the Delaney 37 Foundation.
While Jassey never has stopped wanting to see more done in the name of Delaney, his passion was rekindled by recent news in The Star about No. 37 being properly honored 37 years later with a memorial at the site of his death last month.
The idea was introduced by Marvin Dearman, the police diver who tried to save Delaney and others that day. And it was made possible by a remarkable spirit of cooperation, numerous donations of $37 and the generosity of Tripp Johnson of North Kansas City's Johnson Granite Supply. The company donated the memorial, design and installation, making it possible for Dearman to turn over more than $5,000 (and counting) to the Delaney 37 Foundation since he incurred no expenses.
Yet back here in Kansas City, there still remains no singular commemoration of Delaney, whose example is worth uniquely celebrating in some ways or another.
Honestly, I suppose I've written about the topic of Joe Delaney too often in the last few months.
But while we are holding out for heroes, it's also nice to be able to advocate about one who stands for so much and yet still seems under-appreciated here.
Still, since there's a fine line between over-saturation and striking while the iron's hot, I figured I'd compromise by providing a forum for Jassey to share some incredibly detailed and thought-provoking ideas.
What follows is an edited version of his thoughts sparked by what he calls "the altruism displayed by local Kansas City merchant Johnson Granite Supply Inc."
