World Cup visitors to Kansas City may miss this name. But they should know it
If the first two of the six 2026 FIFA World Cup matches in Kansas City were any indication, 400,000-plus people will have attended the mesmerizing events at Kansas City Stadium (Arrowhead) through the July 11 quarterfinal.
With data indicating the majority attending are from out of town, that means hundreds of thousands of people are visiting not just Kansas City but traveling to the stadium.
One major route there is via the George Brett Super Highway, a 10-mile stretch of Interstate 70 from downtown past the Truman Sports Complex.
Another takes you by way of the Len Dawson Bridge onto East Stadium Drive from Interstate 435.
Locals and plenty of others around the nation revere the essential Kansas City Royal and the legendary late Chiefs quarterback.
Brett and Dawson are institutions unto themselves and vital parts of our sports culture — and overall history — among others such as Bobby Bell, Lamar Hunt, Ewing Kauffman, Willie Lanier, Buck O’Neil, Tom Watson and, most recently, Patrick Mahomes.
As Kansas City welcomes the world as never before this summer, some of our most renowned names and institutions will be hard to miss and engaged in unprecedented ways — most conspicuously at Fan Fest on the grounds of the National World War I Museum and Memorial, Hunt’s Arrowhead and Kauffman Stadium and the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.
But this also is a time to steer visitors toward some less obvious or underappreciated things to know about Kansas City. Really, there’s too many of those to count, even merely in the realm of sports.
But one in particular is on my mind this week, one that’s easy to overlook hidden in plain view as the “Joe Delaney Memorial Highway” on a 2-mile section of I-435 near the Truman Sports Complex.
A stretch I drove by recently ... and that once again left me misting up.
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The sign honors not the most prestigious Royal or Chief or other prominent athlete.
It doesn’t recognize, say, a significant politician, community activist or celebrity.
It commemorates a man whose name by now is unfamiliar even to plenty of people here.
But a man whose name everyone should know.
Forty-three years ago on June 29, Delaney — the promising Chiefs running back who was the 1981 AFC Rookie of the Year — died trying to save three children drowning in a park in Monroe, Louisiana.
Most hauntingly and poignantly, the 24–year-old Delaney couldn’t swim — an act that those who knew him best will tell you reflects that he died as he lived: seeking to help others.
No matter how many years go by or how many different ways I’ve tried to write about it, the story still pierces.
That’s a reminder in itself of why it should be shared and passed on, especially to a new audience ... even with the understanding that it’s both an inspirational and cautionary tale.
Over time, I’ve written about and become friends with Marvin Dearman, the police diver who tried to save him, and I’ve been eager to write about the “Joe Delaney Learn To Swim Program.”
I’ve been especially honored to spend time with Delaney’s widow, Carolyn, and daughters, and grateful to attend the 2020 dedication in Monroe of a monument to Joe — one designed, installed and donated by Tripp Johnson of Johnson Granite Supply in North Kansas City.
Through the decades, Delaney’s memory has been celebrated many times, many ways, including through children being named for him and his daughter Joanne writing tales of “Joe The Great.”
Weeks after his death in 1983, then-U.S. Vice President George H.W. Bush went to Louisiana to bestow upon the family a Presidential Citizens Medal on behalf of President Ronald Reagan.
Proclaiming that Delaney had made “the ultimate sacrifice by placing the lives of three children above regard for his own safety,” the citation added, “By this supreme example of courage and compassion, this brilliantly gifted young man left a spiritual legacy for his fellow Americans.”
Perhaps because his time in Kansas City was so brief, though, Delaney for a long time wasn’t memorialized visibly here.
Yes, he was inducted into the Chiefs Hall of Fame in 2004. And while his jersey No. 37 has not been formally retired, no Chief has worn it since his death.
But it was hard to find evidence of his example, even his existence, until the last few years by way of the zealous efforts of Adam Jassey, a lifelong Chiefs fan from New Jersey who reached out to The Star and went into high-gear after we covered the dedication of that memorial.
Next thing you know, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas in 2020 declared Oct. 30 to be Joe Delaney Day in Kansas City. Noting Delaney’s “love of all humanity as evidenced by his final selfless act of bravery,” the proclamation cited his “incredible heroism, his honorable valor and shining example he set for Kansas City and the entire Kansas City community at large.”
Then came the memorial highway dedication in June 2021.
Nuanced as it is, it’s not quite like seeing his name on, say, the 65-foot heart at Fan Fest.
But the signs sure are in a place where they can be seen by hundreds of thousands of people, likely even millions, in the next 15 years before it’s subject to a renewal process.
And they’re worth looking for, to be sure, as a chance to tell people about someone precious to our community who died not in vain but as the best of us — shattering as it was.
This story was originally published June 24, 2026 at 6:00 AM with the headline "World Cup visitors to Kansas City may miss this name. But they should know it."