an eerie but more successful echo

I’m referring to this story:

“Kansas City Chiefs tight end Leonard Pope, whose nickname is ‘Champ,’ lived up to the moniker last weekend when he saved a 6-year-old boy from drowning in a swimming pool.”

Nice work by Leonard Pope in saving the boy. But my first thought on reading the headline was touched upon by the story itself at the very end:

“The Chiefs are an organization that has dealt with a similar tragedy. It was 28 years ago this month that star running back Joe Delaney drowned while trying to save three children from drowning in a Louisiana pond. Two of the children died.”

That Delaney incident was terrible, and I remember it with painful vividness from high school. He was an extremely promising young player, and obviously his death came from totally out of the blue. The Leonard Pope story is a strange positive echo of the more tragic Delaney case, as if light were being cast by a pre-existent shadow.

And it could have happened to any of us. If you were walking down the road and saw three boys drowning, presumably you’d instinctively try to help them as well. My recollection (though memories can be erratic after 28 years) is that Delaney couldn’t even swim; he just couldn’t stand there and do nothing.

Poor Joe Delaney: