OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — Families all over Kansas City have special Chiefs mementos.
Some hold memories of loved ones who have passed away, as is the case for a Kansas mother and daughter who are spending a little more time flipping through a decades-old yearbook this week.
It’s a team-issued collection of photos and stories from the 1991 Chiefs season. Sandy Brooks treasures the yearbook because of how much it meant to her husband Jeff.
"[The team] contacted him at the office, and he just came home and told me that he had been chosen to work with some other photographers," Sandy Brooks said. “I got to go to the games, we both had press passes. It was just a dream of a lifetime."
Jeff Brooks, who used his skills with a camera for multiple businesses over the years, died in 2015.
His treasured item, which contains signatures from the whole team, was a fixture on the family coffee table when daughter Taylor Penrod was growing up.
"A week before my dad passed, we pulled out the book,” Penrod said. “We were going through and just looking at different pictures that he took. He was showing me a couple of his favorites and a couple of signatures in the front that he really liked."
Unfortunately, Jeff never got to experience the success the team has enjoyed in recent years, but his family feels like they’re sharing it with him every time they read the book now.
"[I remember] how much he loved his photography," Sandy Brooks said. “Every once in a while, especially in a time like this when we're going to go back to the Super Bowl, it's fun to look back."
Sandy Brooks says that Jeff wasn't necessarily a rule breaker, but he was a rule bender. He made his way onto the field several times for great shots, even though he wasn't technically allowed to do so.
Only 7,500 copies of the 1991 Kansas City Chiefs yearbook were printed.
