KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County. Share your story idea with Tod.
Andy Reid’s passion for football history is legendary, but his affinity for history in general may help preserve a piece of Kansas City history.
Chiefs Kingdom will fondly remember “Shift to Rose Bowl Right Parade,” which netted a key fourth-down conversion during Kansas City’s Super Bowl LIV win against San Francisco.
Reid drew his inspiration for the play from the 1948 Rose Bowl, but he’s a history buff and student of the past in all things, not just as it relates to the gridiron.
“He's really into it,” Tammy Reid, who has been married to Andy for 44 years, said. “He reads history books. He watches documentaries. He's full go. ... He's read about so many different things — our past presidents. Those big fat books, he reads them. I'm like, ‘That's too much for me.’ He loves it, though.”
World history, national history, local history — it doesn’t matter. Andy is a fan.
“He said that he read two or three books about Westport and Kansas City before they arrived, when he first got the job as the Chiefs head coach (in 2013),” Westport Historical Society President Marty Wiedenmann Jarvis said. “I thought that was kind of cool.”
The Reids’ relationship with the Westport Historical Society started when Tammy exhibited her collection of antique quilts at the 1855 Harris-Kearney Historical House Museum, 4000 Baltimore Ave. in Kansas City, Missouri.
She joined the board of directors for the Westport Historical Society, which owns the Harris-Kearney House and operates the museum on its grounds.
“It's the oldest brick residence in the city,” Wiedenmann Jarvis said.
The Harris-Kearney House also has a complicated history.
Built by slaves who handmade each brick 170 years ago, the house was spared demolition and moved from its original location at Westport Road and Main Street in 1922. The Westport Historical Society bought it in 1976 and opened the museum in 1985.
It was added to the National Register of Historic Places four years earlier for its role along the California, Oregon and Santa Fe trails and as the Union Army headquarters during the 1864 Battle of Westport.
“The first time he (Andy) took a tour here, he was riveted,” Tammy said. “He was like, ‘I can't believe this is here.’ We went home and he talked about it for hours.”
When the Reids visited on May 30, 2025, Wiedenmann Jarvis was shocked at how engaged Andy was in learning about the Harris-Kearney House.
“i just figured he was going to come over and take pictures and be gone, because there are honorary chairs of the capital campaign,” she said. “But he wanted to see it, and he was into it — and he's as funny as he is on the commercials. It was delightful.”
The Reids are helping spearhead a $500,000 fundraising effort to make significant repairs to the 170-year-old house.
There’s already been work on the foundation to address cracks that led to flooding and work has been performed on the sewer/drainage system.
The Reids also funded a renovation of the home’s foyer, but there’s a lot more work to do.
As part of the fundraising effort, the Reids have donated a Chiefs-centric raffle package. It includes a football autographed by Andy Reid, two tickets in Section 124 to the Sept. 28 Ravens-at-Chiefs game, a parking pass and pregame sideline passes.
“We need money, because it's very expensive to restore and keep a historical home restored, so we're having a big raffle,” Tammy said. “They wanted an autographed ball for it, and I’m like, ‘Why don't we throw in tickets and a sideline pass and parking?’ They're like, ‘What?’ and I'm like, ‘Yeah, because those are really fun things.’ I get to do these things all the time; I forget that other people don't, and how exciting and fun and one-of-a-kind that is, so I decided to throw all that in just to sweeten the pot.”
Raffle tickets are available online and cost $25 or five for $100. The drawing will be conducted on Sept. 7.
“The hope, the goal is to get it back into as perfect a condition as you can when it's a house that's this old, so that it'll survive another 100 years,” Wiedemann Jarvis said.
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