NOTE: This column by Bob Gretz first appeared on kcchiefs November 11th, 2006.

Insider Blog: Celebrating Ann Roach

She was 21 years old, sitting in an insurance office in downtown Kansas City typing up accident reports.

Exciting, it was not.

So Ann Rentchler decided it was time to find a new job. She heard about an opening in the ticket office of the Kansas City Chiefs. She knew very little about football and couldn’t have picked out most of the Chiefs players if they stood in front of her in uniform.

But it sounded like it would be more exciting than compiling notes about fender benders and the like. She went to interview for the position, but when she got to the Chiefs offices, she found out there was another position open. A secretary in the team’s personnel department had been in an auto accident and the scouting staff needed help, as the reports were piling up. This job was open now, so she interviewed and got the position.

Ann Renchler started working for the Chiefs on November 7th, 1966.

She still works for the Chiefs. Now Ann Roach, she celebrated 40 years of working for Lamar Hunt’s franchise this week. With the exception of Hunt himself and Jack Steadman, there’s not a soul who has been with the organization longer.

There’s hardly a person who has passed through the building – whether it was the long abandoned offices in Swope Park where she first started or Arrowhead Stadium where she’s worked for the last 34 years – who has not been touched by Ann Roach.

After two years in the personnel department, she became secretary to the coaching staff of Hank Stram. Since 1968, she has worked for every head coach and staff that’s directed the team, from Stram, through Paul Wiggin, Tom Bettis, Marv Levy, John Mackovic, Frank Gansz, Marty Schottenheimer, Gunther Cunningham, Dick Vermeil and now Herm Edwards.

Not just the head coaches, but their staffs as well. Other than Hunt, she’s the only strand that is woven through all those names.

“I remember when Herm was here as an assistant coach and his office was right down the hall,” she said from her spot directly in front of the head coach’s office. “His desk was immaculate then and he’s not changed at all.”

She can remember when Frank Gansz, Jr. would come to the stadium when he was in high school during his father’s first stint with the team as an assistant coach for Levy. Later, Frank Jr. would become a Chiefs assistant coach himself. She watched the Stram family grow up and raise their own families. Now, she works for a head coach who has two children less than 18 months old.

“It’s always nice having babies around,” she said.

When Edwards was named the 10th head coach in Chiefs history, there was no doubt in his mind that he wanted Ann to work for him.

“My only question was whether she wanted to stay,” Edwards said. “When you think about her history, she’s been every coaches assistant. I asked her, ‘when did you start, when you were 12?’ She’s a great woman and a great fan. She likes football.”

She has typed up more game plans and practice plans than she could ever count. From a young girl who didn’t quite know anything about football when she started, she now has a wealth of knowledge and experience that’s unmatched in the organization.

Oh, the stories that Ann Roach could tell. But she doesn’t. She’s not like that. She simply smiles and says “Stories? What stories?”

Ann isn’t one to compare her many bosses. When her name comes up with them, they always ask how she’s doing. The mere mention of her name makes Gunther Cunningham emotional. Several years ago, Paul Wiggin said: “You have to be a special person to be able to work with coaches. They are under a lot of pressure, they can be demanding, distracted, under siege. To have worked with them as long as Ann has, that takes a really special person.”

She says she enjoyed working for each and every one of them. But as she talks it’s not hard to tell that the most memorable boss was Stram.

“He amazed me everyday with his sense of humor and his wit, his one liners,” she said. “At the start it was overwhelming. He had nicknames for everyone, not just around the team but also for his family and the rest of the league. I had to keep track of them on a piece of paper for awhile until I learned them all.”

Stram called her “Punk” and constantly left her wondering what was next.

“When we moved into Arrowhead, he had this gigantic office upstairs, but he really worked downstairs, off the locker room,” she remembered. “I would go two or three days without seeing him. But we had constant conversations on the intercom. You never knew what he was going to ask for next.”

Ann Roach has ridden the roller coaster through every victory, every defeat, every firing, every hiring. “Oh, I’m a bit of a mess on Sundays,” she said. “It matters. To see these coaches and all the time they put in, all the work and effort, it hurts when it doesn’t come with success.”

She and her husband Bruce will soon celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. He’s a former high school football coach, who knew what he was getting into when they got married.

“He knows the hours, knows that Tuesday nights are going to be late, that sometimes there isn’t much of a weekend, that training camp comes around every year,” she said. “Thank goodness he understands.”

Ann and Bruce have talked about how much longer she’s going to work. He’s already retired. But Ann’s not sure she’s ready just yet.

“Oh, sometimes when it’s been a long week, you feel it,” she said. “But then there’s another week, another game to get ready for, and you start all over again.

“It’s still exciting.”