Can a song save a lost man’s life?
The first handful of times Jake Schroeder belted out “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Avalanche games way back in 1998, he was a clueless father of a newborn baby girl. In those days, Schroeder often slept in his underwear as his funk band Opie Gone Bad rolled down the highway to its next gig. Desperate for rent money, he tended bar for tips. During every waking hour, his heart ached from the fresh, jagged wound of divorce.
“I was struggling. I was not in a good place. I was not taking good care of myself,” Schroeder told me. “It was a point where my life could’ve gone either way. The national anthem gave me a sense of community when I really needed it.”
When it all could have gone bad for Opie, he grew up to be the Anthem Guy in Colorado. Schroeder is now blessed to be thanked from the 16th Street Mall to the Champs-Elysees for making us stand taller as Americans.
As Schroeder prepares to sing the anthem for the 1,000th time for the Avs on Saturday night, he’s humbled by a gift wrapped in red, white and blue.
While it might be a stretch to suggest every hockey fan who has warbled off-key or hummed along saved his life, there’s no doubt they have changed Schroeder for the better in ways that will warm his heart forever.
“Itap a hard song. Nothing rhymes. But it stirs my emotions,” Schroeder said Thursday. “I’m so grateful. What a gift to have this song be such a big chapter in my life.”
On this Veterans Day, before Colorado took the ice and thumped Vancouver 7-1, Schroeder worked his magic, coaxing 17,226 spectators to join in the celebration of a tune harder to carry than a grand piano.
“Itap not my song, it belongs to the people,” Schroeder said. “So I’ve always been very conscious of encouraging everyone in the building to sing along.”
The signature moment of the anthem in Denver is a call and response, with Schroeder singing of proof through the night before the arena rafters shake as the audience shouts: “Our. Flag. Was. Still. There!”
“That was never planned on my part,” Schroeder said. The rousing chant “was an organic thing; it started after 9/11.”
When Schroeder began this amazing run, he was a 30-year-old father who couldn’t afford a babysitter, so he hauled newborn daughter Tate to home games and cradled the baby until seconds before stepping into the spotlight.
At a lonely time in his life, Avalanche winger Shjon Podein befriended Schroeder and wrapped him in the warmth of the Colorado dressing room. When the marketing department suggested a variety of singers might deliver more entertainment value, general manager Pierre Lacroix insisted Jake was his Anthem Guy and would hear none of it.
“At a time when I really needed it,” Schroeder said, “Pierre taught me a sense of responsibility to show up and do the anthem.”
His relationship with “The Star-Spangled Banner” began as a mystery. Attending CU football games at Folsom Field as a kid, Schroeder was perplexed why his own father, stoic by nature, wept uncontrollably during the anthem.
It would be many decades later, when Jacob Schroeder III was dying of pancreatic cancer, before the mystery was solved.
During the Vietnam War, the elder Schroeder was stationed on an island in the Pacific, where C-130 cargo planes would make daily deliveries of dead soldiers being sent home for burial. During the somber transfer process, the anthem was played every time. Each time, a scar was carved deeper into an enlisted man who would be eternally grateful for their sacrifice, giving him the opportunity to return home and cheer touchdowns by the Buffs.
“It must have been horrifying for my dad to see the scale of death that took kids his own age … The scale of war is horrible. It was too much for him to handle,” said Schroeder, inspired by a father’s tears every time he picks up a microphone on Avalanche home ice.
If his late father could only see Jake now. For 23 years, the anthem has become his personal soundtrack.
“I was in Paris, wearing a stocking cap; my beard was grown out,” Schroeder recalled. “I was standing on the lawn of the Eiffel Tower, and this guy comes up to me and says: ‘Are you the guy who sings the national anthem for the Avalanche?’”
Remember Tate, the infant whose diaper was changed backstage by friends as the leader of Opie Gone Bad sang for his dinner and a ticket to watch the Stanley Cup champs play?
Well, daddy’s little girl is all grown up. Check out Schroeder’s Twitter page. You will find a gorgeous photo, snapped last weekend, that captures the joy of a man in full, beaming alongside Tate at her wedding.
“As a little kid, she was sitting on the lap of Peter Forsberg at the ChopHouse, the night he realized his spleen was ruptured,” Schroeder said.
One more thing: When the Avs celebrate women in hockey later this month, Schroeder will give up his place on the ice and let a female voice lead the crowd in a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
The anthem singer in Ball Arena on Nov. 22? A 13-year-old girl named Lily Kate. She is the youngest daughter of Schroeder.
“I think,” Schroeder suggested with a chuckle, “she’s trying to steal my gig.”
Well, now we’ve got a juicy story. Could there be a singing family feud in the offing? As an intrepid journalist, I had to ask a poised teenage girl if she was plotting to take her dad’s job.
As her eyes twinkled with a hint of mischief, Lily Kate fessed up: “Well, maybe … eventually.”
Attagirl. You go, Lily Kate.
As Schroeder performs the anthem for the 1,000th time, stand up and kindly remove your caps. Sing it loud and proud.
We are all witnesses to the start of a star-spangled family dynasty.
