20 Years Later
On 30 April, 2002, Charles Franklin Schroeder left this world after a battle with Hodgkins’ Lymphoma. He left behind two doting parents, Mark and Mary, and a baby sister, Katie. He also left behind many loving relatives and more friends than you could count. He and I were fraternity brothers, which meant we did some really foolish things I didn’t approve of, then or now.
Chuck was a very good-looking kid and he often used this to his advantage in wooing both friends and lovers, both of which outnumber me to this day. The last time I saw him was about 2 weeks before he died at a weekend long hotel fraternity party and I remember him showing me a notebook in which he would document the frequency of his hiccups. He told me it was happening at least 7 times a day and it bothered him more than just about anything else. He also said that maybe I could write a story about him and some of our experiences at Carthage College. I started it that week. I finished it 20 years ago tonight through tears, trying desperately to make sense the news I had received earlier that day and before leaving the next day to make the trek from Saint Croix Falls to Kenosha and later to Sheboygan for his funeral. I ended up reading that story in front of the nearly 500 funeral attendants at the request of his parents. I still don’t know how I managed to get through it.
I had entitled my story “My Friend Doc Holliday By Wyatt Earp” as a nod to the movie Tombstone, a film our circle of friends watched over and over and over in 1998 to the point that anyone who was able to do so had grown moustaches like our favorite characters. Chuck had the advantage over all of us to have a pretty fair resemblance to Val Kilmer and his innate coolness earned him pretty much unanimous consensus to be Doc Holliday. Our good friend Russell LeBeau maybe had a little more of Doc’s consumptive disposition, so they would sometimes share the nickname.
One of the first things I ever knew about Chuck was his love for the Green Bay Packers. He was 2 years behind me at Carthage, so he started the fall after Super Bowl XXXI, but we watched several games together in ’97, including the disappointing finish of Super Bowl XXXII. I may or may not have told him it was his fault we lost. I can’t remember. It was 25 years ago.
When Chuck was born, his dad Mark put his name on the famous Packers season ticket waiting list. When he was sick and still fighting his battle with cancer, his name came up, but he told his dad not to accept them and to let the next person on the list get them. Maybe one of you have the pair of tickets of Charles Franklin Schroeder. It would have been sometime around 2001.
I’d like to tell you more about Chuck and maybe sometime I will. I just wanted to acknowledge the world has gone on without him now for 20 years, but there are those of us who still remember. For those of us he touched in his brief time on earth, we will always remember.
