***
Jack Schroeder lives alone these days. Nonie passed away in 1997 from a rare form of cancer. He has three grown children, in order a daughter Amy, a son Matt and a daughter Erin, all of whom were lacrosse players as well. There are also now five grandchildren.
Matt was a goalie at Penn who had the good fortune to be a four-year starter for the Quakers and the bad fortune to do so in the second half of the 1990s, which meant he faced the 1996, 1997 and 1998 Princeton teams that all won the NCAA championship.
“Jack is a wonderful man,” Calkins says. “He’s a very kind person. He’s a very gracious person.”
When you walk into his house, you walk through a living room that is stacked with family pictures on the wall on the left, behind the couch. Past the stairway is the kitchen. On the far wall is an American flag, only it’s not exactly an American flag per se. The stars are the same as on a standard flag, but the stripes feature the names of those who were killed in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. On the bottom it reads “Flag Of Honor” and then “This flag is created from the names of those who perished in the terror attacks of 9/11. Now and forever it represents their immortality. We shall never forget them.”
To glance at this flag is to be reminded of the magnitude of those attacks. Together, all of those names add up to the first casualties in a war in which none of them enlisted. To fit all of those lost into the 13 stripes, the names are printed in a tiny size, in alphabetical order. Each of them had a life and a family and a story of their own.
There, on the 12th row from the top, on the third line in blue, is the name “Jeffrey H. Schreier.” Jeffrey H. Schreier was the son of Holocaust survivors. He suffered from learning disabilities but overcame them to spend 20 years working in the mailroom at Cantor Fitzgerald in the North Tower of the World Trade Center. He was there on the morning of Sept. 11. His remains were never found.
Two names over from Jeffrey H. Schreier is Susan Lee Schuler. She lived in Allentown, N.J., not far from Princeton. She and her husband Jim had a house with a small yard, and Susan loved to work in her garden. She was also a securities consultant by day, and every Tuesday she went into New York for client meetings. She was in one such meeting in the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11.
They all have stories.
The name in between “Jeffrey H. Schreier” and “Susan Lee Schuler” is “John T. Schroeder.” He has a story as well. While there are details that need to be added, you can almost see his entire story through the pictures that hang in his father’s house.
There are pictures of him as a lacrosse player. There are pictures of him with his family, including at his Princeton graduation. In one picture, he is dancing while dressed as an Elvis impersonator. In another he holds a fancy bottle of wine. These pictures suggest a man who was smart, athletic and fun. They speak to how important his family was to him.
He went to St. Anthony’s himself and played middie on the jayvee team as a freshman. When he reached the varsity the next year, it was as a defenseman.
“He was always a pretty good athlete,” Jack says of his oldest son in his understated way. “He was one of the best off-ball defenders I’ve ever seen. He was a little too aggressive on the ball sometimes, but off the ball he just had a great sense of where to be. I was so happy when he went to Princeton. I knew Billy was a great coach. And you can’t get into a better school. He was recruited by Notre Dame also, but he had his heart set on Princeton.”
Schroeder was a starter his first two years, including a sophomore year in which he started every game and earned honorable mention All-Ivy League honors. Meanwhile, Tierney improved the Tigers from that 2-13 first year to 6-8 Schroeder’s freshman year and then to the NCAA tournament for the first time ever in Schroeder’s sophomore year, which included the program’s first NCAA win, which came over Johns Hopkins.
By his junior year, Princeton was flooded with talent all over the field, and his role changed a bit. Instead of a starter on close defense, he became a role player, with some defense, some longstick midfield and some man-down. It was in the last of those situations that he made his biggest contribution to Princeton lacrosse.
“Cuse was on a run,” says Calkins, a middie on that team. “We were up big, and then in a blink we were tied.”
To be exact, Princeton was up 8-2 at one point before the Orange came back. Syracuse would score the next six goals, tying the score at 8-8 in the fourth quarter. Then, with 4:07 to go, Princeton went man down. Schroeder came on the field with that unit.
“They had all the momentum,” Calkins says. “I think we were collectively dealing with the pressure of having lost such a big lead. We were up against a team with an enormous amount of talent.”
Jack Schroeder was at Franklin Field that Memorial Day too, up in the stands.
“They were coming back,” he says “You knew they would. They had too many great players not to. We needed something to change things. When we went man down, we really needed a stop. John did what he could do so well, make a big off-ball play.”
Schroeder, playing off-ball, stepped into a passing lane to intercept a pass. Then he cleared it. Within 60 seconds, Princeton had a 9-8 lead, and even though Syracuse tied it just before the end of regulation, Schroeder’s play had a huge impact on who won the game, which Princeton did on Andy Moe’s goal off the face-off of the second overtime.
“He helped stabilize the moment,” Calkins says. “When he did, everyone took a deep breath. It was a tremendous play and we all still talk about it. He changed the momentum back in our favor.”
“He made a huge play,” Tierney says. “That’s for sure. He was ready when we needed him to be.”
That was John Schroeder the lacrosse player. What about John Schroeder the person?
“We had some personalities on the team, and he was one of them,” Tierney says. “He had a very dry sense of humor. He was very funny. He was loved deeply by everyone.”
“He had a dry sense of humor,” Calkins says, echoing his coach. “He had a sarcastic sense of humor. He wanted to be around people having fun. He liked to joke around. He brought a lot of levity. We all had a lot of fun together.”
“He was a great kid,” Jack says. “He really was. He was smart, but he didn’t overdo it. He liked to have fun. That’s for sure.”
Like Tierney and Calkins, his thoughts drift away from the conversation, and so he is silent for five seconds or so.
“He was a great son,” he says next.
“He represented so much of the best of Princeton lacrosse,” Tierney says. “He was a young man who bought into what we were trying to do. He loved being a part of it. He did whatever we asked him to do.”
“He was a great teammate,” Calkins says. “He was a wonderful big-hearted person. He just loved to be part of the team, and it was a really important part of who he was. To be a Princeton lacrosse player, on a team of guys who loved each other and looked out for each other, he thrived in that environment. Even when he started to play a bit less, he continued to work hard. He was dedicated to his game. He embraced the roles he could play, and he would do anything for the team. He was just a remarkably selfless individual. We were a group of guys who believed in each other and wanted to accomplish great things, and without him, maybe we wouldn’t have.”
After graduating with a history degree a week after the championship game, Schroeder went to work in New York City in finance, like so many other Princeton lacrosse alums. He also continued to play lacrosse, winning national club championships in under-30 and over-30 divisions, to go along with championships at St. Anthony’s and Princeton.
“He was seven years older than I was,” Matt Schroeder says. “He was the life of the party, that’s for sure. He always made people feel good. He liked to hang out and make people laugh. He wasn’t afraid to laugh at himself. Hey, look at his nickname. He was also fiercely loyal. If anyone was ever in trouble, he was right there. Anyone needed anything, he was right there.”
For instance, there was a friend of his sister Amy who was teaching and coaching basketball at a small school in New York City.
“They didn’t have money for uniforms,” Jack says. “So John went out and bought them for them. Just did it. That’s what he did. He finally started to make some real money, and he told his other sister that he would pay for her college tuition at Georgetown. That’s how he was. Whatever he could do to help. I didn’t find out about that until years later.”
John Schroeder started to make what his father calls “real money” when he worked for a company called Harvey, Young and Yurman. After a few years there, he was recommended, along with a few others at the firm, for a job at Fred Alger. He started his new job in June of 2001. His new office was on the 92nd floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower.
Before John made “real money,” he supplemented his income repairing golf clubs. In fact, he had a side business called “King Of Clubs,” and his business card read “Custom Clubmaking, Repairs & Gripping,” along with his name and phone number. He and his father often played together.
On Labor Day weekend of 2001, the two wanted to play the famed Bethpage Black course, a public course in Farmingdale, Long Island. There are five 18-hole courses at Bethpage State Park. The easiest is the Yellow course. Then Green. Then Blue. Then Red. Then Black. The black course hosted the 2002 U.S. Open and then again the Open in 2009, as well as the PGA Championship in 2019. When Jack and John Schroeder went to play golf Labor Day weekend in 2001, they found that the Black course was under construction for the 2002 Open.
“You couldn’t make a reservation for a tee time,” Jack says, “so we just had to walk up and get in line. Of course, we wanted to play Bethpage Black, but they were getting it prepped for the Open. Only it was a bit of a rainy day that day. We were supposed to play the Green course, but then John saw some guys going over to the Black course. He went inside, and they said that we could get out there only on that day because they stopped working on it because of the rain. We went back out and played the Black course. We hit the ball all over the place that day.”
He laughs. Then he stops. This has happened with him, just as it did with Tierney and Calkins when they told the story of the nickname. The good memories, the fun times – they all can talk about them only for so long, before reality snaps back in.
This time it’s a bit different. This time, as Jack pauses, he tears up. A single tear runs down his right cheek and lands on one of the purple stripes on his golf shirt. He starts to speak. First he says this: “I don’t know why I’m crying. I guess it’s better that I am than I’m not.”
Then he hesitates again. Another tear joins the first. Now there’s a small spot of tears covering one purple and one black stripe.
“That day,” he says, “was the last time I ever saw him.”