Grandpa Lou spent half a decade coddling the babies of teen moms who were earning their high school diplomas. He once gathered what means he could to help send one graduate to college.
But the heyday ended a few months ago, when cancer gripped Lou Schroeder and refused to let go.Now, the Salt Lake resident is too ill to volunteer at Creekside High, Murray's alternative school. But his spirit lingers there, his photos adorning offices and conference rooms. And a social worker makes sure she delivers the school's spirit to him, in videos of toddlers and the crayon sketches they make.
"It's still the greatest love of his life," Sharon Schroeder says of her bedridden father-in-law's work at the nursery.
A Salt Lake County Foster Grandparent volunteer, the 87-year-old Schroeder spent five years enveloped by young life at the school, five hours a day, five days a week.
Volunteer work came naturally for the retired contractor and Michigan machinist with a distaste for idle hands. And its rewards boomeranged, helping him to live life to the fullest even after the death of his wife, Nadine, an LDS missionary he met at a Chicago church service.
"If I hadn't had that job, I think I'd be gone," Lou Schroeder says from his bed, surrounded by cards and snapshots from Creekside's nursery and portraits of his four children, 16 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. "I was an inspiration to them, and they were an inspiration to me."
Schroeder, past president of the Lions Club of Holladay, was not your average volunteer who stays a couple of years or comes and goes sporadically. He was there, rain or shine, at first driving himself then taking the bus, where students often greeted him and helped him into the school.
"He was a good kind of male figure for the kids, like their own grandpa," said Tristyn Paswaters, the school's day-care provider, who Grandpa Lou prefers to call "Sunshine."
Schroeder would play a "dinosaur" hide-and-seek type game with toddlers, saying "Boo!" when bright eyes peeked from their hiding place.
He would play fisherman while the youngsters "swam" along the ground, waiting to be caught.
He read books. He cuddled infants and steadied their bottles. Sometimes, just resting in a rocking chair became a kid magnet, with rugrats ("they have a lot of batteries," he says) gathering at his feet and crawling on his lap.
"At the end, he could hardly pick them up because he was so weak. But he would do it anyway," principal Shauna Ballou said.
Schroeder would chat with Paswaters and share stories of the 1950s with sophomore Kisha Trafelet, who hung on every word about candy costing a few cents and nifty cars kids zipped around in.
Students began telling their adopted grandpa the day's problems or deeper difficulties they had with their babies' fathers.
"He always told me if he had another granddaughter, he'd want me to be his granddaughter. I don't have any grandpas," said junior Dezarai Andreason.
Lou Schroeder would tell the students to keep their heads up, and they would. He would help pay for their lunches if they couldn't afford it and tried to hand off coins for candy.
Last year, he coyly presented Ballou with $300 he somehow gathered between Social Security checks to help a student go to college. The school hopes to fund a "Grandpa Lou Scholarship," which debuted one year after he received an honorary high school diploma and standing ovation, in his honor.
By that time, Lou Schroeder was on a roll.
But so was the tumor creeping through his lungs. And it was gaining speed.
Doctors had informed the pre-World War II veteran of the cancer more than three years ago, his children say.
He had refused to believe anything was medically wrong.
But the cancer had progressed to life threatening around Thanksgiving. The family was told he may die by Christmas. And Lou Schroeder learned he could no longer keep up with the work at Creekside -- an announcement he says came like a bump on the head.
"I miss life, that's all," he says.
The school gave Grandpa Lou a hearty farewell. Staff and students crammed into a balloon-filled room for a chat, piece of cake and to shed a tear or two.
"There is a tremendous benefit to students in having the opportunity to rub shoulders with a senior citizen like Grandpa Lou," Sherry Madsen of the Murray Board of Education said. "Lessons are learned that will impact the future. Lives are changed for the better, and bonds are created that will endure long past the time those students leave Creekside."
Meanwhile, Lou Schroeder -- called "a master of resurrection" by one doctor -- cheats Father Time. He keeps contacts with the school by phoning Ballou, whom he has asked to speak at his funeral, and watching videos of the children wishing him a happy Valentine's Day and birthday, which he has rolled into one.
"Thank you," he responds to the video, smiling.
Sometimes, when he wakes, he says, "Maybe I'll get better and go back to school." But his family, and the students, know the truth.
Still, the empty space in the nursery has taken some getting used to. Trafelet couldn't believe Grandpa Lou wasn't there when she returned to school with her newborn son, whom she thought would be cuddled by the aging hands.
Ballou says the school might get another foster grandparent but not this year.
"If we get lucky, we'll get someone like him," she says, adding the odds of that are slim. "He's one in a million."