Playing for his sister’s wedding or for 60,000 people at a Colts game, Nathan Klatt ’01 is living and breathing a dream grounded in faith. HE STOOD STOIC AND ALONE
THE —by Michael Schroeder ’01 photo courtesy of Indianapolis Colts
in the end zone with a 110year-old family heirloom in his hands and his game face on. Servicemen and -women in camouflage fatigues stood shoulder to shoulder with Indianapolis Colts football players and fans stretching taut an oversized American flag 33 yards across the field and 100 yards to the opposing end zone. Sixty-three thousand people stood hushed. Then 33-year-old Nathan Klatt ’01 did what he’s always done since he played his first wedding at eight years old: He slid a bow across strings and waited that agonizing millisecond to hear the result. Only this time it traveled a little further, through a pedal board to a wire that shot off the sideline and out through a powerful sound system and into cavernous Lucas Oil Stadium. That keening first note in Nathan’s rendering of the National Anthem gave me chills, no less because I’d been privileged to come into the side door of his life when we first met at the Lambda Chi house at Wabash in the fall of 1997. I’d watched him schlep violins and mandolins with him like children on road trips and, with no musical gifts of my own, I am still awed by his effortless ability to pick up on tunes like one might hum— the product of perfect pitch finetuned by classical training, and an athlete’s no-nonsense work ethic. As a friend I was thrilled for him, and slightly intimidated. Someone who had never seen him