Carnival of Soul

The New York Times Sports department is revisiting the subjects of some compelling articles from the last year or so. Here is our June report on Charles Glenn’s final days with the Blues.

Charles Glenn misses the concession workers at Enterprise Center in St. Louis. He misses the custodial staff there and the crew that cleans the ice. He misses the Blues’ players and management. He misses the energy that would pulse through the corridors before games where he sang the national anthem, his voice, a soulful tenor, resonating through the arena’s uppermost reaches.

After 19 years as the Blues’ primary anthem singer, Glenn informed them on Jan. 6 — his 64th birthday, when the team ranked last in the Western Conference — that he would retire at season’s end. Even on better days, his multiple sclerosis left him fatigued and weak, and it was time to stop, it just was.

But Glenn promised that he would continue singing in the playoffs, if the Blues qualified. They kept winning, so Glenn kept singing — through April and May and deep into June, with three home games in the Stanley Cup finals, the latest a Blues season had ever stretched.

Three days after St. Louis throttled the Bruins in Boston to win Game 7, Glenn and his band perched on a stage beneath the Gateway Arch, near the end of the victory parade route. Conducting with his cane, Glenn performed for about two hours, riffing during a soaring rendition of the team’s traditional goal song, “When the Blues Go Marching In.” He also belted out a different kind of anthem: “We Are The Champions.” Several times that afternoon, overcome with emotion, Glenn paused to collect himself.

“I have never seen so many people at one place, just a sea of people, all united for one purpose,” Glenn said. “It brought a tear to my eye.”

The Blues completed the most improbable in-season turnaround in N.H.L. history to win the franchise’s first Stanley Cup, a championship made ever more special by their relationship with people like Laila Anderson, the young superfan stricken with an immune disorder, and Glenn, a link between two of the city’s passions — hockey and music.

Months later, as a token of the Blues’ appreciation, Glenn received the same gaudy championship ring that the players did, with 282 diamonds and 51 sapphires.

“When he saw it, I wish you could have seen his face,” said Jason Pippi, the Blues’ director of entertainment. “He was walking around opening night wearing that thing with the swagger that only Charles Glenn can command.”

That night, Oct. 2, the Blues raised their championship banner and hoisted the Stanley Cup once more before playing the Washington Capitals. During a stoppage, Glenn was shown on the video screen, and introduced to a rousing ovation. He has not returned to Enterprise Center since — not because he is avoiding it, but because he has been too busy.

In October, he sang the national anthem before two Cardinals playoff games at Busch Stadium, hoping to transfer his talismanic powers to the local baseball team. In November, he said, his wife, Nikki, had to ferry him out of town for Thanksgiving, absconding to Kansas City, so she could get him to herself. Between teaching vocal music and choir at Missouri Baptist University and performing at holiday parties with his band darn near every night, Glenn had not had a day off in two weeks when we spoke in early December. Nor did he foresee getting any time off soon.

“I’m supposed to be retired,” Glenn said, “and I’m working harder than I ever have in my life.”

But when his schedule does allow, Glenn tunes into Blues games on television, or radio, and he listens. He listens to his successors. Out of respect to Glenn, Pippi said, the Blues did not want to hire a successor so soon. Instead, they are relying on the bounty of local talent, some of whom Glenn judged during summer auditions.

“A lot of times they’re on, and I’ll say, ‘Oh, I remember them. They were very good,’” Glenn said. “There’s no weak link in the bunch.”

In those moments, and others, Glenn misses singing the anthem. But he does not miss the long drives to and from the arena. Nor does he miss walking up and down all those concrete stairs. But the Blues are again a juggernaut, leading the Western Conference, and though Glenn’s schedule this June is full — his daughter’s wedding, a deferred trip to New York for the Tony Awards — he would cherish the opportunity to watch them repeat.

“If they want me back, I’m there,” Glenn said. “I’ll be well rested.”