ASHWAUBENON, WI (WTAQ) – Forgetting the words can be the worse nightmare for anyone singing the National Anthem and for a Green Bay Area man, it happened Sunday at Lambeau Field.
It was a moment that a Green Bay area man would like to forget, but knows he will forever remember.
“Forever I will be known as that guy.”
He says he knows the words well, but an incident in front of him threw him off of his game.
“As they were hauling the big flag out, a lady fell and a guy fell right on top of her and it distracted me for just a second, and I forgot the fourth phrase.”
Hermans has performed the National Anthem hundreds of times, and this one started well.
Once Hermans got to “What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming, but then the next line became full of La, La, La.
He says with his experience in being a professional singer, he is trained to make up new words when that happens to get back on track, but not with the Star Spangled Banner.
“You cannot sacrilege the wording, so I just went la, la, la. Thank God.”
He says he also had another thought going through his mind.
“Hey we have this timed out for the flyover, so I have to somehow come back in the timing and the phrasing of this song.”
Hermans says he was asked that morning to fill in singing for a country artist that was not able to fly in due to weather and rehearsed perfectly just hours before.
He says as tough as that was, being so well known in the community has led to tons of support from many.
“I do the CP Telethon every year and the charity shows that Let Me Frank Productions does, of course, it helped. In a day in age where it is tough to be forgiving and everyone is saying bad things about people, it is nice to see the support I am getting.”
He says he knows he is not alone and since the event, he has been getting texts and emails from people giving examples of others who have messed up the words.
“Everybody is patting me on the back and saying it is okay, it was still strong. I screwed up the National Anthem, I am a professional singer, the veterans are very important to me. I have all these guys standing behind me and I screwed up. I have been wanting to sing at a Packer game forever.”
He said after he got off stage, his 19-year-old son who also sings, came running down the stairs to tell him that he feels his pain, but that he sounded amazing.
Herman has been waiting for the chance since almost getting to sing in 1992. He says he was scheduled to sing, but the band director decided not to have a singer along with their performance, from then on, it has been a bucket list item.
Many are praising Hermans for not giving up and finishing on time like nothing happened.
“I was able to recover, but still I messed up the lyric.”
Hermans was able to recover and finish strong, he says he hopes the Packers give him another chance sometime.
