Iron Man’s Iron Will Stood Tall The Late Jake Dretke Won’t Soon Be Forgotten

Somewhere hidden inside the new Spokane Arena, blended into the infrastructure, is a black metal rooster.

Only the ironworkers who welded it there know exactly where.

It honors Jake “The Rooster” Dretke, who led a team of hardhats in building and erecting the eight steel trusses that form the arena’s massive skeleton.

The day before Dretke was to oversee the erection of the final truss last October, his body washed up at Green Lake in Adams County. He and a buddy had drowned four days earlier when their boat capsized 6 feet from shore in 10 feet of water.

Dretke was 52, and the arena was his last major project.

After nearly 30 years as an ironworker and a few early ones riding bulls for paltry purses, The Rooster was headed for semiretirement.

He planned to spend his free time with a new grandson, Jaeger, now 15 months, and as a new member of the Hoof and Horn Duck Club.

His colleagues, wife Patricia, son Layne and daughter Laurie were left stunned. They all thought the scrappy, strong-willed Dretke, who had the personality of a banty rooster and a tattoo of one on his chest, was indestructible.

There had been plenty of proof.

Like the Christmas Eve that Dretke tore off a finger while working at Kaiser Aluminum, then taped it back on and met his family for dinner. They forced him to the hospital when it got infected.

Then there was a stroke. Dretke missed only a week of work.

He took several spills, but always climbed back up on the beam.

In Dretke’s world of ironworking, there were no sick days or excuses.

“He was a stern man,” says his son, Layne Dretke. “He worked iron. There was only one way to do the job, that’s the right way. That’s why you were hired.”

Dretke passed the work ethic to his family and every apprentice he trained. It was every man’s responsibility, Dretke believed, to put food on the table.

“He would walk across hell on a Sunday to make sure Laurie and I had something better,” Layne Dretke says.

Their father wasn’t particularly sensitive or politically correct. That’s why he shocked his family when he cried after his only grandson’s birth.

Another of Dretke’s loves was a mutt named Popcorn. The dog died three weeks ago of what the family calls a broken heart. Popcorn had mourned Dretke’s death for 10 months.

With Popcorn at his side, Dretke would rock the baby and sing “Jingle Bells” out of season because the song had the only lyrics he knew. His family would laugh as Dretke butchered even that tune.

“I saw a man very different from when I grew up,” daughter Laurie Dretke says through a stream of tears. “He was really just a softie. That was a very special time for us.

“It’s a huge loss.”

Dretke’s death was the lone human crisis during Arena construction, says Tim Welsh, president of general contractor Garco Construction Co.

It devastated his colleagues.

Garco project engineer Hollis Barnett, 26, is a white-collar manager who was regaled by Dretke’s blue-collar stories. Barnett still kicks himself for not videotaping Dretke’s pep talk to ironworkers just before the first truss was laid.

It went something like this: Hey, boys, we’re professionals. We’re Spokane ironworkers. We’re the best ironworkers. I want this done efficient, safe, quick. Think smart. No mistakes up there.

Cranes hoisted two 95,000-pound steel beams and aligned them. It was a perfect fit. The crowd of workers cheered. From then on, ironworkers erected a truss a week, a dizzying schedule.

“He was one of those guys you never saw walk,” Barnett says of Dretke. “He would literally run from one place to another and always had a tool or something in his hand. There was never an unproductive moment.

“He wouldn’t spare any patience for anyone who wasn’t as efficient as he was either. And everyone respected him for that.”

The foundation of Dretke’s life was hard work. The rewards would come when he could take his dog and grandson hunting and to see the buildings he erected.

Says daughter Laurie: “He always wanted to take Jaeger to the arena and say, ‘This is the house that Jake built.”’

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo