Philip Lutzenkirchen played football. That’s how most people knew him. They knew him as the starting tight end for the 2010 Auburn national championship team. They knew him as the all-time and single-season leader for touchdown catches by a tight end at Auburn. They knew him from his game-winning catch from Cam Newton in the Iron Bowl in 2010. Or maybe they knew him before that, as the Lassiter High standout who was named to the 2008 AJC All State football team and was a PrepStar All-American.
But most people didn’t really know Philip Lutzenkirchen.
“Sports were his release from the world,” his sister Ann said. “He knew he could go there and be the man he wanted to be. He could go there and show his strength, he could be a leader. Sports were his passion. But I don’t think it’s what defines him. When people think of Philip they thought of football, but when he thought of himself, he just thought of this goofy kid.”
A goofy kid who loved Disney, anyone he met, and the platform sports afforded him. Such as the opportunity to inspire Bailey Moody, an 11-year-old girl from Atlanta who went from playing basketball for her school to being diagnosed with bone cancer in a matter of hours. Lutzenkirchen not only visited her in the hospital to lift her spirits, but, as with most people he met, he befriended the young girl as well.
His family recently learned that wasn’t a rarity.
“I found out he did so many things for people that we never knew about,” Ann said. “Now we’re getting calls from everyone saying he did so many things for them. He never bragged about that type of stuff.”
Philip Lutzenkirchen, of Marietta, died June 29 in a car accident. He was 23. Funeral services will take place Thursday at 1 p.m. at Transfiguration Catholic Church.
To know Lutzenkirchen only as the best tight end to ever play for Auburn is not to know him, his father, Mike, said. Sports might have been what people first knew Lutzenkirchen for, but it wasn’t what they remembered him by.
“That was his mantra. ‘I play football and that’s this thing that I’ve gotten good at, but it’s not who I am.’ He valued that he got his platform,” Mike said.
What people who knew him truly valued was what Lutzenkirchen did with that platform.
“Philip Lutzenkirchen was what every parent aspires their son to be,” former Auburn coach Gene Chizik said in a statement. “He was compassionate, determined, honorable and full of love, integrity and respect. In 27 years of coaching, I have come across what I would consider to be a few ‘rare’ young men. Phillip was certainly one of those ‘rare’ ones. He truly lived his life for other people and always found time to give to others.”
Lutzenkirchen’s football career came to an end shortly after he suffered a hip injury during his senior year. Recently, he had been serving as an assistant coach at St. James High School in Montgomery, Ala., where he was also working in a wealth-management firm.
But even before his days on the gridiron were over, Lutzenkirchen knew what he wanted his legacy to be. Ann remembers one thing her brother told her in the height of his football career.
“It’s cool people remember me for those plays,” he said. “But I really want them to remember me for the people I touched.”
Philip is survived by his parents Mary (Meier) and Mike Lutzenkirchen of Marietta, and sisters Amy, Ann, and Abby Lutzenkirchen of Marietta. He is also survived by his grandparents, Howard and Phyllis Skolak, of Aurora, Ill., and William Lutzenkirchen, of Davis, Ill.
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