Thank you to Adele Sciarroni, a 2019 PFL Scholarship winner, for providing this blog.

It is an absolute honor to be selected as one of the winners of the 2019 PFL Scholarship. I heard about this scholarship from my aunt who lives in Marietta, Georgia and knows the Lutzenkirchen family and their story. After reading about Philip’s life and the legacy his family has lived since his passing, I was very inspired. The two main parts of Philip’s story that I related to were the prominence of faith and football in his life and his family’s advocacy for safe driving.

The way that faith and football brought together the Lutzenkirchen family and their community, in both good and bad times, reminded me a lot of the community I grew up in. I have gone to Catholic schools my whole life and was raised with faith as a very important part of my life. Ever since I was born, my dad has been a high school football coach and the presence of football in my life has only grown as my friends and brothers began playing themselves. It amazes me how these two parts of my life, while significantly different at their cores, are so similar. Church and Catholic school classrooms have brought some of the most important people in my life and helped me to build a supportive and caring community around myself. The football field on Friday nights has had a similar role in bonding the people in my life together into a community as we all cheer for our favorite teams and players. Just as faith and football were prominent parts of Philip’s life, they have also had a big impact on my life. The encouraging community that faith and football have enabled me to surround myself with is something I am especially grateful for and will never take for granted.

The Lutzenkirchen family’s advocacy for safe driving was the other aspect of Philip’s legacy that inspired me. Being the oldest of four kids in my family meant that I did a lot of carpooling and “mom” duty to help my parents out after I got my license. The number of my friends or my siblings’ friends that I have driven around is too many to count. This responsibility was always something I enjoyed taking on but definitely did not take lightly. I love driving people around because I feel like you really get to know someone in a unique way after driving with them—their music taste, patience level, directional skills, etc. I became excited to join the carpool rotation and give my friends rides, because of my ability to create stronger bonds with people, but also to keep them safe through my safe driving practices.

This scholarship will be an enormous help to me and my family as I continue my education at Duquesne University in the pursuit of a Doctorate of Pharmacy. I am so grateful to have the opportunity to honor Philip’s legacy through my own life and I’ll always remember to take 43 key seconds upon entering a vehicle!

Watch Adele’s video here.