Kentucky's Steinmetz laid to rest
Posted: Thursday November 19, 1998 07:42 PM
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Pallbearers carry the casket of Arthur Steinmetz after Mass AP |
EDGEWOOD, Kentucky (AP) -- An infectious joy and enthusiasm made Arthur Steinmetz a winner on and off the football field, Steinmetz's pastor said Thursday in eulogizing the Kentucky football player killed Sunday in a truck crash.
"Not only was he good at the game of football," the Rev. Douglas Fortner said. "I think Artie was good at the game of life."
Some 1,100 mourners -- about 200 of them standing -- gathered at St. Pius X Roman Catholic Church to pay last respects to Steinmetz, 19, who died Sunday when teammate Jason Watts' truck went out of control and flipped on a rural highway near Somerset. Mourners included members of the Kentucky football team and coach Hal Mumme, who spoke briefly with Steinmetz's parents, Marshall and Therese Steinmetz.
Also killed in the crash was Christopher Scott Brock, 21, of Hyden, a student at Eastern Kentucky University and a friend of Kentucky quarterback Tim Couch. Brock's funeral was Wednesday in Thousandsticks, just outside Hyden.
Watts is being charged with drunken driving and two counts of second-degree manslaughter after a test showed his blood-alcohol content to be 1 1/2 times the legal limit. He suffered a 12-inch gash in his right forearm and remains hospitalized at Lexington's University of Kentucky Medical Center in good condition.
Blood tests have shown all three men were legally drunk when Watts' truck wrecked early Sunday morning, as they headed to a southern Kentucky farm to go deer hunting. All three were thrown from the vehicle.
Jack Kennevan, who was Steinmetz's principal at Covington Catholic High School, recalled meeting Steinmetz for the first time when he visited football practice in a hot July day.
"What I remember most was his enthusiastic, 'Yes, sir!,' to my questions," Kennevan recalled. "Artie conducted himself with enthusiasm and joy. He was contagious. He loved, above all, people."
Also eulogizing Steinmetz was Bishop Robert Muench of Covington, who referred to Steinmetz's August decision to transfer from Michigan State, where he had played football as a freshman, to Kentucky, where he was sitting out this season before becoming eligible to play for the Wildcats.
"In his life, we know two colors of Artie, blue and white," Muench said. (Covington Catholic's colors are blue and white, as are Kentucky's.) "Oh, he was tempted at one time to wear green and white, but he knew he was meant for blue and white."
Muench went on to say that blue and white also are the colors of the Virgin Mary, whose prayer of last resort has become the name for a last-second, desperation pass play in football, the Hail Mary.
Muench then led mourners in reciting the Hail Mary.
Fortner told mourners that their sense of loss is real.
"But it is not the whole truth," he said. "It is our part of the truth." For Steinmetz, he said, death is "the beginning of a life of full love" with God and is comparable to being born all over again.
"He didn't belong to us," Fortner said. "He was on loan to us from God."
Steinmetz is survived by his father and mother, who has said the couple do not want Watts prosecuted in the case, and by a brother, Matthew.
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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