Of all the photos documenting the life of former Arizona Cardinals defensive back Pat Tillman, one stood out so vividly that it inspired a statue outside the team’s stadium honoring Tillman after his 2004 death while serving with the Army Rangers in Afghanistan. Tillman’s story has been told and retold, but rarely does the public get to know the story of photographers such as Gene Lower, who is responsible for that iconic image of Tillman celebrating a tackle 26 years ago.
A recent hurricane and devastating flood in Florida are just the latest, stunning turns for Lower, whose teenage son died last year. The flood wiped out most of his family’s belongings, including nearly the entire archive of film negatives from Lower’s early career. An extraordinary twist of fate, however, gave this story an uplifting trajectory.
As a young photographer in 1998, Lower was covering Cardinals games from various angles when he decided to focus on one particular rookie whose performance he summed up in a single word: “Passion.” This was back in the age of film photography, pre-digital, and Lower used up a lot of rolls trying to capture the spirit behind that NFL newbie with the No. 40 jersey.
Lower captured the essence of Pat Tillman, at the time an intense defensive back on the rise, who made the most of his skills delivering bone-crunching hits while firing up his teammates. The description — passion — that Lower attached to Tillman on and off the field closely resembles the way Tillman’s Ranger platoon mates describe him in Afghanistan. Tillman enlisted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and was deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I caught him in stride, giving that primal scream of passion and excitement,” Lower recalled recently. “Ripping his helmet off and just that explosion of emotion that rained from him after that play.”
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